During the summer of 2024, our outreach assistant, Sterling Bryant, curated an exhibit on propaganda before leaving to pursue his Master’s degree with Virginia Tech’s Department of history. He did a spectacular job and this has been one of our most popular exhibits. This blog post translates the exhibit into digital form so that we can share it more easily online.
This exhibit explores the powerful role of propaganda as it was used during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The items featured here include pamphlets, posters, books, and artifacts which illustrate how governments, political parties, social movements, and others employed propaganda to sway hearts and minds during some of the most tumultuous periods in history.
Curated By
Sterling Bryant, SCUA Outreach Assistant; Master’s Student, Department of History Anthony Wright de Hernandez, Archivist
Recruitment posters like this one were used by the United States Army during the American Civil War. They were designed to recruit Americans to join the Union Army by stoking fears of a Confederate invasion of Washington D.C. This poster is a replica from the New York Historical Society.
Scrapbooks like this were compiled during the American Civil War. Some contained information on the 1860 election or memorabilia on the Confederate States of America. This scrapbook was patriotic to the Union and contains music and images that can be recognized by Americans today. The full scrapbook can be viewed online.
World War I
Thrift and Economy
Date
circa 1917 or 1918
Creators
Council of National Defense The Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense
Publisher
United States Food Administration
Collection
World War I Food Posters (Acc.2021.094)
Description
Posters like this were common during the First and Second World Wars. They urged Americans to conserve resources so that they could be used by the military in the war effort. This poster depicts a signed statement by the Council of National Defense and the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense encouraging citizens to avoid all unnecessary expenditures to help the war effort.
Sugar Means Ships
Date
circa 1917
Creator
Fuhr, E. (Ernest), 1874-1933
Publisher
United States Food Administration
Collection
World War I Food Posters (Acc.2021.094)
Description
Sugar rationing for commercial uses began in fall 1917, reducing production of ice cream, sodas, and other treats which had become popular in part thanks to their promotion as alternatives for alcohol by the Temperance movement in the United States. Rationing for civilians did not begin until 1918; however, the United States was not capable of producing enough sugar domestically to meet demand. This led to calls for people to reduce sugar consumption so ships could be used for the war rather than to ship sugar.
Baker Recruitment Poster
Date
circa 1917
Creator
United States Army
Publisher
National Printing and Engraving Company, New York
Collection
World War I Baker Recruitment Poster (Ms.2021.029)
Description
Recruiting posters were a necessity during the World Wars. Conscription could only add so many specialties to the military, meanwhile specialists like bakers were greatly needed. This baker recruitment poster likely dates to New York City in 1917 and gives a quota on how many bakers are needed to support the United States Army.
Food Saving and Sharing
Date
1918
Creators
Tappan, Eva March, 1854-1930 United States Food Administration United States Bureau of Education United States Department of Agriculture
Subtitled “Telling how the older children of America may help save from famine their comrades in allied lands across the sea.” Toward the end of the First World War, famine began affecting families around the world. The United States Food Administration published literature urging families to conserve and share food with their neighbors so that comrades in allied lands across the sea could be saved from starvation.
Japanese Coronation Prints: Emperor Taishō
These lithograph prints were created to commemorate the enthronement of Yoshihito, later known as Emperor Taishō, to Japan’s Chrysanthemum Throne. The ceremony, held in November 1915 while Japan fought alongside the Allied forces in World War I, was the first of its type held as a public event and with foreign leaders in attendance.
Emperor Seated Upon the Throne in Shinshinden Palace
His Majesty the Emperor Seated upon the Throne in the Shinshinden Palace at the Enthronement Ceremony. The ‘Takamikura’ H.i.M. The Present Emperor’s coronation ceremony at ‘Shinshinden.’ From the series commemorating the Imperial Ceremonies.
His Majesty the Emperor passed through the royal gate to perform the official ceremony. From the series commemorating the Imperial Ceremonies.
Red Scare: Communism in America
These pamphlets published between the 1930s and the 1950s vary in support or opposition to the working class in the United States who may be identified as “communist” or “socialist” by the United States Government. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States was experiencing something called the “Red Scare” and there were federal investigations to determine if individuals were spies for Soviet Russia.
On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities of private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of communist or fascist ties. It was chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-Tex.). This pamphlet describes the activities of the committee and its apparent willingness to believe any accusation of communist tendencies.
Written by a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party and a leader in the American labor movement, this pamphlet argues against the Mundt-Nixon Bill, formally called the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1948 that would have required all members of the Communist Party of the United States to register with the Attorney General.
This pamphlet subtitled “The Truth About the Communists Which the Un-American Committee Tried to Suppress” was written by the General Secretary of the American Communist Party and lays out arguments against the Rankin Bill (H.R. 1884) and the Sheppard Bill (H.R. 2122) which were both intended to curb or outlaw the Communist Party in the United States.
War Bonds were integral to funding the United States military during World War II. Posters like these went up to urge Americans to buy bonds that would later be paid back to the purchaser at value plus interest after the war.
Make America Strong Posters
Date
1941
Creators
Extension Service, United States Department of Agriculture
Publisher
United States Government Printing Office
Collection
Make America Strong Poster Collection (Ms.2008.012)
Description
Before World War II, the science of nutrition was not well understood. Scientists knew that protein, energy, and minerals made for a healthy diet, but they did not know the specifics. With the approach of World War II, the government was very concerned about malnourishment among the citizenry following the Great Depression. The “Make America Strong” poster campaign was created by the United States Department of Agriculture Extension Service and included thirteen posters promoting the importance of dietary needs, healthy eating habits, and ways to fight food insecurity. Three of the thirteen posters were featured in the exhibit.
The first poster in the series shows an idealized depiction of masculine strength and sets the tone for the campaign.
In the middle of the series is a poster encouraging meals that are ample, well prepared, and rich in “protective foods.” Included under the label “protective foods” were milk, leafy vegetables, eggs, fish, and organ meats.
The final poster serves as a rallying cry for Americans to get to work making a positive change.
This special issue of the Army and Navy Journal, titled “United States at War December 7, 1941 – December 7, 1942,” was sponsored by General Cable Corporation. The advertisement from that company on the inside front cover supports the “More Production” war effort. The rest of the journal contains letters and reports by government employees and military commanders detailing the first year of the war effort.
England and Normandy in Seabee Roads to Victory
Date
1944
Creators
Metzl, Ervine, 1899-1963 (maps) Huie, William Bradford, 1910-1986 (text)
The Seabee Roads to Victory serves as recruitment propaganda for the United States Navy. The Seabees, still around today, are the construction wing of the Navy. During the Second World War, the Seabees constructed bases, staging areas, and training facilities in the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. Featured here is the book’s account of Seabee involvement in landing operations in Normandy during World War II.
Paper Bullets: Great Propaganda Posters, Axis & Allied Countries WWII
Date
1977
Creators
Lerner, Daniel, 1917-1980
Publisher
Chelsea House Publishers, Distributed by Whirlwind Books
This book contains various propaganda posters from the World War II era. Seven were featured as part of the exhibit.
Ecco I “Liberatori”!
Date
1944
Creators
Artist Unknown
Origin
Italy
Description
This poster comes from Italy in 1944 and suggests that the Allied forces coming through Italy were leaving a trail of destruction behind them. The text reads “Here are the ‘liberators’!”
Соревнуйтесь На Лучшую Помощь Фронту!
Date
1942
Creators
Korkorekin, Alexei Alekseevich (Кокорекин, Алексей Алексеевич)
Origin
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Description
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics World War II propaganda poster. The text reads “Follow this worker’s example. Produce more for the front!”
這個美國空軍把日本人趕出了中國的天空ー援助他！
Date
circa 1945
Creators
United States, Office of War Information
Origin
United States of America
Description
A Pro-American leaflet in Chinese showing a heavily armed American airman stamping on a cowering Japanese soldier. The text reads “This American airman drives the Jap from China’s Skies –Give him your help!”
人人敌忾，步不设防，坚强壁垒，制敌死命
Date
circa 1937
Creators
Junshi weiyuanhui zhengxunchu (军事委员会政训处)
Origin
China
Description
A Chinese woodcut poster. The text reads “Everybody must hate the enemy, defenses must be constructed step-by-step, fortifications must be strengthened, the enemy must be exterminated!”
der Fuehrer’s Face
Date
1942
Creators
Walt Disney Studios
Origin
United States of America
Description
Promotional poster for the animated anti-Nazi propaganda short film “der Fuehrer’s Face.” The film was originally titled “Donald Duck in Nutziland” or “A Nightmare in Nutziland.” It was released in 1943 and attempted to lift the spirits of Americans experiencing rationing as the country shifted toward a war footing.
Holding The Line
Date
circa 1942
Creators
Guigmon, Henri
Origin
United States of America
Description
This United States poster caricatures Winston Churchill as a British bulldog to highlight the tenacity of the British people holding the line on the European front in World War II.
Anti-German Postcard
Date
1944
Creators
Unknown
Origin
Belgium
Description
This Belgian postcard from 1944 features the allied forces represented by a winged depiction of the Roman goddess Libertas or “Liberty” who is holding the flags of the allied nations as she defeats Germany.
English translation: Holding study classes is a good method; many problems can be solved in study classes. During China’s Cultural Revolution, posters containing “Chairman Mao’s Latest Instructions” were published regularly and were celebrated by the people.
English translation: Erect revolutionary committees of three unions, do great criticisms, clean up the revolutionary ranks, consolidate the Party organization, simplify the structures, reform irrational regulation systems, send the administrative staff to the countryside, struggle, criticize, correct in the factories, in the main go through this process a few times.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics During the Cold War
Pamphlets published by Russia’s state-owned domestic news agency. Sovinformburo (Совинформбюро) was founded in June 1941 and operated under that name until 1961 when it became the Novosti Press Agency (APN). It underwent a series of name changes and reorganizations from 1990 to 2013 and was absorbed into the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, known as Roskomnadzor (RKN).
Towards Freedom and Progress
Date
1970
Creators
Khamid Sharapovich Inoi︠a︡tov
Publisher
Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow
Collection
Soviet Propaganda Literature (Acc.2011.040)
Description
The Soviet Union experienced ups and downs within its tenure as a world power. This pamphlet lays out a plan to continue their rise and grasp over world affairs.
Anti-Sovietism – Profession of Zionists
Date
1971
Creators
Vladimir Viktorovich Bolʹshakov
Publisher
Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow
Collection
Soviet Propaganda Literature (Acc.2011.040)
Description
This propaganda piece discusses how Zionism is anti-Soviet.
Soviet Sport: The Way to Medals
Date
1988
Creators
Aleksandr Rostislavovich Lavrov
Publisher
Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow
Collection
Soviet Propaganda Literature (Acc.2011.040)
Description
This pamphlet showcases the athletic talent of Soviet athletes in the 1980s. The Soviet Union also published propaganda for events like the Olympics, to display their legitimacy on the world stage.
