Casts from the Past

We love trains! I was a brakeman on the Grand Trunk Railroad for a year or so back in the 1990s. My cousin was an engineer for many years, too.

I was very pleased yesterday to get an email from the B&O Museum in Baltimore, Maryland announcing the First Annual National Train Day sponsored by Amtrak. From the event website:

What is National Train Day?

On May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, the “golden spike” was driven into the final tie that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, ceremonially creating the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. And America was transformed.

Suddenly, the country was united in a way it never had been, and train travel sparked imaginations in small towns and big cities, among folk who desired adventure and businessmen who saw fortunes to be made. The sound of a train whistle was the soundtrack of happy reunions and tearful farewells. It heralded the arrival of mail, supplies and change.

The train became more than the go-to mode of transport for people and goods. It was a proud achievement of engineering vision, technical ingenuity and sweat. It was a cultural force that sparked the creative imaginations of storytellers in songs, movies and novels. Railways provided jobs for thousands of Americans. The train station became a focal point of every community, from New York City’s Pennsylvania Station to the tiny stations that dotted rural America.

Now, 139 years after the golden spike connected east and west, there’s never been a better time to take the train. Huge crowds and the frustrations that go with them burden our highways and airports. And at a time when we all share the same pressing concerns about ecology and energy conservation, trains are a more energy-efficient mode of travel than either autos or airplanes. Riding the rails is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. Not to mention meet interesting people and see breathtaking scenery.

So mark May 10th on your calendar for a coast-to-coast celebration of the way trains connect people and places. In New York’s Penn Station and Union stations in Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles, there will be simultaneous National Train Day festivities that are a treat for all ages.

A Golden Opportunity

The spirit of National Train Day resides at the Golden Spike National Historical site in Utah, which commemorates the achievement of those who created the national’s first transcontinental railroad. It was there that the final spike was driven into the tie that joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads on May 10, 1869, and it’s part of a network of nearly 400 important sites that’s cared for by the National Park Service. And like all of the places you can visit within the National Park System, the Golden Spike National Historical site is alive with history, recreational adventures and beauty.

There will be celebrations in Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. The largest event will be in D.C., though.

On May 10, 2008, in Washington DC’s Unuion Station, National Train Day Activities will inlcude:

Speaking of the Golden Spike National Historical site, I found this cool movie on YouTube posted by SkipW. It features a condensed version of the Golden Spike Celebration for the completion of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad held on October 23-25, 1914 at Cain Rock, Humboldt County, California.

Because the film has no audio, I thought I’d try streaming my own soundtrack. One of my favorite train songs is Neil Young’s Southern Pacific from the Reactor album. (I know, I know. Southern Pacific doesn’t quite fit because the film is about the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, but it’s cool anyway). You have to hit play for the movie and the song individually, but I think it’s worth the effort.

 

 Neil Young's Southern Pacific - LIVE: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Scenes from the Past loves all things Michigan. Michigan was blessed to be the birthplace and/or home of some of the greatest men, minds, inventors and inventions the world has ever known. Men like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison have strong Michigan roots. (FACT: Although Edison was born in Ohio, he was raised in Port Huron, Michigan, and worked on the Grand Trunk Railroad as a boy).

It has long been a historical “fact” that Thomas Edison was the father of recorded sound, when in 1877, he made a tinfoil phonograph of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. This particular recording is courteousy of the National Park Service via the Internet Archives. Because the original recording was never saved, Edison recreated the moment on August 12, 1927 at the Golden Jubilee of the Phonograph ceremony held at Glenmont (Edison’s home), in West Orange, New Jersey. It was taken from a Movietone Production news film.

Here Thomas Edison recite Mary Had a Little Lamb for yourself:

Imagine my surprise when I read in the New York Times (may require you to login) last month that a Frenchman named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, “a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison”, actually beat Old Tom by almost 20 years!

Excerpts from the March 27th, 2008 New York Times Article by Jody Rosen:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Scott’s 1860 phonautogram was made 17 years before Edison received a patent for the phonograph and 28 years before an Edison associate captured a snippet of a Handel oratorio on a wax cylinder, a recording that until now was widely regarded by experts as the oldest that could be played back.

Scott is in many ways an unlikely hero of recorded sound. Born in Paris in 1817, he was a man of letters, not a scientist, who worked in the printing trade and as a librarian. He published a book on the history of shorthand, and evidently viewed sound recording as an extension of stenography. In a self-published memoir in 1878, he railed against Edison for “appropriating” his methods and misconstruing the purpose of recording technology. The goal, Scott argued, was not sound reproduction, but “writing speech, which is what the word phonograph means.”

