How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs, “America’s National Toy” (1916)

in Architecture, History | April 21st, 2021

How many archi­tec­tur­al careers have been kin­dled by Lin­coln Logs? Since their inven­tion in the mid-1910s, these decep­tive­ly sim­ple wood­en build­ing blocks have enter­tained gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren, whichev­er pro­fes­sion they entered upon grow­ing up. I myself have fond mem­o­ries of play­ing with Lin­coln Logs, which, with about 70 years of his­to­ry already behind them, were a ven­er­a­ble play­time insti­tu­tion, not that I knew it at the time. I cer­tain­ly had no idea that they’d been invent­ed by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright — nor, indeed, did I have any idea who Frank Lloyd Wright was. I just knew, as many kids did before me and many do still today, that they were fun to stack up into cab­ins, or at least cab­in-like shapes.


This endur­ing toy’s full ori­gin sto­ry is told in the Decades TV video above. When Wright designed his own fam­i­ly home in Oak Park, Illi­nois, he includ­ed a cus­tom play­room for his six chil­dren. Its stock of inno­v­a­tive toys includ­ed “geo­met­ric build­ing blocks devel­oped by Friedrich Froebel, the Ger­man edu­ca­tor who came up with the con­cept of kinder­garten.”

The spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion for these blocks exhib­it­ed by Wright’s sec­ond son John Lloyd Wright hint­ed at a con­flict of inter­ests to come: though John “began to feel that spir­it of being an archi­tect” in the play­room, says toy his­to­ri­an Steven Som­mers, “there was always a ten­sion between his father, who was an archi­tect, and his [own] love for build­ing toys that he’d begun to learn in that Froebel sys­tem of ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion.” The two inter­sect­ed when Wright fils assist­ed Wright père on one of the lat­ter’s most famous works, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo.

John Lloyd Wright took note of the inter­lock­ing tim­ber beams used to make the struc­ture “earth­quake-proof” — a design lat­er test­ed by 1923’s Great Kan­to Earth­quake, which left most of the city destroyed but the Impe­r­i­al Hotel stand­ing. By that time, the younger Wright had already act­ed on his inspi­ra­tion to invent the sim­i­lar­ly inter­lock­ing Lin­coln Logs (see patent draw­ing above), which quick­ly proved a hit on the mar­ket. Named after the six­teenth pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and the log cab­in in which he’d grown up, the prod­uct tapped into Amer­i­can fron­tier nos­tal­gia even at its debut. In the cen­tu­ry since, Lin­coln Logs have sur­vived wartime mate­r­i­al rationing, the rise and fall of count­less toy trends, the buy­ing and sell­ing of par­ent com­pa­nies, a brief and unap­peal­ing late-60s attempt to make them out of plas­tic, and even the Impe­r­i­al Hotel itself.  For “Amer­i­ca’s nation­al toy,” struc­tur­al endurance and cul­tur­al endurance have gone togeth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Beautiful, Innovative & Sometimes Dark World of Animated Soviet Propaganda (1925–1984)

in Animation, Film, History, Politics | April 20th, 2021

Grow­ing up, we assem­bled our world­view from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sources: par­ents, sib­lings, class­mates. But for most of us, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er we passed our for­ma­tive years, noth­ing shaped our ear­ly per­cep­tions of life as vivid­ly, and as thor­ough­ly, as car­toons — and this is just as Lenin knew it would be. “With the estab­lish­ment of the Sovi­et Union in 1922,” writes New York Times film crit­ic Dave Kehr, “Lenin pro­claimed the cin­e­ma the most impor­tant of all the arts, pre­sum­ably for its abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the oppressed and wide­ly illit­er­ate mass­es.”

Lenin cer­tain­ly did­n’t exclude ani­ma­tion, which assumed its role in the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da machine right away: Sovi­et Toys, the first U.S.S.R.-made car­toon, pre­miered just two years lat­er. It was direct­ed by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, the inno­v­a­tive film­mak­er best known for 1929’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, a thrilling artic­u­la­tion of the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary. Ver­tov stands as per­haps the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of Sovi­et cin­e­ma’s ear­ly years, in which tight polit­i­cal con­fines nev­er­the­less per­mit­ted a free­dom of  artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion lim­it­ed only by the film­mak­er’s skill and imag­i­na­tion.

