The Battlefield at Gettysburg is primarily known for two things. First, over three days, July 1 through July 3, 1863 the bloodiest battle of the Civil War took place there. Second, it was the site of The Gettysburg Address, the famous speech that President Abraham Lincoln delivered four and a half months after the battle on … Continue reading Gettysburg: Civil War Monuments, Nuclear Arsenals, and Dreams of Peace
The Cartographic Branch holds numerous maps created by noted Civil War mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss. Born in Windsor, New York, Hotchkiss moved to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia prior to the Civil War. He worked as a tutor and eventually founded and opened two schools. Although not professionally trained in geography or cartography, Hotchkiss studied map-making … Continue reading Jedediah Hotchkiss: Mapmaker of the Confederacy
Take a look at the two movie screens in the photos below. Notice anything different? The screen in the color image, photographed in 1998, is much wider than that in the 1946 black-and-white image. Each screen has a different aspect ratio. Merriam-Webster defines motion picture aspect ratio as “the ratio of the width of a … Continue reading The Measure of a Screen: Motion Picture Aspect Ratios in the Archives
Most of us know about James McNeill Whistler’s famous work “Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1: The Artist’s Mother”, more commonly known as simply “Whistler’s Mother”, but my guess is that we know somewhat less about some of his other works. For instance, did you know that in the cartographic holdings of the National … Continue reading When James McNeill Whistler Worked for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey
Airbrushing was an early method of retouching and coloring photographs which can be traced back as far as the late 1800s. It is a unique process which creates a beautiful matte effect, causing images to look as though they are caught somewhere between photograph and painting. While the technology is still employed today, in the … Continue reading Spotlight: Dogs in Airbrush
"Since the Council began its work, the enormity of the year 2000 problem has become increasingly apparent. It is not just a Federal systems problem or an American problem, it is a global problem." -President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, May 5, 1998, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/18514276 Humanity's worst fears about a Y2K meltdown on January 1, 2000 never … Continue reading Y2K: The New Year’s Disaster That Wasn’t
Co-written with Amy Edwards The Cartographic Branch holds a wide variety of materials. While working with these documents for reference requests, projects, or research room requests, our staff comes across some very cool and significant documents. Today, we are featuring a few of our favorite records that we've come across this year. We hope that … Continue reading Cartographic’s Favorites of 2017
This post was written with Heidi Holmstrom. In the past year, staff in the motion picture preservation lab handled millions of feet of film. Films might come to us for inspection and repair, photochemical duplication, or digitization. To continue an annual tradition, we’ve identified a handful of films that were digitized in 2017 and found their … Continue reading Favorite Film Finds of 2017
Among the vast holdings of the National Archives, in Record Group 19: Alphabetical Series of Ship Engineering Drawings, are a type of ship plans known simply as “Booklets of General Plans”. These plans are illustrations various vessels showing elements such as the starboard and portside views of boats, schematics of weaponry, and deck layouts including … Continue reading How a Booklet of General Plans Helped Save 32 Trapped Sailors After the Attack on Pearl Harbor
This is the second installment in our series about the United States Information Agency’s Young Film Maker Bicentennial Grant Films. In the previous post, we told you about the program and featured a trippy animated short. Today we have Sharon and Thomas Hudgins’ film Homespun and Stephen Rivkin’s Winter Count, both completed in 1975. Homespun When … Continue reading Celebrating the Bicentennial: Crafting the Old Ways