Subtitled “speech on the occasion of the meeting in Moscow of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council, April 13, 1988.” Pamphlets like these were common in the Soviet Union throughout their time as a world power. Gorbachev was very notorious for pushing them out in the late 1980s as their empire looked as if it were ready to crumble.
This paper was written for an English-speaking audience to demonstrate to the world that the United States was not dampening the spirit of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Viet Cong).
Peacetime in America
Our Most Important Unit
Date
1996 Apr 8
Creators
The Army Times
Publisher
The Army Times
Collection
John A. Coulter Collection on Richard T. Shae, Jr. Newspaper Articles (Ms.2000.090)
Description
In The Army Times, this picture advertises how the family unit is the most important unit in the United States military. Its purpose is to recruit people who may have a spouse and children. It details benefits available to Army spouses and children such as spousal employment assistance and assistance locating childcare.
Additional Content
Following the creation of the exhibit, Sterling began work on a related project during his first year of graduate school. This project will conclude with three live presentations on his Twitch channel and content about the exhibit materials on his website.
Twitch schedule
Join Sterling’s live presentations about this material in late November 2024 at https://twitch.tv/Strlang.
written by history graduate assistant Miles A. Abernethy
Introduction
Earlier this month, I completed researching and putting together an exhibit on the professional life and legacy of Dr. James I. Robertson Jr. Known to friends and fans as “Dr. Bud,” Robertson taught Civil War history at Virginia Tech for over forty years, from 1967 to 2011. Even before the term came into vogue, he taught the Civil War like a public historian, seeking to appeal to broad audiences. He achieved this through vivid storytelling, connecting people to the lived experiences of Civil War figures and making events long past seem moving and compelling. His classes at Virginia Tech appealed to all majors and class levels, regularly teaching over one hundred students every semester for most of his time at Tech. Robertson can be said to be part of the university’s growth, especially in the nascent History Department, lending his skills to grow the department as well as the liberal arts broadly. The exhibit covers Robertson’s contribution to the Civil War Centennial Commission, as well as his life and legacy connected to Virginia Tech. I want to share my experience with the collections I used, as well as how I thought about this exhibit, Robertson, and Civil War history in general.
Ironically, I used very little of Dr. Robertson’s own collection (Ms1994-021 James I. Robertson Jr. Papers), and the making of this exhibit was a way for me to identify how the collection can be used, and if it can be expanded. I actually processed a new accession to the collection in 2022 which included his filing system for Virginia units in Confederate service and for Civil War history of Virginia’s counties and cities. In addition, this accession included records on Robertson’s involvement with battlefield preservation, and correspondence with fellow Civil War historians. However, if interested parties want to gain a better understanding of Robertson’s teaching and non-publishing life, they would be disappointed, as the collection is about two-thirds of book drafts for Robertson’s major publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. Luckily, SCUA holds a record group for the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies (RG 21/8 Virginia Center for Civil War Studies), the Civil War academic center that Robertson founded in 1999. This collection contains papers regarding Robertson’s founding and running of VCCWS through his retirement in 2011, as well as documents from outreach events from the 1970s through 2000s. It also has papers concerning Robertson’s tenure as chair of the History Department from 1969 to 1977. It is from this collection that I gathered most of the extant papers and information about Robertson’s professional life at Virginia Tech.
Two other collections proved useful as well. The J. Ambler Johnston Papers (Ms 1974-012) contains correspondence between Johnston and Robertson. Johnston, a 1904 Virginia Tech graduate and career architect, took special interest in Civil War history and communicated regularly with Robertson on the Civil War and on Virginia Tech matters before his death in 1974. Robertson’s biographical Vertical File also proved extremely useful, containing information about Robertson’s perception in the wider Virginia Tech, state, and national community. Helpfully, it also has an article on Robertson’s job as a football referee for the Atlantic Coast Conference, a part of his life that I really wanted information on. While these other collections helped build out the exhibit, they highlight the fact that Robertson’s own collection is severely lacking in information about his non-publishing academic and personal life. What is and isn’t in a collection is the choice of the archivist, the late Robertson, and his living relatives, but as a significant figure in Civil War historiography, public history, and Virginia Tech, we ought to have more information in a centralized collection about him.
9 February 1987. Bud Robertson in a referee’s uniform. Gene Dalton. Roanoke Times & World News.
Civil War Centennial Commission
Unfortunately, one of the most impactful episodes of Robertson’s life is essentially absent from the extant archival materials, beyond a few articles and mentions: his work on the Civil War Centennial Commission from 1961-1965. The Civil War Centennial Commission (CWCC) was active from 1957 to 1965, and sought to organize public commemorations of the war’s one-hundredth year. Robert Cook’s Troubled Commemoration (2007) is the current authoritative work on the subject, and focuses on the developments and hurdles faced by the Commission. Conceived by Civil War historians and amateur “buffs,” factions soon emerged in the national and state organizations on the best way to organize events and by what means. Professional historians clamored for a serious and academic remembrance, while business figures argued for more popularly accessible events. Sectional divisions became even more salient as Congressional leaders were appointed to the commission; Northern and Southerners clashed as debates over whose version of Civil War history would prevail. The state commissions, ostensibly under the purview of the national leadership, took their own approaches that varied between the sections.
Tensions came to a head in April 1961 when the CWCC planned to hold its fourth annual conference in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the beginning of fighting at Fort Sumter. Officials feared for the safety and inclusion of Madeline Williams, a Black woman on the New Jersey state commission. Segregationist commissioners worked to block Williams’ attendance, in concert with other efforts to block what they saw as revisionism to their “Lost Cause” understanding of the war. With the Commission teetering on failure, President John F. Kennedy stepped in, pressuring the CWCC to meet at desegregated federal military bases. Unwilling to acquiesce to Kennedy’s compromise, many of the staunch segregationists resigned, allowing professional historians to take more active leadership. Leading the revived CWCC were Professors Alan Nevins and James I. Robertson.
Cook characterizes Robertson generally as an effective and straightforward executive that had a genuine interest in telling a serious but appealing story of the Civil War to the American public. Even more important was the pairing of Nevins and Robertson: a Northerner and Southerner respectively, that seemingly balanced any sectional preference that detractors of the CWCC were eager to point out. The Commission’s fortunes soon improved, and Robertsons former professor Bell I. Wiley of Emory noted that he “works hard, maintains a cheerful outlook and wins friends for himself and the Commission by his open cordiality.”1 The new professionalism of the CWCC earned praise from Kennedy, resulting in an awards ceremony with the President in which Robertson was present. The image of both figures is on display in the exhibit.
17 April 1962. AR7173-C. President John F. Kennedy Accepts Civil War Centennial Commission Medallion. Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. Public Domain.
Robertson describing his experience helping prepare for the funeral of John F. Kennedy.
Robertson was a product of his time however, and his appointment as the executive director under Alan Nevins was a strategic move to satisfy the worries of the segregationists who feared that the CWCC would become a tool of the Civil Rights Movement. While Cook describes Robertson as genuinely committed to positive civil rights change in the South (albeit at a gradual pace), he recognized that the success of the CWCC required working with conservative Southern commissioners and telegraphing some of their feelings into the national commission. Cook reflects one of these unfortunate moments, as Robertson generally chafed at a request by Nevins and Wiley to write African American soldiers as playing a larger role in winning the war for the Union in a student handbook.2 Despite a conservative historical outlook, Robertson’s work helped cement the centennial as an important historiographic moment. Although the public largely lost interest in the commemorative activities after 1961, the stabilization of the CWCC helped maintain academic and public interest in the Civil War through the twentieth century.
Time at Virginia Tech
I contend that Robertson’s time as a professor at Virginia Tech is his most important contribution to the public vitality of Civil War studies as well as the study of the liberal arts at Virginia Tech. Arriving in 1967, Robertson’s public popularity helped grow the fledgling History Department in its early years. His successful tenure as chair between 1968 and 1977 is indicated by the steady growth of bachelors and masters degrees awarded during that same time, as well as an expansion of history curriculum.3 This is all accomplished while Virginia Tech was, and remains, an engineering and science-focused institution. Robertson’s style of storytelling-teaching attracted history and non-history majors alike, and his wider popularity meant that his Civil War classes were usually attended by hundreds of students. One amusing document that is featured in the exhibit is an October 2000 memo from Associate Vice President Thim Corvin to Robertson concerning the total number of students that had attended Robertson’s classes. Corvin’s office presumably underestimated the number, prompting Robertson to respond with his own personal data that he spent a whole evening compiling, along with some remarks about the effectiveness of Corvin’s people. According to his data, Robertson had taught over twenty thousand students by the late 1990s. If we take that at face value, then by his retirement in 2011, Robertson likely taught over thirty thousand students during his time at Virginia Tech.4
Robertson describes his time teaching at Virginia Tech.
Robertson was a public historian before the term became vogue in history circles, seeking to appeal to broad audiences. In addition to his classes, he organized and led outreach classes and events beginning in the late 1970s. Although classes and lectures had long been part of offerings by Civil War Round Table organizations, Robertson’s partnering of academic prestige with public outreach meant that people who had passing interest in the war or wanted to take a specific course could do so through extension classes. Early organized lectures included the “Campaigning with Lee” series, as well as a featured lecture that Robertson delivered in Squires Student Center in 1979.5 By the early 1990s, steady attendance at these public events prompted Robertson to begin the Civil War Weekend conference in 1992 that continues to this day. Events like these bring the public into spaces with professional historians, enhancing everyday understanding of the Civil War, its meaning, and the historical agents that took part.
Legacies
Dr. Robertson passed away in November 2019, right as I was beginning my time as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. At that point, I hadn’t decided on a career in Civil War public history and wasn’t really aware of the Civil War history significance of Virginia Tech. I was, however, aware of Dr. Robertson and the emotional connection that he fostered between himself and his students and the war they all studied. I recall meeting people at Civil War Weekends or on online forums that describe the loyalty that he inspired in students, even on a generational level. My father, Robert Abernethy, is a 1990 Virginia Tech graduate and took Dr. Robertson’s Civil War class. We have a signed copy of Robertson’s A.P. Hill: Story of a Confederate Warrior that my dad had signed while he was a student. His academic interest in the war was invigorated by Robertson, and he passed that passion onto me.
Robertson’s professional guidance influenced many historians today. Jonathan Noyalas, a Virginia Tech Masters alumnus who studied under Robertson, is head of the McCormick Civil War Institute at Shenandoah University. Patrick Schroeder, a Virginia Tech student who attended Robertson’s earliest classes, now serves as Historian at Appomattox Court House NHP. Chris Mackowski, author and editor-in-chief of Emerging Civil War noted in a tribute that Robertson instilled in him the confidence and reassurance that newer historians need to stake out on their own.6
Robertson’s work is felt directly at Special Collections and University Archives. His work to donate thousands of Civil War era books and manuscripts has elevated SCUA to one of the largest repositories of Civil War information in the United States. I always like to tell people why I study the Civil War. Plainly put, it is America’s most defining event. Even one hundred and sixty years later, Americans are living out the changes in government, politics, war, and society that the conflict produced. Like the war that he devoted his life to studying, Dr. James I. Robertson has left us a complex legacy, but one that has elevated our understanding and appreciation for the quintessential American experience.
