Americas Collections Blog

Civil War Project: Maps - Birds Eye View of the Seat of War (Prang, 1861)

Maps 71495 (69) Birds Eye View of the Seat of War, arranged after the latest surveys (Prang: Boston & London, 1861)

Some more US Civil War materials have been added to the website today, including one of the print and map publisher, Louis Prang's more interesting efforts.  To access the maps, visit www.bl.uk/manuscripts and enter [maps] in the Manuscripts search box.  The system was designed to be used to display Greek Manuscripts, which accounts for some of the current design and UX choices.

 

[MJS]

Civil War Project: The Great Seal of the Republic Redux

(The Great Seal of the Republic, shown on the British Library digitised manuscripts website)

You may recall an earlier post about the Confederate Seal of the Republic, which was supplied to the Southern States by a British firm ("That symbol - the Great Seal of the infant Confederacy - sent to it by its nurse, England").  Well, we've now added it to the Library's digital items site: Digitised Manuscripts, which lets you explore the seal's case, provenance and zoom in on the seal itself.  More to follow.

[MJS]

 

Mapping 1812

Royal United Services Institute maps: Battle of New Orleans, 1815

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) collection of maps at the British Library reveals the importance of mapping to the work of the Institute, which was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington to encourage the study of naval and military science.  Yesterday, Phil and I visited Tom Harper, the curator of antiquarian mapping, to see what the collections might possessfor our War of 1812 digitization project.   He had kindly pulled from the shelves the very heavy two-volume catalogue to the collection, which is handwritten in leather-bound volumes purchased from the Army & Navy Stores by an Edwardian predecessor.  The collection is catalogued by region and by topic (e.g., Naval, Battlefield, and even Aviation).  We focussed on the United States of America and Canada, passing the numerous maps of the Punic Wars or the Second Carpathian Campaign (and noting details in the catalogue, such as 'to accompany Col. –––––'s lecture'.  Some references noted, we descended below the Northern Line and made our way to the secure 'cage' that houses these particular maps.

We weren't disappointed.  The Battle of New Orleans – tragically fought after news of the ending of the war by the Treaty of Ghent – was clearly an important event for military pedagogy: no fewer than three maps showing the movements of General Edward Pakenham's troops and the defenders under Major General Andrew Jackson are present.  (There was no mention of the forgotten ladders, but a relief drawing of the American defences was present.)  Phil was also pleased to see a number of other maps focussing on the Canadian/US border, with a marked emphasis on defensive forts.  We'll be gathering other materials, and hope to have some proper images on the blog soon.

[MJS]

Civil War Project Update: from rifles to TIFF files

I can recall seeing adverts for 'Winchester' drives in the 1980s, at a time when the humble tape-recorder provided the common means of saving computer data.  According to Wikipedia, in 1973 IBM had introduced their 3340 Drive, offering commercially for the first time many of the technologies that became standard for future drives (e.g., 'low mass and low load head with lubricated platters').  The drive was designed around two 30 megabyte spindles, causing the project lead, Ken Haughton, to name the machine 'Winchester' after the famous (or, given its violent purpose, infamous) Winchester 30-30 rifle - a gun designed in 1894 by the same firm that manufactured the Henry Rifle during the Civil War: 'that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!' (also used by the Confederate President Davies' personal security guards).

More peacefully - and more prosaically - the portable hard drive shown above is now being used to ferry giant TIFF files from the Library's scanning studio to my computer, where I am starting to relabel them with the relevant shelfmark and folio (using something called Ant Renamer), and send them on their way to www.bl.uk/manuscripts, making sure that the match up to their catalogue entries and are transformed into 'DeepZoom' .dzi files.

[MJS]

Civil War Project: the Emancipation Proclamation

Happy Thanksgiving. As a holiday treat, here's a link to the Library's copy of the Leland-Boker Authorized Edition of the Emancipation Proclamation (1864), recently released as part of our US Civil War digitisation project.  The signatures at the foot are in the hands of Abraham Lincoln, John Nicolay (Private Secretary to the President) and William Seward (Secretary of State).

There's more about the Proclamation on our Americas Collections Highlights pages, and it's available on Images Online.  The Smithsonian also provides an introduction.

