CGHS Library

Happy Kansas Day!

We have a LOT of Kansas books in the library!

US National Archives Channel on Giphy

First of all, did you know you can make a channel on Giphy, and upload your own gifs to it?

Second, did you realize the US National Archives has a Giphy channel?

Primary Source Sets from the Digital Public Library of America

Fashion Passes. Style Remains. (Coco Chanel)

PhotoScan by Google Photos

KansasMemory.org

The Biodiversity Heritage Library of the Smithsonian Has a Great Flickr Stream

Kansas Day

To celebrate Kansas Day, I scanned some photos from Our Town on the Plains: J. J. Pennell's Photographs of Junction City, Kansas, 1893-1922. (978.129 Shortridge)

Leo Loeb's decorated Cadillac, 1905. Loeb's new automobile, a ten-horsepower model, cost $950, and made him a center of attention. Grace Hubbert sits next to him. Elizabeth Loeb is one of the other passengers.

Miss Crook (left) and Miss Mickey at the Wareham-Dewey switchboard, 1905. Operating from a room above Shaw's general mercantile store at 119 West Seventh Street, these young women mechanically connected Junction City residents with one another and the world. When a person initiating a call picked up his or her phone, one of the disks on the switchboard would drop down (they are called "drops"). The operator then would plug in one end of a drop cord, flip a switch, and ask the caller what number was wanted. Next, she would take the other end of her cord and plug it into the number requested. Finally, she would ring the person on that line with a ring switch (the knobs closest to the operators). A typical farm telephone number 12-F-21, meant a combination of two long rings and one short one on farm line twelve.

Kansas Day Eve

To celebrate Kansas Day, I scanned some photos from Our Town on the Plains: J. J. Pennell's Photographs of Junction City, Kansas, 1893-1922. (978.129 Shortridge)

John Welsh and catfish, 1901. Welsh's catch is surely worthy of this photographic record. Pennell used a backdrop that suggests that Welsh and the fish are still outside, not in Pennell's second-story downtown studio.

Second Battery gun squad, 1907. The U. S. Army defines artillery as any gun that uses ammunition greater than one inch in diameter and that is not fired from the hand or shoulder. This piece, although it was known as a "light field gun," certainly qualifies. The weapon was one of the first to incorporate a hydropneumatic recoil system, which allowed it to remain relatively stationary after firing. The "trail" (where the dog is sleeping) contains a spade at the end. This would dig into the ground to help keep the weapon in place during recoil. The barrel could be adjusted to shoot at angles up to nineteen degrees above the horizontal, useful in attacking an enemy hidden behind a ridge. A caisson, a specialized cart, is on the left. It was used to haul the heavy three-inch shells.