01 September 1986. Virginia Tech history professor, Dr. James Robertson. Bob Veltri. Imagebase. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
Robert Cook, Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961–1965 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 218.
Cook, 222.
George G. Shackleford, “Department of History at VPI & SU,” RG 15/13 Department of History.
“Memo to Thim Corvin,” RG 21/8 Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Box 1, Folder “Student Solicitation.”
“Gone With The Civil War: History that Historians Overlooked” Virginia Tech Union’s “The Not Your Average Lecture Series,” MS 1994-021 James I. Robertson Jr. Papers, Oversize Folder 1.
In July of 1956, Virginia Tech became the first university in the United States to install a Nuclear Reactor Simulator. The simulator was installed as part of an atomic energy laboratory in Davidson Hall which was home to the Department of Physics at that time.
Tech First University to Get Nuclear Reactor Simulator. January 1, 1956, The Techgram, Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.Virginia Tech is first college to own nuclear reactor simulator. July 30, 1956. WSLS-TV News Film Collection, 1951-1971. Special Collections, University of Virginia. https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/uva-lib:2267277
The laboratory also included a two-million-volt nuclear accelerator “built by staff members and graduate students,” and the “first university-owned graphite-moderated exponential reactor”, a sub-critical reactor made possible after the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) approved Virginia Tech to receive “a neutron source and 2,500 pounds of natural uranium metal”.
Tech Gets Uranium For Reactor. July 1, 1956. The Techgram. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.
Dr. T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. as Head of the Physics Department, circa 1950s.
According to The Techgram following their interview with Dr. T. Marshall Hahn, Jr., the sub-critical reactor was scheduled to come online in July (only six months after the approval) “because college technicians have been at work for two months machining the 32,000 pounds of reactor graphite to be used in this new facility. The exponential pile will therefore be nearing completion and will be a tour feature when Virginia Tech is host to the Eighth Oak Ridge Regional Symposium on Atomic Energy and Science in its first Virginia appearance July 30-31.”
The symposium hosted by Virginia Tech with support from the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies (now the Oak Ridge Associated Universities – Virginia Tech has been a sponsoring institution since 1946) marked the opening of the lab. It included a short course in nuclear engineering physics, a traveling exhibit from the American Museum of Atomic Energy (now the American Museum of Science & Energy), a film from General Electric “A is for Atom”, and various symposia on nuclear topics.
General Electric film “A is for Atom” from the Nuclear Vault YouTube channel.
Two years after the opening of the lab, in 1958, Virginia Tech was awarded a grant from the Atomic Energy Commission that allowed the institution to purchase a 10-kilowatt Argonaut (Argonne Nuclear Assembly for University Training) reactor, a class of small nuclear research reactors based on the one developed at the Argonne National Laboratory. Unlike the sub-critical reactor that was already in operation, the Argonaut was a critical reactor meaning that the nuclear chain reaction would be self-sustaining. Virginia Tech was set to be the first university in the United States to install this new type of research reactor (according to Wikipedia, it’s possible the University of Florida beat Virginia Tech into operation by about six months).
Tech Gets $114,098 In Grant From AEC. July 1, 1958. The Techgram. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.
This new reactor was installed in the New Physics Building (now Robeson Hall) which was about to begin construction. It first achieved criticality in mid-December 1959 and was officially placed into operation on January 6, 1960. The occasion was marked by a dedication ceremony featuring an address by Lieutenant Governor A.E.S. Stephens. Eventually, the reactor’s operating capacity was increased from 10-kilowatts to 100-kilowatts.
Illustration of the nuclear reactor assembly from Andrew Robeson’s “Report on Utilization of Nuclear Materials on Loan from U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.” December 1962. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.
Cockcroft-Walton accelerator set up for use in polarized neutron experiments. The man is not named but is likely John T. Rogers, Ph.D. student. From Andrew Robeson’s “Report on Utilization of Nuclear Materials on Loan from U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.” December 1962. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.
The atomic energy laboratories were expanded again in 1968 with the addition of a van de graaff accelerator. Four years later, on November 12, 1971, there was a “Nuclear Event” and Robeson Hall was evacuated. Our collections include a document called the “Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971”. Despite searching extensively, I have not been able to locate the actual report to which this is an appendix. The document we have includes 161 pages of transcribed interviews with people involved in the event. The document has not been digitized but I’ve scanned the first few pages which include a description of the event by Ronald J. Onega. The full report is available in Special Collections and University Archives (https://catalog.lib.vt.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=603347).
The scram was at 3:05, … Bill attempted to bring the sample up and all the alarms went off. … This was in Room 106 where the experiment was being carried on and the reactor console is in Room 108, so I ran over there to find out if it was serious, if it was real or to see what the situation was. The alarm went on to begin with, as well as I recall, and then it went off and then it came back on. … It was suggested that the sample be knocked loose. We could see that the sample didn’t return, so I think that Keith suggested that we try to dislodge the sample, which was the reasonable suggestion, it seemed to me at that particular time, to dislodge the sample by firing another one in. We did that and whenever we brought the sample back, it was radioactive. It was very hot and so when we discerned this I think Bob Stone went out to get a lead container to put the hot radioactive sample in, and we fired it in again as I recall. We fired this sample in twice in order to try to dislodge this and bring it back, and neither time did the original sample come back. The sample was then – the container to dislodge the original one was then taken out of the rabbit, put into the lead container, as well as the end cap for the rabbit. Bill Raymond went and got another lead container in case we could get the original sample back, and he also got another end cap for the rabbit which I think he got from Room 17 from Furr’s lab. We tried several times to bring the sample back but none of it was successful. Well, after we saw we weren’t going to get it loose, Bob Stone, Sy Meyers, Bill Raymond and myself took some survey meters and we were trying to find out exactly where this sample was hung up. The sample was hung up right at the edge of the reactor shield itself. It was in the rabbit tubing, right at the edge of the shield and whenever we discerned exactly where it was, we got a screwdriver and disconnected the tubing there, taped the end shut and also disconnected the tubing, the other end of this aluminum tube that the sample was in, and taped that end shut. I handed the tube to Bob Stone who was standing on the top of the hot cell and he lowered the tube, with the sample in the tube, down into the hot cell where it still remains. Both ends of the remaining tubing were also sealed shut. … I guess I neglected to say that sometime previous to this, the building had been evacuated. I don’t remember exactly what that time was. I estimate, Bill and I estimated, that the whole incident required, perhaps from the time the sample, from the time the building alarm went off, originally, until the sample was secured in the hot cell may have been around twenty (20) minutes. But that is as good as we can estimate. During this time I also had a pocket dosimeter on, and during the whole business I got 51 millirem of radiation. After the sample was secured, then we tried to discern exactly what the situation was and we saw that we did have a contamination problem. Furr’s lab was used to discern exactly whether fission fragments were scattered around or not, and it was discerned that they were.
“Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971” 1971. Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech.
Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971, Page 1Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971, Page 2Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971, Page 3.Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971, Page 4.Appendix to Report of the Nuclear Event of November 12, 1971, Page 5.
Other than that incident, the atomic energy laboratories seem to have operated smoothly under both the Physics and Mechanical Engineering departments. The Virginia Tech Argonaut Reactor (VTAR) was remodeled in 1983 with new control panels. Three years later, in 1986, it was decommissioned. It was removed from Robeson Hall in 1989.
Students working on the Virginia Tech Argonaut Reactor being observed by an instructor, circa 1950s.
About a month ago, I had a chance to look through the Byron Nelson Cooper Papers (Ms1973-004) for the first time. I don’t routinely transfer collections of faculty papers from storage just for my own entertainment, but I’ve been exploring collections weekly as part of a live Twitch broadcast, Archival Adventures, for nearly two years (the full playlist of past episodes is on YouTube and the live show airs Wednesdays on twitch.tv/VTULStudios).
I try to include materials from all of our collecting areas on the show and I thought a geology professor’s papers might contain some interesting things. While the collection did have some interesting geology-focused items (including an envelope of actual rock samples), the standout for me was Cooper’s writing. His speeches, lectures, and creative writing feature a strong narrative voice filled with personality and humor.
Note: There’s also a lot of misogyny and possibly some racism (I honestly haven’t had time to fully read Whisky for the Cat, included later in this post, but some skimming of it made me think there may be some Hispanic stereotyping happening.) Since these are historic documents, it’s not surprising to find these types of sentiments reflected as they were quite common at the time. Knowing about these problems in advance, one can look to see what else the documents have to offer beyond the problematic biases while still recognizing that the problems exist.
First, a bit about Byron Nelson Cooper. He was born in Plainfield, Indiana on August 19, 1912. We don’t have any information about his life before college but we do know that he attended a geology field camp run by Oberlin College before graduating from DePauw University in 1934. According to the Geological Society of America’s memorial of Cooper, this was his first introduction to Virginia geology. He then went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Iowa with both of his theses focusing on the geology of southwestern Virginia. While researching the region, he established familial ties to the area through marriage to Elizabeth Doyne of Pulaski County. After his Ph.D., Cooper was an assistant professor of geology at Wichita University for five years (1937-1942). He then served as associate geologist of the Virginia Geological Survey for four years before joining Virginia Polytechnic Institute as the head of the Department of Geological Sciences in 1946. As head, Cooper led a two-person department to become nationally recognized. He also consulted for business, industry, and local governments throughout Virginia on geological matters, particularly issues relating to water supply. He died on March 26, 1971, suffering a heart attack in his office on campus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Untitled Speech, 1964
Reading the text of his lectures, speeches, and other writings, it’s not hard to see how his leadership inspired excellence from the Department of Geology. Cooper is an excellent writer, crafting persuasive phrases that retain the audience’s interest. In Box 6 of his papers, there is an untitled speech from mid-December of 1964. The speech is clearly meant to inspire students in the program to work toward their maximum potential. (The last page seems to be an excerpt from another speech regarding campus unrest and student solidarity which is also quite interesting.)
I don’t know what Cooper’s voice sounded like, but I can almost hear him speaking with conviction the lines he has written.
If you live for tomorrow with the objective of
making today’s dreams come true tomorrow, you
begin to pace yourself and to deny yourself small
rewards in favor of engineering bigger things. In
a matter of months one can gain a pretty accurate
assessment of his personal power and of his capacity for
work, and time enables one to not only
play the game but to keep his own side.