This changed with the times: the 1940s saw the ele­va­tion of skilled but West-imi­ta­tive ani­ma­tors like Ivan Ivanov-Vano, whom Kehr calls the “Sovi­et Dis­ney.” That label is suit­able enough, since an Ivanov-Vano short like Some­one Else’s Voice from 1949 “could eas­i­ly pass for a Dis­ney ‘Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny,’ ” if not for its un-Dis­ney­like “threat­en­ing under­tone.” (Not that Dis­ney could­n’t get dark­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic them­selves.)

With its mag­pie who “returns from a flight abroad and dares to war­ble some of the jazz music she has heard on her trav­els” only to have “the hearty peas­ant birds of the for­est swoop down and rip her feath­ers out,” Some­one Else’s Voice tells a more alle­gor­i­cal sto­ry than those in most of the shorts gath­ered in this Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da ani­ma­tion playlist.

The playlist’s selec­tions come from the col­lec­tion Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da: From the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion to Per­e­stroi­ka; “work­ers are strong-chinned, noble, and gener­ic,” writes the A.V. Club’s Tasha Robin­son. “Cap­i­tal­ists are fat, pig­gish cig­ar-chom­pers, and for­eign­ers are ugly car­i­ca­tures sim­i­lar to those seen in Amer­i­can World War II pro­pa­gan­da.” With their strong “anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Ger­man, anti-British, anti-Japan­ese, anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, anti-Impe­ri­al­ist, and pro-Com­mu­nist slant,” as Kehr puts it, they would require an impres­sion­able audi­ence indeed to do any con­vinc­ing out­side Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry. But they send an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to view­ers back in the U.S.S.R.: you don’t know how lucky you are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Digital Lomax Archive Provides Free Access to the Pioneering Recordings of John & Alan Lomax, Compiled Across 7 Decades

in History, Music | April 19th, 2021

The work of eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist father and son team John and Alan Lomax was intend­ed to pre­serve the local musi­cal cul­tures of the Unit­ed States and regions around the world against an encroach­ing mass media threat­en­ing to erase them. But the thou­sands of Lomax record­ings, films, books, arti­cles, and oth­er doc­u­ments not only con­served region­al music; they also helped trans­form mass cul­ture by intro­duc­ing local forms that have since become part of a glob­al musi­cal gram­mar. Lomax and his son Alan — “the man who record­ed the world,” as biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed called him — pop­u­lar­ized folk music thir­ty years before Dylan record­ed his first album and were among the first white lis­ten­ers to rec­og­nize the genius of Robert John­son.

Alan Lomax began trav­el­ing the coun­try with his father in 1933. In 1939, “while doing grad­u­ate work in anthro­pol­o­gy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty,” notes a biog­ra­phy at Lomax’s Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tur­al Equi­ty, “he pro­duced the first of sev­er­al radio series for CBS. Amer­i­can Folk Songs, Well­springs of Music, and the prime-time series, Back Where I Come From, exposed nation­al audi­ences to region­al Amer­i­can music and such home­grown tal­ents as Woody Guthrie, Lead Bel­ly, Aunt Mol­ly Jack­son, Josh White, the Gold­en Gate Quar­tet, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger,” who described Lomax as “more respon­si­ble than any oth­er per­son for the twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry folk song revival.”

Alan Lomax brought blues, fla­men­co, calyp­so, and South­ern bal­lad singing, “all still rel­a­tive­ly unknown gen­res,” to New York in the 1940s with con­cert series like The Mid­night Spe­cial at Town Hall. “The main point of my activ­i­ty,” he once said, “was… to put sound tech­nol­o­gy at the dis­pos­al of The Folk, to bring chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to all sorts of artists and areas.” A per­former him­self, he coined the term “cul­tur­al equi­ty” to describe this work, a means of advo­cat­ing for musi­cal cul­tures left behind by com­mer­cial­iza­tion, the “cul­tur­al gray-out,” as he called it. From his first field record­ings in 1933 to his 1993 Land Where the Blues Began, which earned a Nation­al Book Crit­ics Award, he stayed true to that mis­sion.

