A Transit from Tahiti

The Green is set up for Commencement--covered with chairs, the stage and bleachers--but on Tuesday a crowd gathered on the grass to watch the last transit of Venus to occur this century. Venus won’t pass directly between the earth and the sun again until the year 2117. Surely Dartmouth students will be here to watch that one as well.

The 1769 transit of Venus provided the impetus for Captain James Cook's first voyage around the world. Cook was instructed to observe the transit from Tahiti; a precise measurement of the time it took for Venus to pass across the face of the sun would allow astronomers to calculate the distance between the sun and the earth.

Cook’s observations of the transit of Venus were less accurate than the Royal Society had hoped, but his exploration of Australia and successful circumnavigation of New Zealand made him a national hero. The journals of his first voyage were published in 1773 under the title: An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773).

This large, three-volume account of Cook’s voyage was published with the general public in mind; readers interested in the particulars of Cook’s observations were directed to the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society. We’re fairly certain our copy once belonged to an armchair traveler -- it still carries a faint scent of tobacco.

See Cook’s observations for yourself by asking for Val G12 H313ac.

From the Yukon to Abilene

Our books have lives that we will never know. When you look at a 16th-century book, you know it has been in a lot of places and been held by many hands. Many of our books have a definite provenance--they have gained value by association with famous people and places--but most have had less glamorous, undocumented travels.

We just bought this interesting little tourist book, Scenes from the Land of the Midnight Sun (Dawson: Landahl's Emporium, [1908?]), featuring snippets from Robert Service's poetry laid over photographic scenes from the Yukon. If we can trust the inscription, our copy was purchased at Dawson in 1928, but it somehow managed to find its way to the Hilton Hotel in Abilene, Texas. You have to wonder, how did the parched and weary traveler arriving at the hotel respond to this book? In the Texas mid-day sun, was the cool of the midnight sun just a dream?

We purchased it from a Canadian book dealer, so we have interrupted its journey back to the Yukon. We think the Hanover winter and being ensconced in the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration should make it feel at home, but will it long for the smell of cattle, dust and oil?

Ask for Stef F912.Y9 S25 1908 to see it.

Almost Reaching That Peak

Browne (left) & Parker 1912

Belmore Browne was an explorer, artist and writer. Despite his contributions to these areas, he is perhaps most famous for his involvement in early attempts to summit Mt. McKinley. All three of the expeditions Browne was part of failed to reach the top - the last by mere yards.

In 1906, Browne was a member of Frederick Cook's expedition. Cook later claimed to have summited with another member of the expedition, but this was eventually proved false by photographs taken during Browne's second expedition - the Parker-Browne Expedition of 1910.  These photographs show that Cook's peak is actually a much lower peak several miles from the real summit.

Cook's "Fake Peak" at left
showing its relative height to the
real peak (right arrow)

Browne Photographing the
"Fake Peak" during one of the
Parker-Browne Expeditions

The third expedition missed the top by yards.  Severe storms kept the party from the top, despite several attempts to reach it.  This may have been providential as the glacier the expedition members were camped on shattered only hours after they had started back down the mountain. The first true summit of Mt. McKinley was finally achieved by Stuck and Karstens in 1913.

Page from Browne's
Stikine Trip Sketch Book, 1902

In addition to numerous photographs (prints, negatives, and lantern slides) of the various Mt. McKinley expeditions, Browne's papers contain his sketchbooks and diaries as well as scrapbooks and clippings.

Ask for Stef Mss 190. A paper guide to the collection is available in Rauner.

Is Not My Word Like Fire

Long before he dreamed of Dartmouth College, Eleazer Wheelock was a key player in "The Great Awakening." The religious revival of the 1740s enflamed church and civil life in New England. Its stern vision of personal piety and salvation challenged the delicate balance of Puritan life. For Wheelock, the fervor was both religious and physical: this two-week preaching schedule scrawled on the back of some sermon notes shows Wheelock’s popularity as an evangelist. "Upon the Sabbath here, Monday at Hebron, Tuesday at Colchester, Wednesday at Goshen…." And in a letter from 1742, he wrote, "The week before last I preachd 10 sermons... last week I preachd 10 times again... I am exceedingly worn out with constant labour and much watching."