…
Every quarter or semester in a university is
a test of planning ahead. You learn to work,
you learn to meet deadlines, you learn to avoid the pitfalls
of goofing off. You learn how to pilot yourself to avoid
most of the bumps. Each setback only stiffens the determination
to win in the end. The daily lesson is the mind’s food, unless
you feed the mind it doesn’t grow.
…
Some silly students believe you learn in college
what you have to know + then you go out + use your
knowledge. This just is not so. You leave here with a
bullied and bruised head + many facts though they
be filed in your mind will never be recalled. You
do leave even if its by flunking out –
with an enlarged view – of the world + of yourself.
…
The great men of history have possessed a sense
of their histories being even as they lived. If
you tie your wagon to a star + work to reach the
goal you have set – you have given your life meaning
but perspective and some historicity – and in the
process if you do so I assure you that you will have
one helluva good time in the best sense of that
phrase.
Really, this entire speech is quite inspiring (if one can get past the students being constantly referred to as men). If offers some great perspective on what is important in the educational experience and acknowledges the fact that not all learning on campus comes from the details learned in the classroom. You can find a full transcription of the speech on Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives Online.
How to Catch a Genius, undated, likely 1957
While exploring the finding aid, two other pieces of writing caught my attention thanks to their titles. The first is How to Catch a Genius, a play in two acts with a prologue and an epilogue. It’s a comedy about a professor (Dr. Claude Sidney Magnabrayne) coming to Virginia Tech for an on-site interview and the unacknowledged and vitally important role that the women of the university community have in persuading potential professors to accept offers of employment despite the clueless behavior of their husbands (Dr. George A. Blurt being an example). Again, this piece is misogynistic in its portrayal of women. It’s also full of stereotypes including ones about politics, brainy-but-clueless academics, stressed-out over-drinkers, and many more. While the play is undated, its portrayal of women and the stereotypes seem to fit the 1950s or 1960s. The play itself gives us a clue about the date being portrayed (if not the date it was created). At the beginning of Act I, there is a bit about a phone number:
As Scene
1 opens, we find Sid leafing the pages in the local phone book for the
Covington, Kentucky Area Code. So he dials 606—-then 5-5-5--
then 1-2-1-2. (For those unfamiliar with Long Distance dialing, what
Sid is trying to do is find out his own phone number which was changed
recently—as a matter of fact about 26 months ago.)
The important part in dating the item is the parenthetical addresed to “those unfamiliar with Long Distance dialing” and the notation that Magnabrayne’s phone number changed 26 months earlier. From the context of the play, it’s clear that we’re mid-20th century. According to the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), the numbering plan we’re familiar with today (1-digit country code, 3-digit Numbering Plan Area code, 7-digit local number) was developed by AT&T in 1947 to allow consumers to dial long-distance calls without operator assistance. The plan began implementation in 1951. The NANPA database also tells us that area code 606 was put into service on January 1, 1955. This tells us that the play is set around March of 1957, 26 months after Magnabrayne’s phone number would have changed from something like “Covington-5000” to the 606 number given in the play. Given the 1957 setting of the play (which is probably also near in time to when the play was written), it’s not at all surprising to see the misogyny and stereotypes present in this piece.
The play itself is a short humorous play that would have been entertaining for faculty since it makes fun of a common experience. We don’t know why the play was written, whether for entertainment or some other purpose. Perhaps it was intended as a fun training tool to help orient faculty to the recruitment process for new faculty. I do find it interesting that the play is centered around recruiting a forensics professor. Forensics in this case is referring to public speaking rather than scientific analysis of physical evidence. Given Cooper’s skill with turning a phrase, this evidence of his interest in the field of forensics stood out to me. I think my favorite part of the play comes in the epilogue when Cooper basically suggests that recruiting Magnabrayne was ultimately all Myrtle Blurt’s doing:
Who can say that Mrs. Blurt may not have rendered the telling
act of consummate kindness in driving Sid Magnabrayne back to his
motel after the power went off. You know she just could have called
the Vice President and asked him to cut the power off and thereby
end those awful Beethoven symphonies. Sort of funny the way that
power came on just as she drove her guest up to the motel. He could
have stalked out of the house and headed back for Covington if that power
had not gone off during the playing of the redundant Sixth. Or perhaps
something she said about Blacksburg just convinced Sid Magnabrayne
that B-burg was the place for his Tillie and their six geniuses.
Remember, Sid Magnabrayne just could be President here some day,
and if my surmises are true, wouldn’t Myrtle Blurt have a reason to smile
knowing that she helped get old Sid Magnabrayne to sign.
The play, with a full transcription, is available on Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives Online.
Whiskey for the Cat, undated, likely 1960s
The last item I wanted to share today caught my eye because of the title. On the finding aid, it just said Box 6, Folder 28: “Whiskey for the Cat” n.d. (no date). How could I ever resist taking a look to see what this item was? What I found is 85 handwritten pages of what appears to be the first chapter of a novel. While the document is undated, I suspect it is set in (and likely written during) the 1960s based on a sentence on page 84: “In the brief span of the seventh decade of the twentieth century man suddenly begins to understand himself and the world in which he lives.”
As with the play, this story is set on a university campus. This time, it’s set at a fictional university in the midwest. While the book chapter is clearly in a crime or detective fiction genre, I notice what seem to me to be small bits of Cooper’s signature humor that poke through here and there. For example, the fictional university is named Enneagh University (pronounced Any University). Again, this work of fiction seems like it would most appeal to someone who had lived and worked at a university, but it’s also well written. Cooper crafts scenes well, providing just the right amount of detail for the reader to be able to imagine the scene without becoming bogged down in details. It does have some outdated language usage such as referring to the faculty and staff of a university as the “indigenous population” of a university town. Today, the term Indigenous peoples is understood to refer to the earliest known inhabitants of a geographic area and would correctly be applied to one of the many Mississippian peoples who inhabited the region referenced in the text.
Most American universities go into some
level of hibernation during the summer and anyone
who has lived through a summer in the Middle Mississippi Valley
can readily understand why summer is the idling
period of the university year. It is too hot
and sultry in the midwest during the summer for
heavy thinking. The indigenous population in a
university community – the professors and
ancillary personnel who keep the faculty in line
have had it after nine months of intensive
association with students and they need time to
regain a modicum of patience and compassion to
fortify them for the next year. The ancillary
personnel need uninterrupted time during the hot months
to clean up the accumulation of junk, paper, the
cigarette butts with their indestructible cork tips, and the
decorative graffiti deposited on desk tops, toilet stalls,
dormitory rooms, and classroom walls has to
be cleaned off or painted over. The university admini-
stration needs the summer to process its final admis-
sions of new students conduct the on-campus visitations of bewildered
parents who want to examine the environment into which
their John’s and Mary’s will move as unprepared children
(or so the parents think).
Given the length of this item, I haven’t yet had time to read it in its entirety; however, skimming through, it seems that in this first chapter (I have not noticed any point where a Chapter II begins) a university professor and his student endeavor to solve a mystery involving marijuana, organized crime, and murder on a typical American midwestern college campus. There are again stereotypes present in the work, with the professor and student being likened to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. There’s also possibly some racism present in the stereotypes with two criminal characters being Jose Rivera and Steuben Kessel (Kessel being noted in the text as “an alien whose work permit had run out”). But, I get the impression that this story is less blatantly misogynistic than the other works since I didn’t notice it in the portions I have read. A full transcription of this 85 page document is not yet available, but it will be on Special Collections and University Archives Online.
Looking over these three items, I notice a consistent authorial voice while also noting that Cooper can work in different genres and fit into them well. He seems equally comfortable writing a rousing inspirational speech, a situation comedy script, and a detective novel. They each fit their genre well, while still incorporating elements that can be seen in the others. These are just three folders from six boxes of material and I haven’t had time to search thoroughly to find what other stories might be in the collection, but I do hope I can find the time someday because I was very entertained by the inspiration, comedy, and drama I found in the papers of the former head of the Department of Geology.
If you’d like to look through the Byron Nelson Cooper Papers in person, you are welcome to visit us on the first floor of Newman Library. Please note, this collection is housed in off-site storage and you should contact us in advance to request materials be brought to the library for your use.
Millard L. Foley was a bird salesman in Salem, Virginia active during the 1950s and 1960s. The M. L. Foley Collection (Ms2012-031) is a collection of correspondence related to his business. It was purchased by Special Collections and University Archives in 2012 for inclusion in our Local and Regional History and the Appalachian South collections and, despite my interest in birds, I had never had occasion to look at it before this summer. When I did look through it, I discovered some interesting correspondence between Foley and clients.
Most of the correspondence is pretty basic and rather what one would expect of correspondence from a small business offering mail-order sales. There are many inquiries from readers of Allen Publishing Company’s Game Bird Breeders, Pheasant Fanciers and Aviculture’s Gazette (also known as Bird Breeder’s Gazette or simply the Gazette). These are typically followed by a customized form-letter response. There are, however, a few series of correspondence that stand out from the rest. And there’s one in particular that caught my attention and seemed like a fun highlight for the blog.
The series of letters begins simply. Henry Safranek of Lebanon, Connecticut sends a simple inquiry to M. L. Foley asking about Elliot’s pheasant hens and Cheer pheasants. It’s short and basically the same as the other correspondence in the collection, but it begins a back-and-forth that is pretty neat to read.
Lebanon Conn. Oct 17 1959.
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I am interested in buying 1 or 2 Elliot hen phesants, also pair or trio of cheers. Please let me know what you are asking for them.
Thank you Henry Safranek Lebanon Conn.
Foley sent his typical response. In a letter that is all business and responds directly to Safranek’s questions, Foley let him know that he was out of Elliot’s for the year and that he had some Cheers available. Very simple, businesslike correspondence. Nothing remarkable.
October 19, 1959
Mr. Henry Safranek Lebanon, Conn.
Dear Sir:
Thank you very much for your inquiry on ornamental pheasants. I am very sorry that I do not have any more Elliots. I sold the last pair only yesterday. I have one trio of Cheers, breeders, left. The two hens laid 43 egges this season. But I will tell you that the Cheer cock is afraid of these two hens and will breed only occasionally. Another cock will have to be placed with these hens. I am offering them at twenty dollars ($20.00) for the two hens and with or without the cock.
We would appreciate your order and give it our most prompt attention.
Yours very truly, M. L. Foley
Things start to get interesting with Safranek’s next letter. Within a couple of days, Safranek’s second letter arrives with further inquiries. He also provides some description of his prior experiences as a bird breeder and an explanation of why he is looking for an Elliot’s hen.
Lebanon Conn. Qct 23 1959
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir: Thank you for your reply to my letter and am sorry that you have no Elliots hen left. I only bought my pair last spring and lost my hen from eating rat nip. We have been troubled with pack rats this summer and one must have carried a piece of bread into their pen as I lost her the next day.
I don’t know much about rare phesants as this is my first year with them, and although your offer on the cheers is O.K. I don’t know where I could get another cock bird from. So think my best bet is trying to buy a young pair to start with.