Lomax and his father’s work has been “com­piled across sev­en decades” by the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive, which pro­vides free and open access to “the entire­ty of Alan’s pho­tographs and open-reel tape record­ings — made between 1946 and 1991… as well as tran­scrip­tions of his 1940s radio pro­grams, and a selec­tion of clips from his film and video-work of the 1970s and 1980s.” This huge, search­able library sup­ple­ments already mas­sive Lomax col­lec­tions online, such as that housed at the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tur­al Equi­ty, and includes “the entire 70 hours of their Ken­tucky record­ings and the 39 hours of Mis­sis­sip­pi record­ings,” notes a press release. “This lat­ter mate­r­i­al includes the first record­ings of Mud­dy Waters, Hon­ey­boy Edwards, and Sid Hemphill.”

Fur­ther­more, the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive fea­tures online exhibits that “allow for thought­ful, con­text-rich explo­rations into spe­cif­ic aspects of the col­lec­tion.” The first pre­sen­ta­tion, “Trou­ble Won’t Last Always,” com­piles songs from a series launched dur­ing the pan­dem­ic that “speak to themes of lone­li­ness, iso­la­tion, opti­mism, endurance, tran­scen­dence..,” all uni­ver­sal human expe­ri­ences. Lomax believed, his daugh­ter Anna Lomax Wood said, “that all cul­tures should be looked at on an even play­ing field. Not that they’re all alike. But that they should be giv­en the same dig­ni­ty.” His own dig­ni­fied approach helped ensure that we could hear and learn from local his­tor­i­cal voic­es from around the world even as eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal inequities sought to silence them for good. Enter the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

New, Inter­ac­tive Web Site Puts Online Thou­sands of Inter­na­tion­al Folk Songs Record­ed by the Great Folk­lorist Alan Lomax

Stream 35 Hours of Clas­sic Blues, Folk, & Blue­grass Record­ings from Smith­son­ian Folk­ways: 837 Tracks Fea­tur­ing Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Exquisite Watercolors of Demons, Magic & Signs: Behold the Compendium Of Demonology and Magic from 1775

in Books, History, Religion | April 16th, 2021

Noli me tan­gere, says the title page of the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic: “Do not touch me.” For the book’s tar­get audi­ence, one sus­pects, this was more entice­ment than warn­ing. Writ­ten in Latin (its full title is Com­pendi­um raris­si­mum totius Artis Mag­i­cae sis­tem­a­ti­sa­tae per cele­ber­ri­mos Artis hujus Mag­istros) and Ger­man, the book pur­ports to come from the year 1057. In fact it’s been dat­ed as more than 700 years younger, though to most 21st-cen­tu­ry behold­ers a book from around 1775 car­ries enough his­tor­i­cal weight to be intrigu­ing — espe­cial­ly if, as the Pub­lic Domain Review puts it, it depicts “a var­ied bes­tiary of grotesque demon­ic crea­tures.”

The spec­i­mens cat­a­logued in the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic are “up to all sorts of appro­pri­ate­ly demon­ic activ­i­ties, such as chew­ing down on sev­ered legs, spit­ting fire and snakes from gen­i­talia, and parad­ing around decap­i­tat­ed heads on sticks.”

Grotesque­ly com­bin­ing fea­tures of man and beast, these hideous chimeras are ren­dered in “more than thir­ty exquis­ite water­col­ors” that still look vivid today. In fact, with their punk­ish cos­tumes, insou­ciant expres­sions, and often inde­cent­ly exposed nether regions, these demons look ready and will­ing to cause a scan­dal even in our jad­ed time.

Near­ly two and a half cen­turies ago, we might fair­ly assume, a greater pro­por­tion of the pub­lic believed in the exis­tence of demons — if not these spe­cif­ic mon­strosi­ties, then at least the con­cept of the demon­ic in gen­er­al. But we’re sure­ly lying to our­selves if we believed that nobody in the 16th cen­tu­ry had a sense of humor about it. Even the work of this book’s unknown illus­tra­tor evi­dences, beyond for­mi­da­ble artis­tic skill and wild imag­i­na­tion, a cer­tain comedic instinct, seri­ous busi­ness though demon­ic inten­tions toward human­i­ty may be.

With its less humor­ous con­tent includ­ing exe­cu­tion scenes and instruc­tions for the pro­ce­dures of witch­craft from div­ina­tion to necro­man­cy, the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic belongs to a deep­er tra­di­tion of books that elab­o­rate­ly cat­a­log and depict the vari­eties of super­nat­ur­al evil. (A much old­er exam­ple is the Codex Gigas, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a “Dev­il’s Bible” that also hap­pens to be the largest medieval man­u­script in the word.)

