AMERICAN INVENTORS

Two hundred five years ago today, Robert Fulton's steamboat arrived in Albany, two days after leaving New York.  You can read more about Mr. Fulton's world-changing invention (and many more) in a book in this collection titled Inventors. Philip Gengembre Hubert wrote this book which was published in 1893 by C. Scribner's Sons as part of a Men of Achievement series. Its 299 pages contain illustrations, plates, and interesting information about  these American inventors:

Robert Fulton, Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Elias Howe, Samuel F. B. Morse, Charles Goodyear, John Ericsson, Cyrus Hall McCormick, Thomas A. Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell.

To further tempt you to take a look at this Bullis book, here's an excerpt that documents Robert Fulton's account of his voyage:

"My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men comment what they call philosophers and projectors. Having employed much time, money, and zeal, in accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it fully answer my expectations. It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to the merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri, and other great rivers, which are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen; and although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantage that my country will derive from the invention." (pp. 60-61)

This book is on our "to read" list - we suggest you consider putting it on yours.

CARS, CARS, and CARS

Our July 20 post focused on a Bullis book published in 1903 that chronicled a car trip through a portion of western United States. This week we dug around some more and came up with three more books about cars, and if you haven't stopped by the Bulis Room to take a closer look at The West from a Car Window, we hope that these other books will lure you in.

First, we found The Car That Went Abroad, Motoring Through the Golden Age,  written by Albert Bigelow Paine, illustrated from drawings by Walter Hale, and published in 1921 by Harper. "Abroad" means France, and looking at the list of places that automobile visited, it's tires barely had a chance to cool down from one side trip before it was on to the next.

Second, this book popped up on our search: By Camel and Car to the Peacock Throne by E. Alexander Powell, published in 1923 by Garden City Publishing Co.  What makes this book especially interesting to those of us in Upstate New York is that Mr. Powell was a native of Syracuse. He was born there in 1879 and was on the Syracuse Journal staff from 1898-1899.  At the beginning of World War I he was a war correspondent, and due to his neutral position was allowed on both sides of the battle lines. When the US entered the war in 1917, he was commissioned as a captain in US military intelligence. Following the war through1954, he had a successful career as an adventure and travel writer. This book is one of the 20 he wrote during that time. (Wikipedia, "E. Alexander Powell")

The third book we found is from a second-world-war timeframe: The Automobile User's Guide (with wartime suggestions on how to get the most out of your car and make it last longer : a practical operating manual for automobile owners and their families. General Motors Corporation authored and published this book in 1940. Although times and cars have changed in the last 72 years, there are still some good, practical ideas and lots of nostalgia between the covers of this book. 

There's still time for car trips this summer, and in between your travels, we hope you'll stop by and let us show you these interesting (and fun-to-read) books.

REACHING OUT

This week volunteers worked on reaching out to the local area in another way ... with an ad in the 30th annual Macedon Center Community Lumberjack Festival's booklet.  On September 8 (9 Am to 5 PM) and September 9 (11 AM to 5 PM), both professional and amateur lumberjacks will compete for prizes in a series of events that include log chopping, chain sawing, log rolling, tree felling, and greased pole climbing.

When festival goers open their ad booklets, they will find our announcement that tells them this collection has over 6000 items "to help you explore the World, the Sciences, the Past, and the Faiths from the perspective of Victoria era authors." Readers will also be encouraged to schedule a visit by calling the library at 315-986-5932 option 3.  We hope that many of them will do just that.

We've also included a reminder of the Bullis Room open house on November 10, 2012, from Noon to 3 PM, when area residents can bring their old photos of Macedon to scan into the Town Historian's digital archive of Macedon.

Our purpose in posting this information now is to get you to mark you calendars for the November 10 open house. But please don't wait until then to stop by the Bullis Room. Just call the number above and we'll gladly schedule some time for you to come in, peruse the shelves, choose some volumes to leisurely look through, and bask in the aroma and atmosphere of old books. (For free!)

"GOINGS-ON"

We want to give you advance notice on some "goings-on" here in the library that are a high priority for those of us interested in the Bullis Collection. So we suggest you mark your calendars now for these events:

1. Sunday, October 21, 2 PM - Peter Jemison, Manager of the Ganondagan historical site in victor, will make a presentation in MPL's Community Room. He'll be focusing on the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua and the importance of the treaty to the settlement and history of the greater Macedon area.

2. Saturday, November 10, from Noon to 3 PM - "Documenting our Macedon Memories" -  Macedon area residents can bring their historic photos of Wayne County to one of three scanning sessions in the library. The emphasis will be to document information about the photographs, gather family stories, and increase awareness about the photography collection in the Town Historian's office (which is right next door to the Bullis Room).