My Elliot hen laid about 20 eggs half of which were deformed and which I did not set. Out
(2) of the 10 which I did set 5 were good but I lost them after they hatched. I had them with 6 bantam chicks under a bantam hen. I guess that they were much to flighty for her and she killed them on me the second day.
I use to raise 4 to 5 hundred ring neck under bantams each year but no longer have time to take care of that many birds, so as a past time I thought I would try a few pairs of rare phesants.
The only person that I have met that raises rare phesants around here is Mr. Steve Rebello of Sumerset Mass. who has some of the most beautiful phesants I have ever seen. I bought a young pair of Lady Amhersts from him and raised 8 young ones. I was both suprised and happy that they bred the first year.
I see by your ad. in the Gazette that you also have Erckel’s francolins. What are
(3) you asking for a young pair as I would like to try raising some.
I would also appreciate it if you could send me the name of any reliable place here on the east coast where I could buy an Elliot hen, as the express charges are so high when you have birds shiped from out west.
Thank you Henry Safranek Lebanon Conn.
Hens dead from apparently eating rat poison? Deformed eggs? A bantam chicken hen murdering all the young pheasants!? The drama in this one letter is amazing. But, the series continues. Foley doesn’t take the bait of the ornithological drama in Safranek’s letter. His response is very businesslike and indicative of his usual style of customer service. He provides the information asked for, the appropriate prices, and an offer of service, but doesn’t delve into the tales of troubles with the birds.
October 31, 1959
Mr. Henry Safranek Lebanon, Conn.
Dear Sir:
Ralph Meachum of Rockingham, N. C. or Walter Oakie of Winston Salem, N. C. will probably have an Elliot hen for sale. I visited them a short time ago and they had some at that time. I would say that the express charges would be about seven dollars.
Ihave one pair of proven breeders in Erckels and one pair of this years hatch left. Am offering the breeders at $25.00 and the young at $10.00. You should be able to get a Cheer cock from Meachum or Oakie or Rebello for about $8.00. If you should like to have any of these birds, I would be glad to ship them , upon reply from you.
Yours very truly, M. L. Foley
Then, we suddenly have a letter from Safranek for an order of some Erckel’s Francolins. What’s odd is that this letter is in cursive and the handwriting seems very different from the printed text in the other letters. I thought at first that this might have been a letter from Henry Safranek and that the others were possibly from his son. In researching that, I discovered that the author of these letters was likely Henry Safranek, Junior (born September 1, 1927; died September 17, 1991). So, I was correct that the letters were written by Henry junior but he was 32 years old at the time and, as far as I could find, didn’t have children of his own, so they weren’t written by a child with this one by a parent. I did, however, find that he had a sister and, from a later letter, I know he lived near or with his mother. So, maybe one of them wrote this letter for him? Anyway, other than that, everything seems to be in order. Maybe we’re done talking about dead birds? Is this the end of our dramatic correspondence?
Lebanon Conn. Nov. 7, 1959
Mr. Foley, Dear Sir,
Thank you for the nice letter you sent me and the information I asked for about the Eliott Hen.
Enclosed you will find a check for $10.00 for which I want you to send me a pair of the young Erckels you wrote about in your letter
So kindly send by express to my nearest station which is.
Henry Safranek Willimantic, Conn.
over.
I thank you again yours,
Henry Safranek. Kick Hill Rd. Lebanon. Conn.
I wasn’t able to find a response to the order letter from Foley. Presumably, he sent the Erckel’s Francolins with a note and the note wasn’t copied into the collection. Our next entry in the series is from Safranek again. This letter is much longer and we have yet another dead bird! This time, the weather seems to be to blame. Safranek asks about housing conditions for the young birds, debeaking the birds to combat possible cannibalism, and recommendations for breeders to purchase another hen from.
Lebanon Conn. Nov. 19 1959
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I received my birds Tuesday afternoon, and they arrived in very good shape. They were O.K. but today Friday when I came home from work I found the hen dead. we have had a week of very cold weather It hasn’t been above 32° since they came and has been down to 14°. I will now have to locate another hen. Do you leave your francolins out all winter? I have a small coop in their pen which they have been using. and they have plenty of cover. They are a rather pretty bird. and I sure hope to be able to raise them. would you know where I might buy another hen. I see that you have debeacked them, do they
(2) have a tendency to be cannibalistic?
I really don’t have any idea as to how to produce higher fertility in phesants, as never was faced with that problem when raising ring necks. I always keep extra cocks and in the spring used those that were most aggressive and showed the most development. Also having the breeding pens together where the cocks could see each other seemed to help, by making them jealus I would say.
I have only one pair each of phesants so I am afraid that I will have to just rely on luck and will try your feeding program on them, for now. I believe that to much interbreeding has been one of the reason that rare phesants have this draw back.
I sent to Paul R Hartzog of Niles Michigan for my Elliot hen and also bought a pair of black or dark throated goldens from him. They are the best birds that I have bought so far. My first Elliots came from North Carolina and although they were feathered beautifully they had crooked.
(3) toes and that has been enough to stop me from buying any more from him. When you pay 35 to 40 dollars a pair for birds plus express I think that you should get the best or at least should be told before hand, about such things. I also bought a pair of young Blue Manchurians from him that are extremely nice and hope to raise some this comming spring.
I would appreciate any information that you found helpful in raising your Elliots as my chicks were so active that is what must have prompted the hen to kill them as I wrote you in my last letter.
I always used eggs and hand pressed cottage cheese on my young phesants beside keeping good phesant starter in front of them.
Also in regards to higher fertility in phesants I read where one breeder put his cocks under lights for about 4 to 6 weeks before putting them in with his hens. This proved to be very helpful in making game phesants and don’t know how it would work with ornamentals.
(4) If you have extra birds that you could try it with it might prove to be beneficial.
As I have only started last spring with rare phesants, will have to rely on the trial and erro system for now. I sure appreciate any information anyone gives me that they find helpful and might be helpful to me.
Thank you + Regards. Henry Safranek
Next, we get a letter from Foley expressing condolences for the dead bird and providing advice on raising the birds and on who to buy a new hen from. Still avoiding that drama. Things are still businesslike but a bit of Foley’s personality begins to show through. It’s a bit more personal than any of the other letters so far.
November 29, 1959
Dear Sir:
Was very sorry to here that the hen died. I am quite sure that it died of shock. Although we had not had any freezing weather until a few days after I shipped them. Shock is usually what kills birds in shipment also. I have seen healthy birds die just from catching them in the pen and releasing them again in a few minutes. Either from shock or a heart attack. In very hot weather I never disturb my birds at all. When they start to flying or beating against the wire they may die from shock or over exertion or a heart attack. I am by no means an expert on birds or claim to be. I am just relating to you my own personal experiences. Francolins will pick feathers as much as any of the other birds. I set my eggs under bantams but put them in an incubator the last two days for hatching. From sad experience I have found it is better to raise the young in brooders rather than under hens. Especially the rarer birds. As for putting the cocks under lights I would think that the hen would start laying too soon and you would lose some eggs from freezing unless you checked very closely many times a day. I lost some last year and am not nearly as far north as you. I intend to to go to North Carolina soon and will try to locate another hen for you. If you can get one I will ship it and will give you a pair of Nice Goldens. The freight want be any more. Where did you get the Manchurians?
Sincerely, M. L. Foley
The next letter from Safranek is another lengthy discussion of his bird raising experiences. The discussions are becoming more of a back and forth at this point and less of a customer spilling their troubles out to a vendor. At this point, it’s apparent there is a bit of familiarity developing between the two.
Lebanon Conn. Dec. 14 1959.
Mr. M. L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I received the birds today Monday and they are all O.K.. I want to thank you for your trouble in getting me the Erckel’s hen and also for the pair of goldens, which you sent. If I have any luck with my birds next year, will send you either a pr. of Dark Throated goldens, or a pair of Amhersts, if you would like them.
I have been away on vacation all last week so did not read your letters until this Saturday. I called the Express office at once but they did not have the birds in. They came tonight at 5:30 Dec. 14th.
Since I wrote to you the last time I ordered a pair each of Swinhoe’s and versicolors, from Paul Hartzog. Which I have received.
I am afraid that I am buying more birds then I will be able
(2) to handle and have called it quits for this year.
I now have 10 pr. of phesants counting your goldens plus the Erckel’s a 2 year old pr. of Black Shouldered Peacocks and a 2 year old trio of Blue’s all of which I bought last fall I have all my phesants together in one large 18’x24′ pen, with the exception of the Blue Manchurian which have a 12’x18′ pen of there own. I bought my manchurians from “OAKIE”. They have gave me no trouble so far in keeping them all together and hope to be able to leave them that way until about the first of March when I will seperate them.
I bought a pair each of cheers, Bel’s and w.c. Kalij from Mitchell’s game farm in Anchorville Mich, and would have sent them back if I knew for sure that I would have gotten my money all back. They were the most bed ridden birds that I have ever seen. I have had them about a month now and still cannot get my crested Kalj hen looking like anything. She was almost dead when I got her, so I wrote to them about it but never did get an answer. They were like rails and had the dullest looking feathers, no shine and even
(3) the coloring around their eyer was a very dull almost purple color. I have been feeding them graded raw carrots + grapefruit skins, which they seem to like very well especaly the cheers. Plus cooked potatoes and pears. Beside keeping a mixture of 50% scratch feed and 50% Turkey fatting pellets in front of them at all times.
They have all begun to look like something now, but I have little hope for the w. c. Kalj hen.
The Erckel’s male has become a real pet and hope that before long will have him eating out of my hand.
I only want one more pair of phesants and they are Impeyans which I hope to afford next fall.
In regards to using lights on phesants, you only use them on your cocks. For about 4 to 5 weeks before putting them in with your hens. I wish that I could remember where I had read that article and could send it to you. I do know that Beacon Feeds made reference to it in there pamphlet on raising phesants and will try ang get you one of there booklets the next time that I am near one of there feed stores.
(4) Enclosed you will find a check for $5.00. I want to thank you again for your troubles and the goldends and hope to repay you some day.
Regards. Henry Safranek Kick Hill Rd. Lebanon Conn
The next letter comes after the new year from Foley to Safranek, though it is addressed “Dear Sir” and there is no indication in the letter just to who the letter is directed. I was able to determine that this is a letter to Safranek based on the letter that follows it. That letter from Safranek to Foley in mid-January is sadly the last in this series. In these two letters we learn more about these men than in any others in the series. Foley is a hobbyist beekeeper in addition to raising and selling birds. Foley also apparently co-owned a construction firm as his main job. We learn so much in this letter about him. Then, in the following one, we learn about Safranek. We learn that he lives within proximity to his mother (possibly with her, but that’s unclear) and that he used to be in the Army.