You can behold more of these delight­ful­ly hell­ish illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review and even down­load the whole book free from the Well­come Col­lec­tion. (See a PDF of the entire book here.) And no mat­ter how close­ly you scru­ti­nize your dig­i­tal copy, you won’t run the risk of touch­ing it.

The Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic is one of the many texts fea­tured in The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Man­u­scripts and Oth­er Lit­er­ary Curiosi­ties from His­to­ry, a new book fea­tured on our site ear­li­er this week.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Help a Library Tran­scribe Mag­i­cal Man­u­scripts & Recov­er the Charms, Potions & Witch­craft That Flour­ished in Ear­ly Mod­ern Europe and Amer­i­ca

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Listen to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” Played on a 1914 Fairground Organ

in History, Music, Technology | April 16th, 2021

To tru­ly appre­ci­ate the spec­ta­cle of ABBA’s “Danc­ing Queen” played on a 1914 Hooghuys fair­ground organ, we rec­om­mend you read Angus Harrison’s 2016 VICE essay, “Why Abba’s ‘Danc­ing Queen’ Is the Sad­dest Record Ever Made”:

Make no mis­take. This song is about the danc­ing queen, but it is most def­i­nite­ly not sung by her. Here­in lies the tragedy. Our nar­ra­tor has real­ized that she is no longer the Danc­ing Queen. She is no longer young, no longer sweet, no longer 17. Now, instead, she watch­es from the bar; the dance­floor a mael­strom of lost faith, mem­o­ries, and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. She was once 17, and as such was total­ly obliv­i­ous that the moment would ever end.

Could such sen­ti­ments apply to the above instru­ment, whose carved fig­urines, ornate scroll­work, and dis­tinc­tive sound def­i­nite­ly sug­gest that how­ev­er lov­ing­ly it’s been main­tained, its prime is long past.

This 105-year-old organ was already 62 when “Danc­ing Queen” was released at the height of the dis­co craze in 1976.

The tune quick­ly soared to the top of the charts world­wide, as fans raced to the record store to pick up a 45, or the full album, Arrival, on vinyl, cas­sette, or 8‑track.

But pro­duc­tion of punched, card­board scrolls such as the ones these metic­u­lous­ly hand built instru­ments — no two alike! — use had long since ceased.

A site ded­i­cat­ed to Hooghuys organs ties their decline to the end of WWI, cit­ing the neces­si­ty of cheap­er post-war pro­duc­tion. When the founder of the fam­i­ly busi­ness died, short­ly there­after, the firm ceased to exist.

Flash for­ward to this mil­len­ni­um, when a mechan­i­cal music afi­ciona­do named Alex­ey Rom used MIDI — Musi­cal Instru­ment Dig­i­tal Inter­face — to give the aged organ new life, pro­gram­ming his own arrange­ment, then using an auto­mat­ic punch to cre­ate card­board cards the instru­ment was capa­ble of read­ing.

His first such tri­umph came when he equipped a sim­i­lar organ to cov­er Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” “Danc­ing Queen,” and many oth­er pop­u­lar favorites that didn’t exist in the organs’ hey­day fol­lowed. (We’re pret­ty par­tial to “Mack the Knife” played on an 81-key Marenghi organ from 1905…)

Below Rom shares a tiny peek into his process.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1910 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

When ABBA Wrote Music for the Cold War-Themed Musi­cal, Chess: “One of the Best Rock Scores Ever Pro­duced for the The­atre” (1984)

Bach’s Most Famous Organ Piece Played on Wine Glass­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Experience Footage of Roaring 1920s Berlin, Restored & Colorized with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History | April 15th, 2021

