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Category: Technology

An 18th century engraving, showing French leaders heroically gathered around their King.

The (Sun) King’s View of the World

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The personal world atlas of Louis XIV of France, the absolutist Sun King, was a doozy: a large two-volume set of more than 120 maps now held in the Library’s Geography and Map Division. It was the first world map to show the mythical Sea of the West, a supposed inland sea in the Pacific Northwest, and was the first world map in more than a century to show California as a peninsula, not an island. The creator of the map, Jean-Baptiste Nolin, was later successfully sued for plagiarizing its greatest cartographic innovations, but Louis never let go of his copy.

A pre-teen boy claps both hands to his face as he yells into the bathroom mirror

Home Alone? Check Out The 2023 National Film Registry!

Posted by: Neely Tucker

A sizzle reel introduces the 25 influential films from the past 102 years have been selected for the 2023 Library of Congress National Film Registry, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today, inluding blockbusters such as "Fame," "Home Alone" and "Apollo 13," the popular romance "Love & Basketball," and influential feature films and documentaries such as "12 Years a Slave," "Matewan," "Alambrista!" and "Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision."

Black and white image of the first airplane leaving the sand at Kitty Hawk.

The Wright Brothers History Takes Wing at the Library

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The Wright Brothers collection in the Library is a marvel, a rare combination of significance and candor that details how Orville and Wilbur became the first to achieve powered flight and usher the world into a new age. The collection includes more than 31,000 items -- personal letters from family members, diaries, scrapbooks, engineering sketches -- and more than 300 historic glass-print negatives. You can chart the family’s entire odyssey here, from small-town Midwestern simplicity to worldwide fame, from youthful newspaper publishers to bicycle shop owners to builders of the world’s first airplanes.

Black and white photo of several men, some in military uniform, inspecting a pile of ashes

Oppenheimer: The Library’s Collection Chronicles His Life

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The stunningly complete, intellectually voracious files of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, are preserved at the Library. The files fill more than 300 boxes that occupy a line of files that would stretch, if stacked end to end, more than 120 feet. That’s not including more than 70 boxes of research files compiled over 20 years by Martin J. Sherwin for his part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” (Kai Bird shared the Pulitzer as a co-writer.) Those stretch another 27 feet. The files tell his epic life story in granular detail.

Color portrait photo of Jeffrey Yoo Warren. Photo is from chest up; he's looking to camera left, wearing glasses, a dark purple shirt and a lighter patterned purple tie.

Jeffrey Yoo Warren: Seeing Lost Enclaves

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The Library's 2023 Innovator in Residence, Jeffrey Yoo Warren, is building another doorway to the past with his project, "Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational Reconstructions of Erased Historic Neighborhoods of Color." Using 3D modeling techniques and insights from the collections, Yoo Warren is developing a virtual reconstruction of the once-bustling Chinatown district in Providence, Rhode Island. A vibrant enclave 100 years ago, the Chinatown of Providence largely has been erased from historical memory.

NLS Shares Ukrainian Books to Aid War Refugees

Posted by: Neely Tucker

This is a guest post by Claire Rojstaczer, a writer-editor in the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. It recently appeared in slightly different form in the Library’s Gazette. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a flood of Ukrainian refugees has washed over Europe. The National Library Service for the Blind …