January 10, 1960
Dear Sir:
We really enjoyed the maple syrup on buckwheat cakes yesterday. Thank you very much. Hope you liked the honey. I have ten stands of bees that I try to take care of plus the birds. The bees are a lot of work at certain times but I enjoy doing it. This year I had 210 pounds from eight of the stands which is a reasonable average for this area. The other two were or are new swarms. They wern’t in too good condition when I bought them and it took most of last year to build them up. I have a really fancy set up for a hobby bee keeper. I like everything about abeet keeping bees except the bottling of the honey, and that is really a job. I live only a few blocks from downtown Salem and four miles from the heart of Roanoke. The city limits ajoin. So there isn’t to much bloon for the bees. If you have any spare time you might try them as another hobby.
I am half owner of this company and we do from small to medium commercial work. We just completed a $116,000.00 sewer line construction in Mt. Hope, W. Va. We have about a $60,00.00 job to start soon in Morgantown, West Va. We work all over W. Va. and most of eastern Virginia. I have to depend a lot on my wife to take care of my birds, but so far I have been able to work close to home during the egg laying and hatching season. I don’t think it is going to work that way this year.
I have 12 pens 15×10 ft, 3 pens 14×15, 3 pens 15×17 and 1 pen 12x 30ft. All are 7′ high. Hve just finished a 12x36x12 ft high duck pen. Am waiting on my Federal permit to get a pair of wood ducks. The duck pen has a spring in it and I buried an old bath tub in the spring to make a duck pond. Therefore have plenty of clean water and no trouble. Hope to get a pair of Mandarin ducks soon. Also have seven 4×8 pens with wire floors. You must absolutely raise your Cheers on wire until they are nearly fully grown.
I have as breeders the following, 1 pr Blue Manchurian 1 trio Cheer 1pr Silvers 1 trio Golden 2 trio Reeves 1pr Erckels 2 pr Elliots 1 pr & 1 trio Swinho 1 trio Amherst 1 pr W G Kalij and also had Blacknecks Ringnecks Mutants and Bobwhite quail but am not going to raise any more of the last four.
This is too much letter, so long,
M. L. Foley
Lebanon Conn. Jan. 14, 1960
Dear Sir: Mr. Foley
I received your very nice letter today and am glad that you enjoyed the maple syrup. I wanted to get it to you for Christmas but, the store where I usually buy it was all out and they had to order more. You know how long it takes to get things around christmas. I also want to thank you for the honey, which we have been using to glaze sweet potatoes an to base chickens with, when we roast them..
At one time there were a lot of bees kept around this area but since about the early 40s most of the small farms which had them have been turned over to raising chickens and everything that one thinks of as a quaint little farm has just about dissapeared, from around this area.
Although we live out in the country about 7 miles from Willimantic and 35 miles east of Hartford, I own less then an acre of land and have to depend on using my neighbors land for raising any thing.
I have just finished cutting enough cedar poles to build a 30 x 125 foot pen this spring and hope to start some small pens to raise my young ones in this weekend. I have always raised my young ones in small pens 2x4x2 with a 1×2 ft. coop at one end. This worked out very well for me and will take care of a hen and about 12 chicks for 2 to 3 weeks. Moving them every day to new grownd is the only problem. I am glad that you told me about the cheers so will have to make other arangements for them. I did try a small battery brooder once and had leg trouble with my birds so have never tried it since.
That sure was a very nice deer that you got this fall and you should be proud of it. I don’t do any hunting myself, We do spend alot of time at the shore though. I have a small runabout with a 35 horse motor on it and spend almost every Saturday and Sunday water skying claming, Crabbing or just riding around on Lond Island Sound with it.
I’m afraid that I am also guilty of havnig to have someone take care of my birds. I have to be at work at 7 am so my mother feedsand waters them in the morning and when I get home I do what is left to be done. Mother is always giving me hell for having stuff around and having to take care of it but she really enjoys it as much as I do.
An old army buddy of mine came from Roanoke and always wanted me to come home with him but I never did. I was stationed in the Honor Guard at Washington D.C. for 2 years and had plenty of opportunity to make a trip down with him, but I’m not fond of really hot weather and D.C. was enough for me. He had and old motorcycle which he pushed back and forth on. I think I could have taken it. I did make several trips to Luray and up into Cumbland Maryland. Infact we took a trip to Luray this fall up though Penn. into New York it is very nicecountry down through there and my Mother and Aunt really did enjoy it. I wanted to take the (over)
entire sky Line drive into Winston Salem and back through Norfolk Va. along the coast home. We met some very nice people at Luray caverns who said that Spring is the best time to go South when all of the Roderdendrums are in blossom so we decided to make that trip another time. We enjoy travling very much. So from now until spring I will have to really get busy and get all my pens made. Because when the summer comes we are off. We are planing on making a trip through Canada and around the Great Lakes this year if all goes well.
Regards Henry Safranek Lebanon. Conn.
These last two letters are very personal and there seems to be a genuine connection. Sadly, I do not know whether the two ever met in person or whether their correspondence continued. Foley continued writing letters over the next few years but there are no more in the collection to or from Safranek. Foley’s main correspondent from this point on is a man in Barranquilla, Colombia named Jose Raimundo Sojo who helped Foley source ducks for his bird business. I have yet to fully read that correspondence but if I find any more bird murders, I’ll be sure to blog about those letters, too. Of course, you can stop by Special Collections and University Archives and look through all the letters yourself! Just ask for the M. L. Foley Collection (Ms2012-031).
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
U.S. Senate website, Art & History, Timeline: The Senate and the 19th Amendment
Introduced on January 10, 1878 by California Republican Senator Aaron Sargent, the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” took 42 years to be passed and ratified by the requisite states to become a part of the United States Constitution. Over the course of those 42 years, women organized to advocate for their rights, sending petitions, protesting, and lobbying lawmakers in Washington. In response, women were condescended to, reviled, vilified, and assaulted by opponents to woman suffrage.
The woman suffrage amendment was defeated in the Senate four times, in 1887, 1914, 1918, and June of 1919. The amendment passed the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919 and finally passed in the Senate on June 4, 1920. It was quickly ratified by the required three-fourths of states when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 26, 1920, granting women nationwide the right to vote. Their first opportunity to exercise that right happening just two months and seven days later in the 1920 election.
Last fall, I was asked to put together an exhibit commemorating the 19th Amendment to be displayed sometime in 2020. Generally, our exhibits highlight materials in one of our main collecting areas. National politics is not one of those collecting areas. Still, with a little searching of our catalog and finding aids, I was able to identify some unique and interesting items related to the fight for woman suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment.
If you happen to be in Newman Library before the end of the year, you can check out the Votes for Women exhibit in the Special Collections and University Archives windows on the first floor. For those who won’t be stopping by the library, some letters from suffragists included in our collections are highlighted here.
First are two letters from Adelaide Avery Claflin (July 28, 1846 – May 31, 1931) to Mrs. Hollander discussing an upcoming speaking engagement for the woman suffrage association. These are from the Adelaide A. Claflin Letters (Ms1992-005). Claflin was a resident of Quincy, Massachusetts and began speaking publicly in support of woman suffrage in 1883. She became a member of the Qunicy school committee in 1884 and was the first known woman to hold elected office in the town. For more about Claflin and the suffrage movement in Qunicy, check out Remember the Ladies: Woman’s Suffrage and the Black Holes of Local History on the Quincy History Blog.
Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, page 1Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, pages 2-3
The first letter reads:
Tues. Nov. 11 1884, Mrs. Hollander, Dear madam,
I have received a note from Mrs. Stone, (giving me your name simply as above,) and asking me to communicate with you in case I were willing to speak for you in Somerville on Sunday, the 22d and on the same subject on which I lately spoke in South Boston. As the 22nd is Saturday, I am left in a little doubt as to the real date desired, and I am also a little embarrassed in my writing by some other causes. I have a bad cold just now, but probably would be well enough to speak by that time, and would like to do so, as far as I know at present. But I did not speak, exactly, at So. Boston, I read a written essay upon “What women as a class owe to each other”, and this essay, substantially, was read to the Somerville Woman’s Club a year ago. I do not know whether that club is in the same part of Somerville, or whether that would be any objection. I should, therefore be glad to hear further from you in regard to the circumstances, as Mrs. Stone’s note was extremely brief.
Very truly yours, Adelaide A. Claflin 21 Chestnut St. Quincy Maſ.
Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 1Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 2-3Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 4
The second letter reads:
Friday, Nov. 14, 1884, My dear Mrs. Hollander,
I am much obliged for your explanation in regard to the lectures and I am glad such a course is undertaken. With regard to myself, I only mentioned the So. Boston paper, because Mrs. Stone wrote to me about that. I have spoken for the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, upon that question, a good many times within the past two years, and feel that I can always say something upon most aspects of the woman suffrage question. Mrs. Stone has often asked me to speak upon municipal suffrage because she liked my presentation of that subject – but some of the Somerville friends have very likely heard me speak upon it in Boston, and I would rather prefer myself to speak in a more general way. I have had some experience in regards to schools, having been teacher, mother, and school committee, and had some special advantages here in Quincy where educational matters have been much discussed, and I have been in the thick of it. How would you like as subject “The need of the feminine influence in the school, the town, and the state”? Or if that is too large – the first two leaving out the “state”? I think I could make some useful points in an address of that kind. But if there is any special branch of the suffrage, or woman question, which would be more desirable to you as a step in the unfolding of your scheme of lectures I think it would be safe enough for your President to announce it for me for the 23rd. I have studied the woman question all my life, and while I do not profess to have solved as great a problem, I feel pretty sure I can talk about most parts of it in a tolerably rational manner. I write thus because there is not time before Sunday for me to hear from you and write again as to subject, and I should like to meet the wishes of the committee in that respect. I should be glad to know how long an address is desired and whether it is to be in a parlor or a church, etc.
Very truly yours Adelaide A. Claflin, 21 Chestnut St., Qunicy
As an alternative subject I might suggest “The reaction of equal rights upon woman and society.” A.A.C.
Next is a letter from Lila M. Valentine to J. D. Eggleston, president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, from the Records of the Office of the President, Joseph Dupuy Eggleston (Record Group 2/7). Lila Meade Valentine was co-founder of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and served as its first president. Learn more about her at Encyclopedia Virginia.
Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 1Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 2
The letter from Valentine reads:
Dr. J. D. Eggleston. April 2, 1915 Blacksburg, Va.
My dear [cousin?].
Can you arrange for me to speak any one of the following days, April 21, 22, 23, 24, 26? I am to help in the Pennsylvania campaign in ?? City April 28. I should greatly appreciate a prompt reply as I have several other invitations to fill in, and only wait your decision to readjust them because of your May 1st limit.
Cordially yours Lila M Valentine
P.S. I regret very much that you felt compelled to resign from our State Board of Education. We can ill afford to do without your valuable aid. L.M.V.