3. On a Sunday afternoon in February, 2013 - Dr. David Anderson, a noted storyteller and faculty member at Nazareth College, will present "If My Life is but Spared; Austin Steward's Sojourn from Slavery to Freedom."
     Mr. Steward, a former slave who made his home in Farmington and later Rochester, wrote Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Free Man, published in 1857. AND, we have a copy of this book in the Bullis Collection.

Hope to see you at these events. And if you'd like to stop by the Bullis Room before or after any of these "goings-on," we'll be there.

THE WEST FROM A CAR WINDOW

Okay - maybe you already knew (we didn't) that the Ford Motor Company shipped its first car on this date in 1903. Well, when we found out we once again went to the collection's data base and searched for "cars." Here's the first hit that caught our attention:

The West from a Car-Window

by Richard Harding Davis

Published by Harper & Brothers in 1903

This work documents a car trip from Texas through Oklahoma and into Colorado. And there are photos and illustrations, too!  In an effort to get you to stop by the Bullis Room and take a look at this book, here's a partial list of the visuals:

A Bucking Broncho

"Remember the Alamo!"

Third Calvary Troopers--Searching a Suspected Revolutionist

The "Holy Moses" Mine

The Cheyenne Type

Big Bull

Oklahoma City on the Day of the Opening

A Kiowa Maiden

The Omnipotent Bugler

The Barracks, Fort Houston

Gateway of the Garden of the Gods, and Pike's Peak

Polo Above the Snow-line at Colorado Springs

Pike's Peak from Colorado Springs

So before you set out on your car trip west this summer, you might like to see what it looked like from a car window over a hundred years ago.  This book's waiting for you in the Bullis Room. Hope to see you soon.

ST. THOMAS MORE, HENRY VIII, and a DENTAL CONGRESS

Last week we searched for books on California and got sidetracked by a reference to St. Thomas More. So this week we looked in the Bullis data bank for books on More and were disappointed that we didn't find a book dedicated exclusively to him. However, because he was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England as well as Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to May 1532, there are references to him in these two Bullis books that chronicle the life of that monarch:

1. Memoirs of Henry the Eighth of England: with the fortunes, fates and character of his six wives, written by Henry William Herbert and published by Miller, Orton & Mulligan in 1855.

2. The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon: the story as told by the imperial ambassadors resident at the court of Henry VIII, written by J. A. Froude and published by C. Scribner's Sons in 1899.

So for you history buffs who are into that period in history, we recommend you take a look at these two volumes.

Now for the "Dental Congress" part of this post's title - our "California" search last week also hit on this book in the collection:

Panama-Pacific Dental Congress, San Francisco, California, August thirtieth to September ninth, nineteen fifteen, authored by Panama-Pacific Dental Congress (1915: San Francisco) and published by The Abbott Press in 1915.

How did this book make its way into the Bullis collection? In fact, how did it make its way to Macedon? As far as we know, there were no dentists in the Bullis family and very few (if any?) in the Macedon area in 1915.  We'll never know the how and why of it, but we do know it is in residence on a shelf in the Bullis Room. So if  you're interested in what was going on in dentistry in the Panama-Pacific area a hundred years ago, this may be just the book for you.

CALIFORNIA, HYDRAULIC MINING, AND ISAAC NEWTON

This week we're posting two books in the collection as a way of remembering two events.

First, on July 7 in 1846, the United States officially annexed what is now California, following the surrender of a Mexican garrison at Monterey.  We searched the Bullis data base for "California" books and found this entry:

A Practical Treatise on Hydraulic Mining in California written by Augustus Jesse Bowie and published by D. Van Nostrand Company in 1889. This book contains a "description of the use and construction of ditches, flumes, wrought-iron pipes, and dams; flow of water on heavy grades, and its applicability, under pressure, to mining."

We're recommending this book to any of you who are interested in California history or hydraulic mining (and currently hydrofracturing). Please feel free to stop by and take a serious look at this book, as it contains maps, diagrams, tables, and detailed drawings that illustrate the finer points of a process that was the forerunner of today's methods.

Second, since Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, a three-volume work setting out his mathematical principles of natural philosophy, was published on July 5, 1687, we again looked in the Bullis records for that work. No hits, but we did find another which we think you'll also find interesting:

The Life of Sir Isaac Newton by David Brewster, published in 1831 by J. and J. Harper.

Principia Mathematica is considered one of the most important works every written. You can take a look at it online and you can find out more about the author when you stop by the Bullis Room and look at Sir David Brewster's book. (As an aside: Sir David was a Scottish physicist, mathematician and astronomer who invented the kaleidoscope and made major improvements to the stereoscope.)

One other date this week caught our attention: On July 26, 1535, St. Thomas More was executed in England for high treason. But that's for another post.