History in the Margins

Let There Be Light

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One thing leads to another when I write. One minute I’m focused on the topic at hand. The next thing you know, I’m scurrying down a research rabbit hole.

Earlier this week I was working on an article about a very minor (but quite delightful) artist named named Maurice Busset (1879-1936) who created a portfolio of woodblock prints about the German bombardment of Paris in 1918.* Looking at a print in which citizens of Paris scurry through the night to take shelter in an underground Metro station I suddenly thought, wait a minute: are those flashlights? In 1918?** And I was off.

In fact, it turns out that flashlights were a very real possibility in 1918.

As is so often the case, one innovation rested on another. In the case of the flashlight, it turns out that the necessary first step was the invention of the dry cell battery in 1887–something that had not occurred to me as a limiting factor until I dug in. The flashlight quickly followed. The first flashlights, produced by the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company*** in 1899 under the name Ever Ready, were expensive novelties, no doubt purchased by the nineteenth century equivalent of the people who stood in line to buy the first iPhones. In fact, they were called “flash” lights because neither the battery or the bulb was reliable. The idea that they were “Ever Ready” was wishful thinking on the part of the sales department.

With the invention of a new type of light bulb and better batteries in 1904, flashlights became cheaper and more reliable. By the early 1920s, there were more than 10 million flashlights in circulation.

Next question?

*Coming to a future issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History–a very good magazine if you are interested in military history, widely defined.

**I did not wonder about the Metro station because I knew that the first subway was dug in London in the mid- nineteenth century and I assumed that Paris was not far behind. In fact, it turns out that the Paris Metro was built in 1900.

***Which ultimately became Energizer. Not surprising since it turns out that batteries are a crucial part of this story.

Women Warriors (aka A Moment of Blatant Self-Promotion)

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Those of you who’ve been hanging out here in the Margins for a while now are well aware that I’ve spent much of the last two years* working on a global history of women warriors. Now it’s mostly out of my hands. (Though I did get a second round of copy edits this afternoon. The folks at Beacon Press don’t mess around when it comes to getting books right.)

Women Warriors is scheduled to release on February 26. Even though February feels like it’s right around the corner from my perspective, I realize that in fact it is seven months away. (Not that I’m counting or anything.) Between now and then there will be a pre-order campaign with some cool book swag,** some giveaways, etc. I’ll share big news here, but if you want the little news, details about speaking gigs, etc., you might want to sign up for my newsletter HERE.

I’ll try not to be all “My Book! My Book!” in your faces until closer to publication. But I make no promises, because My Book! My Book!

*Or four decades, depending on when you start counting.
**In fact, Women Warriors is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore. Pre-orders are important to authors because they are important to book sellers, who use them as a gauge of how popular a book is going to be and how many copies they should order.

History on Display: The Vinland Map

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On October 11, 1965, just a few hours before Columbus Day,* Yale University announced that it owned a newly discovered map of the world, dating from approximately 1440 AD, that showed an island named as Vinland, the Vinilandia insula of the Icelandic sagas/ off the coast of North America. The timing was not accidental: if the map was real it proved that the Vikings had landed in North America several centuries before Christopher Columbus.** Indignant Italian Americas denounced the map as a fraud. Scholars at the time debated the map’s authenticity and provenance, with an emphasis on technical aspects of its production and condition. (Think ink composition and the placement of wormholes.)

My friend Karin and I were luckily enough to see the map itself during our visit to Mystic Seaport.**  Science Myth & Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga is a fascinating look at a subject where public opinion, “comic book history,” and scholarship collide. The small excellent exhibit considers the history of the map as an artifact, the work of the scholars who attempted to authenticate it, the brouhaha that surrounded Yale’s very public and consciously controversial announcement, public reactions to the announcement and the archaeological finds at L’Anse aux Meadows. The most interesting aspect of the exhibit from my perspective was the timeline showing the different scientific tests applied to the document over the last fifty years as new technologies became available, ending with new tests performed by a team at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage earlier this year. (For those of you with scientific minds, one of the new tests is called “reflectance transformation imaging“.)

The final conclusion? The map is a forgery but the Vikings did reach North America.

Science Myth & Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga will be on display at Mystic Seaport through September 30.  Well worth the time if you’re in the general area.

*Which at the time was a minor holiday that had not yet become a focus for discussions about social justice, racism, etc. That would soon change.
**In fact, archaeological discoveries at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland had confirmed the presence of Viking settlements in North America the year before. But no one had deliberately rubbed Columbus’s nose in it.  Personally, I don’t see that one achievement lessens the other.
***An unplanned piece of history bugg luck.