Offered the chance to trav­el back in time to any city in any peri­od, sure­ly more than a few would choose Berlin in the 1920s. Ide­al­ly it would be Berlin in the mid-1920s: after much of the social and eco­nom­ic dam­age of the Great War had been repaired, but before the Great Depres­sion reached Ger­many at the end of the decade, doing its part to enable the rise of Hitler. The clos­est expe­ri­ence to step­ping in that time machine yet devel­oped is the video above, a series of clips from Walther Ruttman­n’s 1927 doc­u­men­tary Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here in Open Cul­ture — but smoothed out, scaled up, and col­orized with the aid of appli­ca­tions pow­ered by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Describ­ing it as “the real Baby­lon Berlin of the 1920s” por­trayed “from dawn until dusk in three min­utes,” the video’s poster empha­sizes that the Berlin of the Weimar Repub­lic (the Ger­man state from 1918 to 1933) “was a mul­ti-cul­tur­al city” — which it is again today, though a lit­tle less than a cen­tu­ry ago it was one “teem­ing with flap­pers, bobbed hair, cloche hats, and the danc­ing girls of Berlin’s infa­mous cabaret scene.”

Dur­ing these Weimar “Gold­en Years,” Berlin expe­ri­enced a “cul­tur­al explo­sion,” the vivid­ness of which is under­scored by the myr­i­ad enhance­ments per­formed on Ruttman­n’s already strik­ing orig­i­nal footage. These include the use of DeNoise, the inter­po­la­tion of motion “using a deep learn­ing open source pro­gram Dain-App,” and the addi­tion of col­or with Deold­ify.

You may rec­og­nize the name of that last appli­ca­tion, which was used a cou­ple of years ago to cre­ate a “remixed” ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, now nowhere to be found on the inter­net. Oth­er, more benign uses of DeOld­ify include the col­oriza­tion of dance sequences from black-and-white films like Stormy Weath­er and Hel­lza­pop­pin’, as well as of an 1896 snow­ball fight orig­i­nal­ly cap­tured by the Lumière Broth­ers. Ruttman­n’s work, and that of oth­er cre­ators of “city sym­phonies” in the 1920s, builds on that of those cin­e­ma pio­neers for whom real life was the nat­ur­al sub­ject, cap­tur­ing live­li­er urban envi­ron­ments with dynam­ic and inno­v­a­tive shoot­ing and edit­ing tech­niques to match. If you enjoy your three min­utes in the DeOld­ified ver­sion of his Berlin, why not spent a lit­tle more of your day in sim­i­lar­ly deep-learn­ing-enhanced Paris, New York, and Havana of the past as well?

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

Watch 1920s “City Sym­phonies” Star­ring the Great Cities of the World: From New York to Berlin to São Paulo

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Harvard’s Digital Giza Project Lets You Access the Largest Online Archive on the Egyptian Pyramids (Including a 3D Giza Tour)

in Harvard, History, K-12, Libraries | April 13th, 2021

Noth­ing excites the imag­i­na­tion of young his­to­ry-and-sci­ence-mind­ed kids like the Egypt­ian pyra­mids, which is maybe why so many peo­ple grow up into ama­teur Egyp­tol­o­gists with very strong opin­ions about the pyra­mids. For such peo­ple, access to the high­est qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion seems crit­i­cal for their online debates. For pro­fes­sion­al aca­d­e­mics and seri­ous stu­dents of ancient Egypt such access is crit­i­cal to doing their work prop­er­ly. All lovers and stu­dents of ancient Egypt will find what they need, freely avail­able, at Har­vard University’s Dig­i­tal Giza Project.

“Chil­dren and spe­cial­ized schol­ars alike may study the mate­r­i­al cul­ture of this ancient civ­i­liza­tion from afar,” Harvard’s Meta­l­ab writes, “often with greater access than could be achieved in per­son.” The project opened at Har­vard in 2011 after spend­ing its first eleven years at the Muse­um of Fine Arts, Boston with the goal of “dig­i­tiz­ing and post­ing for free online all of the archae­o­log­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion from the Har­vard University—Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts Expe­di­tion to Giza, Egypt (about 1904–1947),” notes the about page.

The Dig­i­tal Giza Project was born from a need to cen­tral­ize research and arti­facts that have been scat­tered all over the globe. “Doc­u­ments and images are held in far­away archives,” the Har­vard Gazette points out, “arti­facts and oth­er relics of ancient Egypt have been dis­persed, stolen, or destroyed, and tombs and mon­u­ments have been dis­man­tled, weath­er-worn, or locked away behind pas­sages filled in when an exca­va­tion clos­es.” Oth­er obsta­cles to research include the expense of trav­el and, more recent­ly, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of vis­it­ing far-off sites.

