The film’s credits say it was done by Michael Seltzer — it’s rather obviously a student production, but there is also a Dr. Michael Seltzer active in environmental protection. Are they related?
I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama’s inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.
My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.
Were you at the inauguration, on the Capitol grounds? Check Bergman’s photo, and zoom in to see whether you can see yourself in history.
A smaller version of Bergman’s GigaPan photo of the inauguration of Barack Obama; go see the zoomable version at Bergman’s site, and marvel at the detail of faces
In 1878 the creation of a practical long-burning electric light had eluded scientists for decades. With dreams of lighting up entire cites, Edison lined up financial backing, assembled a group of brilliant scientists and technicians, and applied his genius to the challenge of creating an effective and affordable electric lamp. With unflagging determination, Edison and his team tried out thousands of theories, convinced that every failure brought them one step closer to success. On January 27, 1880, Edison received the historic patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp that paved the way for the universal domestic use of electric light.
(Information excerpted from American Originals by Stacey Bredhoff; [Seattle and London; The University of Washington Press, 2001] p. 62–63.
Our Documents grew out of the National Archives list of 100 milestone documents important to American history — Edison’s patent application was voted one of the top 100. Our Documents is now a joint exercise combining the efforts of the National Archives, National History Day, and USA Freedom Corps.
Page from Edison's application for patent for an "electric lamp" - National Archives
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I was just about to tell Kevin to put away his I-pod, when I looked down and saw the graph of the function we were looking at on it. I did not know I-pods had this capability. He said that he downloaded a program with math applications and that is why he was able to do this.
Some days, I just love my job. I yelled at Kevin. “It’s kids like you that are keeping me from retiring.”
Who knew?
Of course, it takes a special teacher to be doing the job so well that the kids use their toys to learn the subject. Or does it? This is a special category of “discipline.”
How are things in your classroom today?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1930s era typewriter that accompanied Australian journalist Ron Boland through his journalistic career, a Remington Portable - State Library of South Australia (on loan from Jasin Boland)
For nearly 50 years, this typewriter was the peak of technology, for a world class journalist.
Boland’s life and timeline could make for some interesting projects or study assignments — see Boland’s campaign for topless swimming on Australia’s beaches. Topless swimming for men.
Boland’s work is probably mostly invisible to American students, but it should provide some good enrichment for students of world history.
The case for Australian journalist Ron Boland's Remington Portable typewriter, testifying to the globe trotting done by the typewriter, and Boland. State Library of South Australia
VHS can now be considered dead, really most sincerely dead.* New tapes are not being produced for almost all programs, and the last, die-hard distributor who sold pre-recorded VHS tapes announced the company will stop those sales in the next few weeks.
For projecting programs in the classrooms in your school, is your school ready to switch to DVDs? I’ve never tried a poll here before, but I hope you will answer this one, especially if you’re a teacher.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) reclines in a chair in front of typewriter in Hollywood, California, December 1942. Alfred Eriss/Pix Inc./Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
In English, it’s just one letter difference between “winds” and “wings.” An encore post, commemorating one historic event from December 17 involving both winds and wings:
Ten feet in altitude, 120 feet traveled, 12 seconds long. That was the first flight in a heavier-than-air machine achieved by Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio, at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
On the morning of December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright took turns piloting and monitoring their flying machine in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville piloted the first flight that lasted just twelve seconds. On the fourth and final flight of the day, Wilbur traveled 852 feet, remaining airborne for 57 seconds. That morning the brothers became the first people to demonstrate sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine under the complete control of the pilot.
No lost luggage, no coffee, no tea, no meal in a basket, either.
* I had difficulty getting the images to work in this post. Odd stuff kept popping up. Then, as a reader Michael Todd gently noted, I discovered I’d used a picture of Sinclair Lewis in place of Upton Sinclair.
In working to correct the problem, I discovered no photos of Upton Sinclar with his typewriter. So, here we have Upton Sinclair, without typewriter. How embarrassing.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
From the library of Life Magazine images available for sale through an agreement with Google: “Marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, 1952.” Photo by Hank Walker. [Photo no longer available at that site; this is the same image, I believe]
Five weeks away from the inauguration of Barack Obama, I wonder what Oring’s postcards could tell us? Where is she now?
Check out her website, I Wish to Say. Maybe your classroom could support a similar project from your students. What do these cards tell us about Americans? What do they tell us about our electoral process? What do they tell us about our hopes and fears? DBQ, anyone?
Two of several hundred postcards from Americans, collected by Sheryl Oring (and typed by her) to send to "the next president" -- who we now know will be Barack Obama.
November 30 is the anniversary of the birth of Mark Twain, born 1835 (a year of an appearance of Halley’s Comet). The photo was taken in the spring of 1894 in the laboratory of inventor Nikola Tesla, and originally published to illustrate an article in the legendary Century Magazine, by T.C. Martin called “Tesla’s Oscillator and Other Inventions,” in the April 1895 issue.
Mark Twain, in the laboratory of his friend, the inventor Nikola Tesla, 1894 - photo in public domain to the best of my knowledge (See Wikimedia)
Who is that to Twain’s right in the photo? Tesla?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Gotta explore the history links there . . . anything you can use in a classroom?
And a gripe about the value of video, fumbled: A resource like this should be a prime candidate for numerous short videos explaining evolution, to make up for the education you didn’t get in high school. On a scary note, if you scan for “evolution,” you get intelligent design advocate Deepak Chopra.
Get with it, Big Think. That’s embarrassing.
Go film P. Z. Myers for a couple of days. Spend some time with Kenneth Miller. Go interview Carl Zimmer about writing the books. Get Andy Ellington’s explanation for the ins and outs of chirality. With dozens of experts available, you don’t have even one?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 