Nineteenth Century Europe
Mr. Eiffel Built More Than a Tower
Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the engineer who designed the Eiffel Tower, reportedly said “I ought to be jealous of the tower. It is more famous than I am.” It’s probably true. Eiffel was a world-famous engineer before he made the tower that bears his name, but not for the kind of things that make a man a…
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Supper at Sea in the Age of Sail
This summer I’ve had the pleasure of working with Fen Truitt. Fen is a student at Trinity College in Dublin. She’s interested in art, architecture, literature, music, hiking, and history–just for starters. In short, she fits in well here on the Margins, as you’ll see in the guest blog post below. (Please note that the…
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Word With a Past: Shoddy
In the early nineteenth century British textile manufacturers began to recycle woolen rags into a an inexpensive woolen cloth. The rags were shredded into fibers, mixed with new wood, and then spun and woven into the cloth, which was known as “shoddy”–a term that may have come from an old word meaning divide.* The process…
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