The February Object of the Month exhibit of the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections includes a letter written in 1961 by Charles Stark Draper, Director of MIT’s Instrumentation Lab (now the Draper Lab), to NASA volunteering as a crew member on the Apollo mission to the moon.
The Object of the Month is also displayed in an exhibit case across from the Archives, Room 14N-118.
Where: MIT GIS Lab, Rotch Library, 7-238
Play with virtual globes like
Google Earth &
World Wind
Explore powerful geographic information systems (GIS), such as
ArcGIS and
PCI Geomatica
Investigate tools for mapping US Census and Demographic information such as
PCensus
Geolytics
Census Tool on the MIT Geodata Repository
Come meet the GIS staff from the MIT Libraries and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education over refreshments.
Library Music: Silence Into Sound, an exciting installation of immersive sonic experiences, will offer a demonstration/workshop today from 2-5 pm in the MIT Lewis Music Library (Building 14E-109).
Students from the MIT Media Lab will explain their ideas and technologies, the Lewis Music Library staff will share some of the library’s hidden treasures, and refreshments will be served.
See this Media Lab page for more information about the installations.
Don’t miss this opportunity to make noise in the Lewis Music Library!!
Ten interactive music installations created by MIT Media Lab grad students will be installed in the Lewis Music Library beginning at 2 pm on Tuesday, January 16. Curated by Professor Tod Machover, “Library Music” explores the relationship between space, movement, touch and sound and ranges from musical stairs to tactile rainfall to a sonorous, robotic chandelier.
The Lewis Music Library is located at 14E-109. IAP hours begin on Jan.8 and are Monday-Friday 10am – 6pm; Saturday-Sunday 1 – 5pm.
January’s Object of the Month exhibit describes the “Harmonic Diagram” designed in 1824 by physicist and inventor Charles Wheatstone. The “diagram” is a mechanical device for explaining music theory. It is one of the items from a wide range of time periods, on diverse subjects, in many formats, in the holdings of MIT’s Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Browse other exhibits for a sample of the scope of the Archives’ collections. All are welcome to visit the Archives for further exploration.
MIT’s founder, William Barton Rogers, was born 202 years ago on December 7. It is appropriate, then, that the Institute Archives and Special Collections, in its December Object of the Month exhibit, announces a grant from the Fred J. Brotherton Charitible Foundation to perform conservation work on one hundred documents from the Rogers papers, one of MIT’s most important historical collections. The grant includes funds to convert the guide to the Rogers papers to EAD (Encoded Archival Description), an encoding standard for electronic archival finding aids, to make information about the collection available on the World Wide Web.
 Shown here is a portion of a drawing of the sewing machine’s parts. |
For November the Institute Archives and Special Collections features as its Object of the Month patent records of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold, a law firm that represented many of the nineteenth century’s most illustrious inventors, among them Samuel F. B. Morse (regarding unlicensed telegraph lines), Charles Goodyear (regarding patent extension of a rubber manufacturing process), and Elias Howe, Jr. (regarding patent extension for the sewing machine). Several items concerning Howe’s sewing machine are included in the exhibit. |
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The October Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections presents the MIT Community Players’ 1958 Acting Workshop Production of The Madwoman of Chaillot, by Jean Gireaudoux.Each month the Archives exhibits an example from its collections to illustrate their richness and variety. A poster is displayed in the exhibit case opposite Room 14N-118 (and the following month in the Libraries’ kiosk at the Stata Center), and a version is created for the Web. We invite you to browse the online exhibits for a taste of our collections, then come to the Archives and explore them further. |
Demographics in Massachusetts, land use in New York City, the rapid population expansion in China, reconstructing sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean over the last 10,000 years, collection and representation of GIS data to aid household water treatment and safe storage technology implementation in the Northern Region of Ghana: this exhibit displays some of the different projects created in the MIT GIS Lab. Geographic Information Systems enable one to combine layers of geographic information in a dynamic digital environment for analyzing and visualizing information. To learn more about GIS at MIT visit the MIT GIS Lab website or come visit us in Rotch Library (7-238).