Finally, a letter from Eulalie Salley to Mrs. Francis Bear of Roanoke, Virginia, from the Eulalie Salley Letter (Ms2013-079). Salley was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1883 and lived on her grandparents’ plantation in Louisville, Georgia before moving to Aiken, South Carolina in 1892. Her education included a year each at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia and Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Around 1912, Salley organized the Aiken County Equal Suffrage League and served as its first president. She campaigned for suffrage by door-to-door canvassing, hosting fundraisers, and even dropping leaflets from an airplane. The end of this letter mentions her efforts to elect Gilbert McMillan to office in South Carolina and his role in South Carolina finally ratifying the 19th Amendment in 1969, 50 years after it became part of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more about Eulalie Salley in the South Carolina Encyclopedia.
Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 1Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 2
The Eulalie Salley letter reads:
Eulalie Salley, Realtor Post Office Box 622 111 Park Avenue, S. W. Aiken, South Carolina 29801
January 12, 1974
Mrs. Francis Bear, “Bearcliff” 100 Etheridge Road, Roanoke, Virginia 24018
Dear Frances. I’m not at all surprised that your Mother did not tell you about my interest in politics. She and I are always so busy talking about members of the family that there is no time for anything else during her fleeting visits. In fact, most of our time is taken up with talk about that beautiful boy of yours.
I am so glad to know of your interest in politics. I’m wondering if you have joined the League of Women Voters or any other Woman’s organization in Roanoke. If not, you should, fo you would find it fasinating. I don’t see why you don’t begin right now to run for some public office—maybe by starting off with City Council or the State Legislature.
Here in Aiken we have a woman County Commissioner and a woman member of the South Carolina Lefislature. I campained for both of them, along with my faithful Gilbert McMillan. (Gilbert is a distant cousin of Louises’ husband, Raiford). He is the one who got the South Carolina legislature to ratify the Nineteenth amendment, a bill women had been working on for fifty years with no success.
Gilbert was a new commer and we decided we needed some one fresh in the Senate so 300 women got out and campained and elected him. It was very exciting.
It took me a long time to find out that if you wanted a law passed, you had better get your own man and get him to go to Columbia and pass it for you.
I hope Jody will do well in his school and I know you are going to be proud of him.
Affectionately, Eula
In addition to these materials, the Special Collections and University Archives exhibit also includes articles about women’s voting from the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1920, items from the New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and some suffrage cookbooks. If you get a chance to stop by the library while the exhibit is up, check it out to see everything on display. If you don’t make it in before 2021, the items are always available to view upon request.
My job here at Virginia Tech is Community Collections Archivist & Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator for the University Libraries. I forgive you if you got lost in all that. Essentially, the part of my job that is archival in nature is to engage with traditionally marginalized communities around their histories. I help them preserve and make available documentary evidence of their existence so that history will better reflect the full human experience. This post is about a project that fell squarely within that scope – and helped me really see what doing this work can mean.
Nancy Kelly, “The Instigator”
About a year ago, I got a request for a meeting with Nancy Kelly, a lesbian alumna who wanted the university to acknowledge the early history of the Gay Rights Movement at Virginia Tech. At the time, I assumed this would be a fairly standard discussion with a potential donor about materials they had and whether Special Collections would be interested in adding them to our collections. I was wrong. Nancy, certainly had some wonderful documents and we talked about the donation process. But, Nancy had a vision. She wanted us to document her experience as a lesbian at Tech during the birth of the publicly visible LGBTQ+ community here. And, she wanted it done on video. And, she wanted us to document the experiences of all of her friends and fellow alumni from that same time period. And she wanted the university as a whole to celebrate the events of 40 years ago and publicly display support for the LGBTQ+ community here. This seemed an impossible dream at the time.
Having some familiarity with the events of January 1979 from the coverage in the Collegiate Times, I wasn’t about to say no. It’s a fascinating exploration of late-1970s attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. At the time, I had no idea how I would make a video oral history project a reality. I had no personal experience as an oral history interviewer. I also knew we had limited storage space and that video files are huge! Still, this was a project with potential, so I said yes. No conditions. No mentioning all the potential issues. I just said yes. Luckily, the university made Kaltura available institution-wide for video hosting about the time I needed to put the interviews online.
What happened over the next year was a mixture of serendipity and perseverance. Working with Jessica Taylor, Assistant Professor of Oral and Public History, and Luis Garay Director of the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, we held an oral history workshop in late November specifically targeted to the LGBTQ+ community and preservation of its history.
At that workshop, I found out that Joe Forte, Shelving Supervisor with the University Libraries (and an amazing DJ for Stacks on Stacks, the University Libraries Radio Show), and Slade Lellock, PhD candidate in Sociology, were very interested in recording some interviews. I also met Adri Ridings, a student who was similarly interested in helping to document LGBTQ+ history.
From there, we began recording interviews with alumni who hadn’t engaged with the university in 40 years. It was emotional. It was cathartic. It was a labor of love for everyone involved. Nancy did the work to engage them and tell them we could be trusted. Without her, there would be no interviews because these alumni had no reason to trust someone from Virginia Tech to care about their experiences and sharing them honestly.
While I worked with the alumni to preserve their stories, Luis Garay, from the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Latanya Walker, Director of Alumni Relations for Diversity and Inclusion, Mark Weber, from the Ex Lapide Alumni Society, students from Hokie Pride, the LGBT Faculty and Staff Caucus, and more were all working on putting together an amazing schedule of events for a 40th anniversary commemoration of Denim Day combined with Pride Week and Queer in Appalachia, an annual event celebrating what it is to be queer here in appalachia.
Meanwhile, we were busily recording and transcribing as fast as possible to get as many interviews online as we could before Pride Week and the planned #VTDenimDayDoOver. I worked with our media folks to create a cool promo/intro video (linked below – click on the picture) for the collection.
As the Denim Day events grew near and we had recorded almost all the scheduled interviews with the alumni from 40 years before, I worked with Susanna Rinehart, Chair of Theatre and Cinema in the School of Performing Arts on content for Jeans Noticeably Absent: The Story of Denim Day 1979 which combined theatre students reading newspaper articles and letters reacting to Denim Day with clips from the oral histories.
Overall, this experience has been amazing and triumphant. We gathered great oral histories and engaged the community. Nancy and her fellow alumni were celebrated by the university that had once ostracized them and called them an embarrassment. We were in the VT News, and the Roanoke Times. We were on the home page of the university – for 2 days running so far!!!! (see picture below)
We had the main university Twitter account tweeting about us.
We had departments from across the university sending out messages of support even though they couldn’t attend our coordinated commemoration photo.
We also got more members of the community to sit down and record their own stories for our collection.
There’s still a ton of work to do to process the material we’ve gathered related to these efforts. There’s also a ton of work needed to engage the parts of the community not represented by the story of Denim Day: those members who aren’t white, cisgender, gay, or lesbian. Hopefully, the work we’ve done here will be a step toward showing that we care enough to do this work honestly and with respect.
To see the collection we built about Denim Day (in progress) and our broader documentation of LGBTQ+ history at Virginia Tech visit here and here.
When people think of Special Collections or of archives generally, they typically think of boxes of old dusty papers or shelf after shelf of rare books.
In truth, we aren’t very dusty. Dust damages our materials, so we try to keep it away. And, while we do have many rare books, that is only a small part of what we’re about. Archives exist to house information. In the past, that information was mainly recorded on some form of paper whether that be a scroll, a sheet of paper, or a book. In the mid-20th century, this began to change. More and more content was created on computers and stored on removable media such as floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, zip drives, removable hard drives, thumb drives, etc.
Image from @palak_dev on Twitter: https://twitter.com/palak_dev/status/962137797640388608
During the same period, archives continued to focus mainly on paper. The form of more recent records became printouts of work done on computers. But the long-term preservation format remained paper. Multiple efforts within the profession focused on figuring out how to handle material given to archives on disks and, more recently, as files in the cloud. Today, the profession has a fairly good idea of how to deal with digital data as material in archives, preserving the data and migrating it to new formats while showing that the intellectual content hasn’t been altered.
Unsurprisingly, our Special Collections has followed along this evolution in practice. We have many records on disk sitting in boxes and many records that have been transferred off their original disks in order to preserve them better. We also have a collecting focus on the History of Science and Technology. The developments in the field of archival practice and our topical interest in the history of technology have provided ample reason for us to acquire various forms of hardware.
The hardware we have allows us to convert many types of digital content to more modern formats for continued use. We’re also exploring making some of the older hardware available for our patrons to experience its use. Let’s take a look at some of the technology we have in our Special Collections.
First up, we have the humble copier. We have a couple of these. They are networked and can scan items at high resolutions. While this doesn’t convert digital content to newer formats, it can help quickly create digital copies of physical materials.
We also have a variety of scanners. The one pictured above is an Epson flatbed scanner. These scanners help us digitize content to share it online. We have many types including flatbed, book scanners, and an overhead camera. With the variety of scanners we have, we are able to create digital copies of our physical materials for use in online content distribution.
For video conversion and playback, we have a number of machines. Pictured above:
Panasonic PV-V4623S 4-Head HiFi VCR
JVC HR-S6900U HiFi Stereo S-VHS VCR
Pioneer LD-V4200 LaserDisc Player
And here we have some video and some audio equipment including:
Funai ZV427FX4A DVD Recorder/VCR with Line-in Recording
Technics SL-Q300 Direct Drive Automatic Turntable System (record player – not pictured)
Of these, the Funai VHS/DVD player gets the most use for conversion purposes which makes sense because it has built-in VHS to DVD conversion capabilities. The others live on our A/V media cart and can be wheeled into our reading room if a patron wants to view an item that is on VHS, DVD, or LaserDisc or listen to one of our cassette tapes or records.
This little gadget does most of the work for our video conversion operations. It is an Elgato Video Capture S-Video/HDMI/Component Video Capture Device. It allows us to connect almost any video player directly to a computer and record the video playback as a digital file. So, even if we don’t maintain a machine for playing a certain type of media, if we can get ahold of one with S-Video, HDMI, or component video outputs, we can convert the contents to digital formats.
Our audio station provides capabilities for audio cassette tapes and reel-to-reel tapes. To support this, we have the following equipment:
Pioneer RT-909 2-Channel Stereo Auto Reverse Tape Deck (reel-to-reel player – front)
Tascam 44-OB 4 Channel Recorder/Reproducer (reel-to-reel player back)
Our audio conversion is done on a Macbook Pro using the open source Audacity software.
When it comes to converting computer files, one of our most versatile tools is the lowly CD drive. Since many computers today don’t include one, we have one centrally located in a cabinet for anyone who might need it.
For more advanced digital processing, we have a forensic recovery of evidence device or F.R.E.D. The FRED allows us to capture a disk image of a computer disk without altering any of the data contained on the disk. Along with the FRED, we have a number of different types of drives that can be connected including a 3.5″ floppy drive, a 5″ floppy drive, a zip drive and more.