In fact, Edison arrived at his advances on his own. There is no evidence that Edison drew on knowledge of Scott’s work to create his phonograph, and he retains the distinction of being the first to reproduce sound.

“Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery…”

Have a listen to the Firstsounds.org Scott recording via the Internet Archive:

It’s too bad that Scott couldn’t have captured Abraham Lincoln’s voice with his phonautograph, of which you can see pictures of at Talkingmachine.org.

(Ok, now that I’ve actually posted some AUDIO, maybe I’m one step closer to actually posting the long-planned podcast.)

As you know, we here at Scenes from the Past and Casts from the Past love the Civil War. This is somewhat late, but it is good until the end of the month of April. Alexander Street Press has offered the rare chance to access their Civil War collections.

As we approach the bicentennials of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Alexander Street Press is offering free access to some of our most popular collections. Through April 30, 2008 you can explore three of our Civil War databases with no restrictions. As a bonus, we are also offering free access to two streaming music collections, which contain songs from the Civil War era.

No registration is required. Simply click on the links below to connect to the databases. When prompted to log in, use the following credentials:

username: american
password: bicentennial

This includes access to the following databases:

The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries

The American Civil War Research Database

The Illustrated Civil War (Newspapers and Magazines)

The Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries

Music Online: American Song

Hurry and take advantage of this free and rare access!

I am a huge Civil War fan. My dad is a blackpowder skirmisher and a member of the North South Skirmish Association (N-SSA) for over 30 years (go First South Carolina Vols!). He’s dragged me to just about every Civil War battlefield there is. Last year he and I made a trip to see the park, knowing that the old visitor center would soon be closed.

As much as we love “old” here at Casts from the Past and Scenes from the Past, I have to admit that the old center is in pretty bad shape. I’m sure it was a great building 30 years ago, but now it seems kind of run down. I’ve been anticipating the opening of the new $103 million visitor center and the renovation of the cyclorama ever since our visit.

This morning, I happened accross this great article from the Washington Post, entitled At Last, a Gettysburg Redress . (Get it? Redress? Address? Clever…)

The article discusses how the National Park Service is about to tear down both the old visitors center and the Cyclorama Building, which was designed in the 1960s by the renowned architect Richard Neutra. They both sit on top of Union battle lines where approximately 900 men lost their lives. The new visitor center does not sit on hallowed ground.

The most notable change, for most tourists, will be the visitor center, which is designed to look like a typical farm structure one might find anywhere in the hills of Pennsylvania. The old cyclorama is being refurbished and reinstalled in what looks like a low, squat silo, painted barn red. Wooden beams salvaged from Civil War era barns have been used, both as decoration and to support porch overhangs. Much of the building is clad in central Pennsylvania granite, which has the curious feature of seeming to be both blue and gray at the same time.

It is everything the Richard Neutra building is not. That structure, a concrete, modernist facility that housed the cyclorama in a round, bunker-like tube, is an overstated, chilly yet compelling presence. The new center is backward-looking, faux-historical and architecturally bland. And there’s little doubt that the new building is the right one for Gettysburg.

Also, about the Cyclorama…

The old cyclorama, a 377-foot round painting of the battle created by Paul Philippoteaux in 1884, was the “immersive” cultural experience of its day. It has taken on such iconic status that it is being restored to its original format, which requires meticulous repair and repainting, and the re-creation of three-dimensional diorama pieces (installed along the edges of the painting to create an optical illusion) that have been missing for at least 40 years. (It will be unveiled at the center’s “grand opening” in September.)

The article also discusses the shift of narrative in the Gettysburg story from millitary strategy to a story of broader issues, such as slavery. You can read the full article at the Washington Post website.

I found this cool video by yorkdispatch on YouTube.com called, “A Better Look at the Civil War”, which is all about the four major goals they had for constructing the visitor center.

April 7th, 2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the return of our favorite beverage here at Scenes from the Past / Casts from the Past: BEER! (NOTE: Just in case you ever feel like grabbing a six pack or two and swinging by, I prefer the Canadian variety like Labatt or Molson. I’m just sayin’…)

Sure, it was only 3.2%, but at least this was the first step in the right direction, as full Prohibition (1919 to 1933) would not be repealed until eight months later with the ratification of the XXI Amendment.

If you’re ever in the area, look us up and we’ll have a beer. Until then, enjoy this quick video by Britannica.com.

I know this isn’t a videocast or the long-delayed podcast I’ve been dreaming up, but I think it is cool, nonetheless. If you are like me, and have a difficult time fitting in good old fashioned books between reading emails, blog posts, text messages, and RSS feeds, then you might enjoy this website I’ve recently discovered. It is called DailyLit and they serialize books and novels and deliver them via email or RSS feed. They send one installment a day, but you also have the option of having the next installment sent immediately.

