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Category: Guest Blog Posts

Photograph of the Narrow-gauge steam locomotive

Walt Whitman’s View of Railroads: To a Locomotive in Winter

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Whitman's poem "To a Locomotive in Winter;" first appeared in print February 19, 1876 in the New York Daily Tribune as part of a preview of the volume Two Rivulets (1876). Published just seven years after the union of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, Whitman's poem "To a Locomotive in Winter" considers the dynamic relationship between the railroad and nature.

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Flights of Fantasy and Fact: Man-made Wings in Literature and History subject of Dec. 3 program

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today’s guest blog post is by science fiction and fantasy author Fran Wilde, who will be visiting the Library on Dec. 3 to talk about “Flights of Fantasy and Fact: Man-made Wings in Literature and History”. Wilde is also a technology consultant and former engineering and science writer. Her short fiction has appeared in publications …

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The Arctic Voyage of HMS Investigator, 1850-54

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today’s guest post is by ST&B’s upcoming speaker Glenn “Marty” Stein, a maritime and polar historian who will be at the Library on October 29 to talk about his recent book “Discovering the North-West Passage: The Four-Year Arctic Odyssey of H.M.S. Investigator and the McClure Expedition” (McFarland & Co, 2015). Stein has researched maritime and …

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Scouting for Exoplanets with TESS, Lecture on October 8

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

The first exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, were definitively discovered in the 1990s, although the idea of other worlds like ours goes back to the ancient Greeks, and their existence had been theorized by Giordano Bruno in the 16th century and Isaac Newton in the 18th. The first direct images of exoplanets were produced in 2008. …

Print shows Thomas Jefferson, full-length portrait, facing slightly right, standing beside a table; he is lifting from the table the Declaration of Independence with his right hand and pointing to it with his left hand; there is a bust of Benjamin Franklin on the table, as well as several books. On a small table to the right is a single-disc electrostatic generator and beneath that, resting on the floor, is a globe.

Counting the Miles: Thomas Jefferson’s Quest for an Odometer

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today’s post is guest authored by Julie Miller, historian of early America in the Library’s Manuscript Division. Julie has written for Inside Adams before- see her post on “The President and the Parsnip: Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Market Chart (1801-1808).” Thomas Jefferson, who liked to count and measure everything, coveted an odometer. While in Paris as …

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Celestial Charts: Exploring and Observing Space at the Geography and Map Division

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today’s post is from Carlyn Osborn, a Library Technician in the Geography and Map Division. Carlyn has a B.A. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. With high-resolution images of Pluto and the search for …

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The “Splendid Purchase” of the Tissandier Collection of Aeronautics

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today’s post is guest authored by Michelle Cadoree Bradley, a science reference specialist in the Library’s Science, Technology, and Business Division.  She is also the author of the blog posts Marie Curie: A Gift of Radium, George Washington Carver and Nature Study and Stumbled Upon in the Stacks, or the Chimp in my Office.   It was a …