The subject of the September Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections is the Physical Science Study Committee, a group of university physics professors and high school physics teachers, led by MIT’s Jerrold Zacharias and Francis Friedman, who created new curricula for the teaching of introductory courses in physics.
Further information about the Physical Science Study Committee can be found in the Physical Science Study Committee Oral History Collection (MC 602), the Jerrold Zacharias Papers (MC 31), the Educational Services Incorporated Records (MC 79), the Physical Science Study Committee Records (MC 626), and other sources in the Institute Archives and Special Collections, 14N-118.
The Institute Archives and Special Collections August Object of the Month is President Theodore Roosevelt’s letter appointing John Ripley Freeman (MIT 1876) one of six “engineers of high standing” to inspect and report on construction of the Panama Canal.
The Archives houses a rich collection of Freeman’s papers, including many photographs of the Panama Canal project. Among his many undertakings was a detailed presentation of designs for MIT’s Cambridge campus, “Study No. 7.”
Also in the Archives’ collections are the papers of Allen Hazen, another of the engineers appointed by President Roosevelt. Hazen, who attended MIT in 1888, was the subject of an earlier exhibit.
Pictured here: the six engineers. Freeman and Hazen, 1st row, 1st & 2nd from left
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The July Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections is about the use of the squid in nerve cell research led by Francis O. Schmitt, a pioneer in modern biological research and the study of the brain, and founder of the Neurosciences Research Program. Dr. Schmitt came to MIT as professor of biology in 1941. He was head of the Department of Biology from 1942 to 1955, when he was appointed Institute Professor. He was Institute Professor Emeritus at the time of his death in 1995.Browse other exhibits for a sample of the collections in the Institute Archives and Special Collections that document the history of MIT and the accomplishments of its faculty and staff. |
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The Institute Archives and Special Collections has chosen as its May Object of the Month exhibit “A Whimsical Map of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1944-5,” a humorous look at life at the Institute, drawn by Professor Frederick Morris, a faculty member in the Department of Geology from 1927 to 1962.Browse other exhibits for a taste of the serious as well as the light side of MIT documented in the collections in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. |
Photos by architecture graduate student Nadya Nilina her brother Nilin, a professional photographer/filmmaker in Moscow. Nilina’s work concentrates on housing developments while her brother has photographed demolitions of Soviet architecture and the disappearance of certain lifestyles such as social clubs. Rotch Library (Rm 7-238). Made possible with support from the MIT Council for the Arts and MISTI MIT-Germany.
In observance of the anniversary of the granting of MIT’s charter on April 10, 1861, the Institute Archives and Special Collections has chosen to focus this month’s Object of the Month exhibit on MIT’s Centennial celebration. Some of the many letters and telegrams received by the Institute on the occasion of its 100th birthday are displayed on a poster opposite 14N-118 and on the Archives’ web site. The warmth and enthusiasm of the greetings celebrate the success of William Barton Rogers’s plan for a new kind of institution and illustrate MIT’s influence on the international scientific and educational communities.
Sacred Transformations from Africa to Asia:
A photographic exploration of the power of collective prayer in transforming the public realm.
Featured artist: Ifeoma N. Ebo
Opening Reception at Rotch Library:
Friday March 10, 2006 5-7 pm
Funded (in part) by a Director’s Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT.
In the fall of 1960 MIT mounted an exhibition of forty works by Andrew Wyeth in the Hayden Gallery. March’s Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections displays a letter from Wyeth to MIT’s first lady, Catherine Stratton, setting forth his reasons for declining an invitation to an opening cocktail party. The letter is from the Catherine Nelson Stratton Papers, which include her “Social Book,” records of entertainment at the President’s House while Julius Stratton was president of MIT.
Learn more about the Archives’ collections and MIT’s history by browsing previous exhibits.
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The subject of the February Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections is “Harbor View: Radar Training at MIT, 1941-1945,” one of the programs sponsored by the U.S. government at MIT during World War II.
Browse previous exhibits for a sample of the scope of the collections in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. |
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