[MJS]

The American Civil War in the Round (Digitisation Project Update I)

 

As I've mentioned before, thanks to the generosity of the American Trust for the British Library, we have been able to embark on a digitisation and online exhibition project for the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.  The focus of the work, as well as helping to develop the Library's digitisation processes and platforms, is to reveal to a broader audience the collection items that tell the history of the British role in the War.  More than a cameo, the fortunes of the British Empire (not least many thousands, if not millions, who were born British or Irish) was closely tied to the course and outcomes of the war.  As well as the geo-political implications, there was also the matter of international trade - and, often, the the supply of goods (and other support) to the Confederate South.   This included the printing of stamps for the South, and we hope to include an image of the die used by a British firm for this purpose.

The image shown above, however, is the electrotype of the seal of the Confederate States of America (Seals XLIV.229), dating from 1864 (or, rather, an image of its image being processed on my desktop).  While two-dimensional digital images are fine for most purposes, and especially so for texts, objects such as these lose more than most in the process of being reproduced for an online world.  So, borrowing some of the techniques picked up during the curation of the Growing Knowledge exhibition, we were able to try a method of rendering objects in what appears to be 3D, known as Polynomial Texture Mapping.  A team from Southampton University kindly came to try out their 'PTM' dome, which records a series of images with light cast from various angles.  These are combined into a single file, which can then be manipulated online, giving the effect of a torch being shone on a 3D surface, casting shadows, highlights and different shades.  Inscriptions and erasures may be able to be seen more easily, and the artefact looks much more realistic.

There are problems, however - not least reflections from metal objects, such as the electroplated seal.  So, Southampton was keen to see what can be done with post processing.  I now have the files, and am in the process of rendering the complete PTM file, and working out how to include the viewer in the online gallery for the Civil War project when it finally goes live.

[MJS]

Civil War Project, Charlottesville and Stonewall Jackson's Birthday

 I spent some of this morning in a meeting, getting approval for a digital project that will digitise some of our collections in time for the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War (followed by an interesting discovery related to this in the music collections.  More anon). 

It's also Stonewall Jackson's birthday.  We'll also, of course, be following the Union side of things; but the British did start off supporting the South.  Here's a brief recording, made in Charlottesville, in front of a commemorative statue - a stunning example of early c20th memorial work by Charles Keck, even if you don't have much truck with the general himself.  [n.b., for 'brass', read 'bronze'; it's also the second in a series of recordings.]

 

[M.J.S.]

Canaan and the New England Courant

There's a very interesting chapter, indeed the germ of the book, in William Doyle's recent Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2009) titled 'Aristocracy Avoided: America and the Cincinnati'.  It's about the controversy that ensued following the establishment of an Order, the membership of which would be extended to the generals and colonels of the French army in gratitude for 'the generous assistance this country has received from France' during the American War of Independence.  A quasi-chivalric order caused quite a stink on both sides of the channel. 

It's a fascinating tale, but what particularly caught my eye was the opening paragraph, which quoted our old friend Ben Franklin, writing as a very young man in his brother's Boston paper, the New England Courant (1722):

In old Time it was no disrespect for Men and Women to be call'd by their own Names: Adam was never called Master Adam; we never read of Noah Esquire, Lot Knight, nor the Right Honorable Abraham, Viscount Mesopatamia, Barron of Carran.

Carran is footnoted sic. It is rendered as Canaan in several editions of Franklin's works, and Doyle suggests it is indeed a misprint in the note.  We have a marked-up run of the Courant in the Burney Collection of newspapers - Franklin, it seems, initialled the anonymous columns by such figures as Silence Dogood.   It has been digitized here at the BL (and available elsewhere via JISC), so I called it up on line.  No helpful initials.  But is is definitely Carran - a misprint.  It is also Baron, too.

A conference, on much bigger matters, is planned for 14-15 December at the British Academy:  The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: An international conference in honour of Professor William Doyle, FBA.  Franklin would have enjoyed it.

[M.S.]

British Caribbean accents

I mentioned that the British Library has several curatorial blogs in the last post.  I'm pleased to note that another one has joined the roster: Voices of the UK - a blog about the BL's audio collections of British accents and dialects.  Among the first of Jonnie, Jon and Helen's posts is one about British Caribbean recordings made in Huddersfield - "Poppy-show and kiss-teeth".   A quick click, and you can find out more about patwa, "KST" and the Database of Regional English ...

[M.S.]