Letter - June 28, 1742

Our current exhibit, "Is Not My Word Like Fire," looks at the Great Awakening and Wheelock's participation. It will be up through the end of June in our Class of 1965 Galleries. You can see Wheelock's itinerary anytime by asking for MS 940, Box 2. The letter is Mss 742378.

Now Serving ...

For the past 230 years, the land that is now occupied by the Hanover Inn has been the site of an inn or tavern. The first proprietor on site was Captain Ebenezer Brewster who had come up from Connecticut with Eleazar Wheelock to serve as the College Steward. In 1782, Brewster converted his home to a tavern. Perhaps tiring of the business of serving drinks to students, Brewster leased the building in 1802 to Mr. Dewey who ran a coffee house there for the next 11 years.

The Curtis Hotel, 1826

In 1813 a new building was erected on the site and this eventually became the Curtis Hotel in 1816. Jonathan Currier purchased the hotel in 1838 and used the building as a private residence and boarding house until 1857. Currier sold the building to Horace Frary who performed extensive renovations on what came to be called the Dartmouth Hotel. The accommodations were spartan - heat was intermittent in rooms that had it and a bath was considered an exotic request. The hotel was destroyed, rather dramatically, in a seven-hour conflagration in 1887.

The Dartmouth Hotel

The Wheelock

Menus and Publicity

Following the fire, the Trustees of the College bought the property and constructed a new hotel on the site that they named the Wheelock. The quality of the construction of the Wheelock was subpar and the building underwent a drastic reconstruction only 12 years later after which it was renamed the Hanover Inn. In 1923 a new wing was added almost doubling the size of the hotel. Avid skiers Ford and Peggy Sayre took over the management of the Inn in 1936, using it as headquarters for their famous ski school. In 1966 the main building, so completely renovated in 1902, was razed and replaced by the façade we are all familiar with.

The Hanover Inn, 1967

Today we watch and wait for the next iteration of the Inn to appear from behind trucks, scaffolding and sheeting. Rumor has it the wait will soon be over; the Inn is set to reopen - at least in part - for Reunion weekend.

Game On

Rauner Library wants you for the "Five Ws" - who, what, where, when, and potentially why. We've collaborated with Digital Humanities Professor Mary Flanagan and Tiltfactor.org to create a series of games based on our large collection of Dartmouth related images. The first one is live now at Alum Tag. (Note that the game site is no longer  available.)

For many of our archival images we have little or no descriptive information other than a very broad topic such as "Winter Carnival" or "Dartmouth Hall." A lot of the key elements are missing - like "Who is that standing to the left of the signpost?" or "What year is this really?" For the image to the right, we only know that is has something to do with the Aegis, Dartmouth's yearbook.

How does it work? The game asks the user to describe the image in as much detail as they can and weighs the data supplied based on frequency and other measures to determine the validity of the users' descriptions. We eventually hope to use this crowd-sourced metadata to enhance our online image collection of Dartmouth College Photographs to make the collection more accessible to users.

Go Play!

Terence

We recently digitized one of our nicest humanist manuscripts: a copy of Terence's Comoediae sex cum argumentis produced in Ferrara in 1462, just a few years prior to the introduction of the printing press in Italy. You can see it in its digital glory, or come in and feel the vellum for the full sensory experience.

 We have another 15th-century Terence that is worth looking at for comparison: Comodiae (Strassburg: Johann Gruninger, 1496). While the manuscript has a simple design connoting a quiet dignity, with many annotations in a contemporary hand, the printed copy from 1496 is far more extravagant and theatrical. Not only does it contain dozens of hand-colored woodcuts and ample rubrication, it also has a prankster's doodles (date unknown) throughout.

The manuscript is Codex MS 001999, and the book is Incun 125.