Published: London, 1921 During the Industrial Revolution, the physical well-being of workers was of little concern to the typical employer. Small children were regularly shoved up chimneys, and were also expected to pick out broken threads from massive machines that were still running. In the 1910s and 20s, female workers at the United States Radium Corporation ingested radioactive materials as they licked the tips of their radium-laden brushes in an effort to paint glow-in-the-dark numbers precisely as their employers demanded. Eventually, though, the health of workers would come to be seen as a worthy consideration for industry. Edgar Collis and […]

Published: New York, 1920 Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle series was a consistent best-seller from the time of its initial publication through the mid-20th century. In the rankings of children’s literature, its popularity was for many years topped only by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Though its iconic status had solidified, Doctor Dolittle faded slowly from the cultural radar, enough so that today most people have little knowledge of the original story. (The Eddie Murphy film version from a decade ago has little in common with the book.) For those unfamiliar with the book, here’s a quick primer (sorry, spoiler alert): English […]

Published: Boston, ca. 1919 Robert P. Bellows and Ralph W. Gray, the architects behind this grand proposal, submitted their plans to the Metropolitan Improvements Commission of Massachusetts in 1911. While their modifications no doubt addressed the structural concerns with the existing bridge, the proposal really sings in its aesthetic aspirations (not least of which lies in a war memorial included in the design). To replace the existing structure of iron and steel, Bellows and Gray envisioned “a permanent and handsome structure of stone and concrete” – something reminiscent, perhaps, of the Old World. In these plans, they point to bridges […]

Published: Cambridge, 1918 We’ve all seen yearbooks, and we know what to expect from them. They follow a formula that doesn’t vary much from year to year: there’s usually a dedication, then a list of faculty; formal portraits of the senior class; maybe some candid shots; humorous bits about tough professors or difficult courses; sections on clubs, activities, and athletics. It’s boilerplate, and it can seem as though the only thing that actually changes from year to year is the photos. And sure enough, the MIT yearbook published in 1918 (by and for the class of 1919) covers the usual […]

Published: London, 1917 The tank. The U-boat. The fighter plane. The machine gun. The flamethrower. Poison gas.  These military technologies were all developed or enhanced during World War I, the first time science, technology, and mass production played a critical role in the course of a war. These technologies also played a critical role in the war’s unprecedented carnage. Defined by destructiveness, scale, and technical innovation, World War I is seen as a watershed, the advent of the modern age. With our knowledge of the part “war inventions” played in the First World War’s horrors, today it seems a bit […]

Published: New York and London, 1916 Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was among America’s foremost novelists during the first third of the 20th century, and several of her books continue to be both widely read and highly esteemed. Among them are The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize). Wharton spent the last three decades of her life in France. During World War I, horrified by the devastation being visited on civilian populations, she worked tirelessly on behalf of orphans and refugees. She visited the front lines, […]

Published: New York and London, 1915 These days we recognize advertising as big business: thirty-second Superbowl spots sell for eye-popping amounts each year. And it’s hard to deny that advertising is effective: just glimpsing the logo of a favorite junk food brand can create a hankering that’s positively Pavlovian. There’s a science behind successful advertisements, which the author of today’s book, Earnest Elmo Calkins (1868-1964), attempts to explain. As he states in the foreword, it is through “scientific management, the painstaking collection of statistics and their intelligent arrangement, and the exercise of … common-sense” that we reduce the “element of […]

Published: London, 1914 The automobile, the machine that so profoundly shapes our culture, economy, politics, and environment, appeared in its earliest guise in France in 1760 as an artillery-hauling, steam-powered three-wheeler.  Invented by army officer Nicholas Cugnot, the ungainly tricycle’s career was cut short by a crash. In the 19th century, a variety of vehicles powered by both steam and electricity proliferated. The gasoline-burning internal combustion engine, the automotive technology that (as we all know) would ultimately prevail over steam and electricity, was invented independently by Germans Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler in the 1880s. By the end of the […]

Published: New York, 1913 Books made up of scale drawings of architectural details aren’t unusual, and MIT owns many such publications. This particular title is notable first because it’s a fine example of the genre. It also happens to contain details from some historic houses that are right in Cambridge, not far from MIT. But the book’s creators are noteworthy as well. Lois Lilley Howe was born in Cambridge and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She then studied architecture at MIT (class of 1906), after which she went on to open the first architectural […]

Published: Washington, 1912 Desirous for a book that would finally standardize colors and their names, Robert Ridgway, an ornithologist, took upon himself the mammoth task of producing just such a volume – covering more than a thousand colors.  The enduring value of his labor is evidenced by the naturalists and artists who, a century later, continue to use it as a standard reference.  Much of this value must certainly lie in the work’s impressive display of color itself: distributed among 53 plates is a true sample for every one of the 1,115 colors Ridgway has named. The challenge of producing […]