Osborne 1 Microcomputer in operational configuration
As we move further into the technology space by offering the chance for our patrons to interact with older technology, we’re acquiring older hardware as part of our collections. Pictured above is the first such piece we acquired: the Osborne 1 Portable Microcomputer. For more about this item, check my blog post from last fall.
Commodore 64 with peripherals
Our newest addition is a Commodore 64 complete with a printer, joystick, monitor, and floppy disk drive. It includes multiple programs and is in excellent condition. It’s not quite ready for its public debut as it has a faulty power supply and requires some maintenance and repair before getting listed in our public catalog.
That’s just a small overview of the technology we use in Special Collections. Our jobs as archivists continue to evolve and we strive to be experts on the past and the present with an eye to the future when it comes to technology. The variety is one of the best parts of working here. I certainly couldn’t have predicted I’d be repairing hardware on an old Commodore 64 as part of my job but I love it anyway.
I hope you’ve found this post interesting and educational. If you’re interested in learning more about our Osborne 1 and Commodore 64, keep an eye on this blog. We’ll post more when they’re ready for people to stop by and try them out.
Osborne 1 Microcomputer in portable configurationOsborne 1 Microcomputer in operational configuration
We recently received an Osborne 1 Portable Microcomputer as a donation from Virginia Tech alumnus, Bob Sweeney. We asked him some questions about his background and this computer. Here are his answers:
Q: Tell us a little about your background as it relates to computing in the 1970s-1980s.
A:At the time, I was a technical writer for a software house that developed products for the HP-3000. We were a small company and I could not always get access to a terminal to access theLARC-3000 word processor I used (Los Altos Research Center – chosen because it spelled Larc, as in “Going out on a larc.”). I was an experienced TW, but this job was the first that allowed me to us a WP. Well, allowed is the wrong word. My buddy – Steve White, VT Class of 1962 – was our head of sales. I mentioned to him that I was ready for my manuscript to go to the typing pool. He replied, “Bob, we’re a computer company. You use the computer.” (I never wanted to do it any other way again. I’d spent 2/3rd of my time proofreading!)
Q: What initially attracted you to the Osborne 1?
A:The Osborne 1 ads showed people carrying the machine in elevators, buses, through an airport. At $1600 with a printer and a bundle of software, this was an affordable machine. When I bought the O1, for instance, a business man was buying a comparable machine (same printer, same processor, same drive, same memory) and he paid twice as much for his IBM. By the by, you probably can find one of those ads online.
Osborne 1 ad c.1981
Q: What was your experience with the computer? Did it work as advertised?
A:It was great! I used its WordStar WP to do my stuff at home and prepare files for the HP. (LARC-3000 was an embedded-command WP. For example, like HTML, <b>….</b> for bold, <p>…</p> for paragraphs.) I could encode the files for HP. With a simple application (included) I could conduct work as though the Osborne was a terminal to the HP. Best of all, I could save my files on a floppy, allowing me to work at home, offline!
I loved the Epson printer, too. In fact, I had trouble reloading the paper one day. I got out the manual and was surprised to find no loading instructions! In frustration, I tried again. The path was so simple, if you just stuck the paper in, it would load properly! I’d thought too hard about it!
Q: The computer was advertised as portable, did you transport it from place to place like one would with a modern laptop?
A:Yes, I carried it from home to work and back. But best of all, we were working on a proposal with a customer in Boston. We took the Osborne up with us on the plane and that night updated the propsal!
Q:What was your favorite thing about this computer?
A:That flexibility. WordStar was easy to use. There was also Basic and VisiCal, although I used neither much. We did do several proposals and business plans using the Visicalc and its links to WordStar (A mail merge function). (If I remember, VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet for microcomputers. We could probably dump it into LARC-3000, too.)
Q:What was your least favorite thing?
A:As you’ve seen, the screen is small! I got a magnifier for the screen, but my nephew – with good eyes – threw it away!
Q:Why did you decide to find a home for the computer rather than recycling it as many would do?
A:It has no value, so I just couldn’t send it off to some beach in India. It was my first and started me out on a career of the future. I still marvel at how any writer did it in the old days! You spent twice as much – possibly three times as much – of your days proofing than writing. (Of course, we also had to learn a new skill – usually from several hard experiences – backing up.
Q:Is there anything more you would like to share about the Osborne 1 Computer?
A:Not as famous as the Apple, but the Osborne 1 was an important step for businesses in the computer revolution. They would be better known if they’d developed an IBM clone. They did have a machine with a larger screen, but it was still CP/M.
Some Computer History
When looking at history, we often ascribe specific importance to that which is first. For example, in 1911 Roald Amundsen from Norway was the first person to reach the South Pole and in 1926 he was recognized as the first person to reach the North Pole. Regardless of the objective truth of these claims (whether indigenous people reached the North Pole before him) he is granted a certain cachet by being recognized as the first. You can find an entire list of similar firsts on Biography Online‘s site.
What does all of this have to do with the Osborne 1 portable microcomputer? Well, it is one of those special things that is special because of its status as first. The Osborne 1 was the first portable microcomputer. For those not familiar with computing history, this was the first (type of) computer (the woman, not the machine):
Computer at her work with microscope and the Friden calculating machine. (NASA).
After human computers came large room-sized machines such as the Harvard Mark 1 in 1944.
As the world of computer technology progressed through the later half of the 1940s and through the 1950s and 1960s, improvements to computer technology were developed and introduced. Punch card input gave way to keyboard input. Components got smaller, leading to “microcomputers” which are just computers that are small. The term generally refers to computers smaller than room sized. Screens were added. Networking via phone lines was added. New and exciting programming languages were created.
As the 1970s progressed, we saw the introduction of the first personal computers (meaning small machines that were within the grasp of an individual to own/operate) from companies such as IBM, with the IBM 5150 Personal Computer being released in 1981. The 5150 followed a great deal of work by IBM in developing a commercial personal computer. Their main competitor was Xerox who introduced the Xerox PARC Alto (a computer that we would recognize today – with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard) in 1974.
In 1976, Apple released the Apple I and then followed with the Apple II in 1977. That year, Tandy Radio Shack (TRS) released their TRS-80, Atari released their computer gaming console, and Commodore entered the market with the PET. Computers were entering the public consciousness and it wasn’t unheard of for people to have a computer at home. It was also becoming much more commonplace to have one at work. During this time, the subject of portable computers was a hot topic and there were entrants to the space as early as 1973 (HP-9830A). Still, an affordable, easily portable personal computer was something that remained mostly a dream until the Osborne 1 was announced in 1981.
Osborne 1 ad: Afghani Mujahadeen posing with the Osborne 1. c.1981
The Osborne 1 was billed as revolutionary, hence the ad featuring the Mujahadeen. It was the first really portable computer. It weighed 24 pounds and came in a case designed to absorb the inevitable knocks it would receive being transported from place to place. It was the first product of the Osborne Computer Corporation, named for its founder Adam Osborne, and known for lending its name to the Osborne Effect – a company going out of business by announcing a new product too soon and killing sales of their current product. Despite its demise in 1985, the Osborne Computer Corporation succeeded in producing a viable portable computer
Cover, Osborne 1 pamphlet, c.1981
Interior front, Osborne 1 pamphlet, c.1981
Interior front, Osborne 1 pamphlet, c.1981
Interior back, Osborne 1 pamphlet, c.1981
Back cover, Osborne 1 pamphlet, c.1981
The corporation had effective marketing and certainly grabbed the attention of the computer-savvy business professional of the early 1980s.
BYTE magazine, March 1982, page 33BYTE magazine, August 1981, page 35
And, Interface Age magazine whose tag line was “published for the home computerist” named it an “outstanding buy” in November of 1981.
Interface Age, November 1981, page 62
Interface Age, November 1981, page 63
Our Osborne 1 is the first of what we hope will be many classic computers housed in Special Collections and available for the public to interact with. If you want to see this piece of computing history, stop by Special Collections in Newman Library anytime Monday-Friday 8:00 AM-5:00 PM.
June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month in the United States. It is a separate observance from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History Month which takes place in October. LGBT Pride Month (or LGBTQ+ Pride Month, or LGBTTIQQ2SA, or whatever umbrella term you are comfortable with) was created in response to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City which followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. It is now 49 years since the Stonewall Riots, and 59 years since the Cooper’s Donuts Riots in Los Angeles, and Pride Month has become a worldwide phenomenon celebrating the spectrum of sexualities and genders encompassed within the umbrella of LGBTQ+. But, there are still instances of bullyingand violence against this community. Just last year, during Pride Month, a mass shooting happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Given the violence against the LGBTQ+ community that prompted the creation of Pride Month – and the violence that still happens to the community today, I thought I’d write about Safe Zone at Virginia Tech in honor of Pride Month this year.
The Safe Zone program at Virginia Tech was established in 1998 in an effort to create a more welcoming environment for members of the LGBTQ+ community. We recently finished processing the HokiePRIDE Records (RG 31/14/15) which include some early documents related to the Safe Zone program defining what or who a Safe Zone is. Listen to David Hernandez talk about the definition of a Safe Zone in his 2014 oral history from The Virginia Tech LGBTQ Oral History Collection (Ms2015-007).
October 2000 notes on Safe Zone
Early notes on the Safe Zone program
Early notes on the Safe Zone program
An early Safe Zone Resource Manual (circa 2000), includes information about the history of the program as well as basic information about terms and symbols used by members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Formal definition of Safe Zone from Resource Manual
Formal definition of Safe Zone from Resource Manual
Cover of Safe Zone Resource Manual circa 2000
Safe Zone training materials circa 2000
Safe Zone training materials circa 2000
Safe Zone training materials circa 2000
Over time, the Safe Zone program has evolved. It was initially guided by the direction of members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Alliance (LGBTA) of Virginia Tech (later known as HokiePRIDE). Later, it fell under the direction of the Department of Student Affairs and the Multicultural Center. Most recently, it has been run through the LGBTQ+ Resource Center. Safe Zone has been a part of Virginia Tech for the last 20 years!
2000s Safe Zone sticker
2010s Safe Zone placard
Society has advanced significantly regarding acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community and so has Virginia Tech. Still, educating people on campus about LGBTQ+ issues remains important and the Safe Zone program remains a vital way for members of the community to identify people who are supportive and have a basic training on issues affecting the community.
Safe Zone session information circa 2015
Safe Zone session information circa 2015
I hope you enjoyed learning a little about the Safe Zone program at Virginia Tech. If you want to see more of the materials from the HokiePRIDE records (RG 31/14/15), stop by Special Collections and have a look!
If you have materials related to the history of the Safe Zone program at Virginia Tech, HokiePRIDE, or LGBTQ+ history at Virginia Tech and are interested in donating to Special Collections, please contact us using the link at top of this page.