Expand­ing far beyond the scope of the orig­i­nal expe­di­tions, the project has part­nered with “many oth­er insti­tu­tions around the world with Giza-relat­ed col­lec­tions” to com­pile its search­able library of down­load­able PDF books and jour­nal arti­cles. Kids, adult enthu­si­asts, and spe­cial­ists will all appre­ci­ate Giza 3D, a recon­struc­tion with guid­ed tours of all the major arche­o­log­i­cal sites at the pyra­mids, from tombs to tem­ples to the Great Sphinx, as well as links to images and arche­o­log­i­cal details about each of the var­i­ous finds with­in.

For a pre­view of the mul­ti­me­dia expe­ri­ence on offer at the Dig­i­tal Giza Project, see the videos here from project’s YouTube chan­nel. Each short video pro­vides a wealth of infor­ma­tion; young learn­ers and those just get­ting start­ed in their Egyp­tol­ogy stud­ies can find lessons, glos­saries, an overview of the peo­ple and places of Giza, and more at the Giza @ School page. What­ev­er your age, occu­pa­tion, or lev­el of com­mit­ment, if you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the pyra­mids at Giza, you need to book­mark Dig­i­tal Giza. Start here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Ingenious Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci Recreated with 3D Animation

in History, Technology | April 12th, 2021

We revere Leonar­do da Vin­ci for his indus­try, but even more so for his imag­i­na­tion. Most of us would envi­sion our­selves, had we lived in the late 15th or ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, being per­fect­ly con­tent with hav­ing paint­ed the Mona Lisa. But Leonar­do had designs on a host of oth­er domains as well, most of them not strict­ly artis­tic. His ven­tures into sci­ence and engi­neer­ing made him the arche­typ­al poly­math “Renais­sance man,” but he was also a man before his time: most of the inven­tions he came up with and doc­u­ment­ed in his writ­ings could­n’t have been built when he lived.

Over the past six cen­turies, how­ev­er tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments have turned more and more of Leonar­do’s machines pos­si­ble — or at least con­ceiv­able to the non-vision­ary. Take, for instance, the bridge only put suc­cess­ful­ly to the test when MIT researchers 3D-print­ed it in 2019.

Alas, how­ev­er advanced our mate­ri­als in the 21st cen­tu­ry, they have yet to prove equal to the ornithopter, a rig meant to bestow upon man the pow­er of flight by giv­ing him a pair of bird­like wings. But you can see it in action in the short video at the top of this post, the first in a series called “Da Vin­ci Reborn.”

Pro­duced by the 3D soft­ware-mak­er Das­sault Sys­tèmes, these videos reveal the inner work­ings of Leonar­do’s inven­tions, built and unbuilt. Apart from his fan­ci­ful ornithopter, they real­is­ti­cal­ly ren­der his odome­ter, self-cen­ter­ing drill, aer­i­al screw, and self-sup­port­ing bridge (which, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can actu­al­ly build your­self). It’s one thing to see these machines dia­grammed and hear them explained, but quite anoth­er to wit­ness them put into com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed action.

Even as these videos help us under­stand how Leonar­do’s inge­nious cre­ations worked, they remind us that Leonar­do him­self had to invent them with­out the ben­e­fit of com­put­er-aid­ed design — with lit­tle more, in fact, than pen, paper, and the Renais­sance-era tools at hand. For him, when the self-cen­ter­ing drill bored straight through a log or the aer­i­al screw took to the air, they did so only in his imag­i­na­tion. It was only there that he could test, refine, and reassem­ble the mech­a­nisms that togeth­er con­sti­tut­ed many of the inven­tions that still impress us today.

It must be some­thing like step­ping into Leonar­do’s mind, then, to expe­ri­ence the Das­sault-designed Da Vin­ci Cas­tle play­ground, which vir­tu­al­ly places these inven­tions and oth­ers on the lawn in front of the Château du Clos Lucé. It was there that the great Renais­sance man came to the end of his life in 1619, hav­ing entered the ser­vice of King Fran­cis I’s ser­vice after the French monarch recap­tured Milan four years ear­li­er. Leonar­do him­self would sure­ly appre­ci­ate this geo­graph­i­cal touch — and even more so, the fact that human­i­ty is still bring­ing such high tech­nol­o­gy to bear on the project of under­stand­ing his work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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