The Historical Webber

Blast from the past

What I have for you this week are just a few websites that give us access to the past, an historical artifact that uncovers a mystery, and some new ways to do timelines.

World Digital Library

A great resource, hopefully, for scholars. From their website….

“The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

• Promote international and intercultural understanding;
• Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
• Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
• Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.”

cuneform digital library initiative

Related to the WDL, is the CDLI. From their website….

“The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. We estimate the number of these documents currently kept in public and private collections to exceed 500,000 exemplars, of which now nearly 225,000 have been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.”

John Harrison sea clock

And here’s a short read on an interesting historical topic. It seems the history of the longitude will need a small rewrite. What’s most amazing, though, is the skill and craftsmanship of the compass at the heart of this historical debate.  Created over 270 years ago, the original parts show no sign of wear and tear, while replacement parts broke down after 80 years. A remarkable piece of history.

The controversy surrounding this clock comes from recent work to replace broken parts from the initial attempt at restoration. It was originally believed that John Harrison created this clock all by himself. He being originally a carpenter, some scholars are a bit skeptic that he could create the intricate brass work needed to create the piece.  The most recent repairs have lead people to believe Harrison had help, and probably commissioned out certain pieces. Comprising over 2000 pieces, this sea clock is a marvel of itself, regardless of who made it.

Now it’s time for some timelines!

It was a shameless publicity post to slashdot, but the timelines got me thinking of other timelines, especially as I’m creating one of my own using MIT’s Exhibit builder, and have created one for a course. So, here are a few timeline tools mentioned in the article.

SIMILE’s Timeline: easy to use, just point it to a data file (which is the most dificult part)

TimeGlider: Looks like a flashed based version of SIMILE’s product. A few different features. Here’s one in action, Rosenberg Cold War trials.

Google’s News timeline: you can do searches on other things as well. Kind of like a modern timeline.

TimeRime: They’re in this for the money, and it doesn’t look all that great, but I didn’t spend but more than a couple seconds looking around.

The history of abandoned things

Buried in sand: The abandoned Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse

I came across the site Artificial Owl this week. Artificial Owl finds images of long forgotten, man-made objects, locates them on a map and tells a bit of the story behind the object if possible. I was initially struck by the beautiful images of buildings, ships, airplanes, and automobiles left to deteriorate and crumble back to nature. I love the imagery of nature reclaiming her elements. It’s a definite reminder that man and his creations will not last longer than mother earth.

There were a number of images of airplanes, which I was glad to see, since I like them most. One of them was particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a picture of a B-29. I love B-29s and B-17s from World War II. The reason, besides them being beautiful airplanes, is because my grandfather was a belly gunner in a B-17 during WWII. He, and an uncle, had numerous models and paintings of B-17s and other WWII fighter planes in my grandpa’s basement. I even put together a model of a B-17 myself as a kid. So, naturally, my interest was peaked. Another reason I was interested in this picture is because I remember hearing about it. The very brief history of this airplane goes like this.

B29 Kee Bird, on frozen lake near Thule, Greenland

In 1947 the Kee Bird (as it was called), was on a top secret spy mission. It made an emergency landing on a frozen lake near Thule, Greenland. The crew were all fine and rescued, but the airplane was left. In the 1990s, a few older gentlemen decided they would rescue the airplane. After lots of money and time (nearly a year), they repaired the engines and minor damage to the plane, and prepared to take off. As they taxied around the bumpy frozen lake, one of the generators used for power broke loose and started a fire in the airplane. All of the crew escaped, but the airplane was destroyed by fire. When the lake melted in the summer, the plane sank to the bottom, never to be seen again.

All of this got me thinking that this would be an awesome way to do history. There is so much information connected to this one airplane, that it could easily fill a book or documentary. I haven’t read either of them, but either would definitely be an interesting read. It would be fun to research the history of the plane, the details and reasoning behind the flight, the biographies of the crew, and all that jazz. There is so much history that can be incorporated into the story of this airplane.

B29 Kee Bird, abandoned plane, near Thule, Greenland

This could be done for all of the images on Artificial Owl, in fact for any abandoned man-made object. As I reflect on that, this is precisely what I want to do with my dissertation. I want to focus on one abandoned tunnel in Halberstadt, Germany. It was used by the Germans before, during and after WWII. It think telling the story of this tunnel can incorporate many aspects of German history around it. Time will tell on how that works out.

Well, I’ll leave you with a few more pics of possible historical tales…

Abandoned old planes at La Paz - Jfk International (El Alto) Airport - Bolivia

Shipwreck of the Galant Lady on Bimini island, Bahamas

Antonov An-8 at rest in Russian woods.

(All images courtesy Artificial Owl, used without permission – thanks!)

Weekly Tips, Tricks, Gadgets and Goodies #5

Well, so much for doing this weekly. But here’s another go at it!

For making some pretty snazy presentations, or graphical representations of data, you can use http://prezi.com/ From their site: “With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.” I imagine this being very useful for historians as a way to visualize their narrative. Move from quote to image to video to audio. You could take a book and condense it down into a 10 minute presentation, using appropriate quotes, some images, and movies if you got em. A good way to introduce a topic, I would think. Perhaps I’ll throw together something and post it back later.

Quietube – send links to youtube, but without all of the comments, ads, and other videos to clutter and distract. When you visit a youtube video, just click the quietube link you previously added to your bookmarks folder. All of the distractions vanish!

An interesting way to let others know where you are in a book, and which books you are reading. You can use it for yourself too, if you don’t have one of those old fashioned paper book marks.From their site: “bkkeepr lets you track your reading and bookmark on the go, via the web and SMS. Want to remember what you read? Want to share your dog-eared pages, and see what everyone else dog-eared? Love LibraryThing, but are always forgetting to add your books? bkkeepr helps you do it, wherever you are.” So, basically, a way to let a website keep track of what books you’re reading and where you are in the books, made simple by sending a quick SMS.

Tags: wwtgg

Finished 1989 Flash Map

I had to dig this out of the depths of my computer today, and a quick search showed that I never posted the final version. So here it is in all it’s glory. 1989 Events

Tags: history of 1989

Major Update to Multiple SVN Wordpress Installs

It’s been a while, but I thought it important to post an update to the wpupdate program I wrote to upgrade a whole mess of WordPress installs at one time. I took a cue from the program officially sponsored by WP, but think mine is much, much better.

Here are some of the features:

1. Specify a file with a list of svn WP installs, or update the current directory, or specify the directory to update on the command line
2. Use command flags or options. You can specify the program to update or switch, use tags or branches.
3. Automatically saves a copy of the svn update to a file so your terminal is not overflowing with text, but does output any conflicts that arise.
4. Automatically saves a backup copy of the wp-contents directory (just in case the update or switch screws something up).
5. Automatically saves a copy of the database, backing up only the tables used by the WP install (based off of the wp-config supplied table prefix).
6. Restores permissions to the original owner and group.

Anyhow, check out the new page devoted soley to this application: SVN WordPress Updater

License: Anyone is free to use this program however they want, as long as they give me due attribution. Also if you update or modify the program in any way, I need to know about it. That’s what free and open software is all about. Any updates should benefit us all.