Here is the best part: they offer FREEBIES! Yes, that’s right- free!
They also offer low-cost choices that start in the $4.00 range. That isn’t bad…

I’ve chosen to start with My Life and Work - an Autobiograpgy by Henry Ford. I figured this was somewhat appropriate, considering the focus of Scenesfromthepast.com and Castsfromthepast.com.

Description:

Born into a modest Detroit family, Henry Ford became a pioneer of American ingenuity and industry. In 1922, at the peak of his success in putting countless automobiles on the road, Ford put his own story onto paper. A practical statement of his personal history and shrewd business values, this book is the self-portrait of an American icon, one of the greatest success stories of United States history in his own words.

I’m going to see how this goes and will try to offer reviews on the books I read, if they are appropriately themed.

You know, I’ve always wanted to read Moby Dick.

Here is a great widget I found so you have the inside scoop on what is happening at the National Archives.

I doubt that Alexander Graham Bell could have ever foreseen the advent of the cell phone or the dreaded telemarketer, but a day late I celebrate the invention and inventor of the telephone by posting this charming little video.

Bell’s journal contains the following entry for March 10, 1876:

I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.

I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.’” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled.

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929 St. Valentine’s Day, Al Capone sent a bloody .45 caliber Valentine when five members of George ‘Bugs’ Moran’s gang were lined up against a brick wall of the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side by Capone’s men and slaughtered with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns. Al Capone ordered the massacre to wipe out “Bugs” Moran and his North Side Gang, which was muscling in on Capone’s bootlegging operations. You can read the story at the official Wikipedia page.

Here is some Michigan tie-in trivia: The two Thompson submachine guns used in the massacre, seized by police when Fred Burke (a Moran North Side gang member) shot and killed Charles Skelly, a policeman in St. Joseph, Michigan, are currently being held in the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan.

Also, I found this cool video made by jwuestling on YouTube illustrating what happened.

On November 10, 1975 the bulk freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior with all hands lost. This post is dedicated to the memory of those 29 men and the families they left behind. This very touching video directed by Joseph Fulton shows some excellent footage of the Fitz over Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” from 1976.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior they said never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

The Crew:
Ernest M. McSorley, 63, Captain, Toledo Ohio
John H. McCarthy, 62, Mate, Bay Village, Ohio
James A. Pratt, 44, second mate, Lakewood, Ohio
Michael E. Armagost, 37, third mate, Iron River, Wisconsin
Thomas Bentsen, 23, oiler, St. Joseph, Michigan
Thomas D. Borgeson, 4l, maintenance man, Duluth, Minnesota
John D. Simmons, 60, wheelsman, Ashland, Wisconsin
Eugene W. O’Brien, 50, wheelsman, Toledo, Ohio
John J. Poviatch, 59, wheelsman, Bradenton, Florida
Ranson E. Cundy, 53, watchman, Superior, Wisconsin
William J. Spengler, 59, watchman, Toledo, Ohio
Karl A. Peckol, 20, watchman, Ashtabula, Ohio
Mark A. Thomas, 2l, deck hand, Richmond Heights, Ohio
Paul M. Rippa, 22, deck hand, Ashtabula, Ohio
Bruce L. Hudson, 22, deck hand, North Olmsted, Ohio
David E. Weiss, 22, cadet, Agoura, California
Robert C. Rafferty, 62, steward, Toledo, Ohio
Allen G. Kalmon, 43, second cook, Washburn, Wisconsin
Frederick J. Beetcher, 56, porter, Superior, Wisconsin
Nolan F. Church, 55, porter, Silver Bay, Minnesota
George Holl, 60, chief engineer, Cabot, Pennsylvania
Edward F. Bindon, 47, first assistant engineer, Fairport Harbor, Ohio
Thomas E. Edwards, 50, second assistant engineer, Oregon, Ohio
Russell G. Haskell, 40, second assistant engineer, Millbury, Ohio
Oliver J. Champeau, 4l, third assistant engineer, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Blaine H. Wilhelm, 52, oiler, Moguah, Wisconsin
Ralph G. Walton, 58, oiler, Fremont, Ohio
Joseph W. Mazes, 59, special maintenance man, Ashland, Wisconsin
Gordon F. MacLellan, 30, wiper, Clearwater, Florida

You can watch the Detroit Historical Society’s Maritime Auxiliary Group Webcast of the Lost Mariners Remembrance live on November 10, 2007 at the Dossin Museum at this link (will be active Nov. 10 at 6 p.m.):

http://www.detroithistorical.org/webcam/webcast/2007/