Posts Tagged ‘British Library’
Say what?…
Trying to master a role in a Tennessee Williams play? Place someone by their accent? Steven Weinberger, a linguist at George Mason University can help. He’s created The Speech Accent Archive, where one can click on a map to hear some native, some non-native English speakers from all over the world– but in each case reciting the same short English paragraph, crafted to contain every sound in the Queen’s Language.
(C.F. also the previously-reported British Library Map of Accents and Dialects.)
As we smooth our sibilants, we might recall that it was on this date in 1938 that Northwestern University conferred an honorary degree on ventriloquist’s dummy Charlie McCarthy (whose “partner,” Edgar Bergen, had attended Northwestern, but never graduated).
Lest we doubt that Bergen and his wooden friend were worthy of the academic accolade, we might note that they have been credited by some with “saving the world”: later that same year, on the night of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles performed his War of the Worlds radio play, panicking many listeners, most of the American public had tuned instead to Bergen and McCarthy on another station. (Dissenters note that Bergen may inadvertently have contributed to the hysteria: when the musical portion of Bergen’s show [The Chase and Sanborn Hour] aired about twelve minutes into the show, many listeners switched stations– to discover War of the Worlds in progress, with an all-too-authentic-sounding reporter detailing a horrific alien invasion.
Charlie McCarthy, BA (left), with his friend Edgar Bergen (source)
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”*…
Peter Barber, Head of Map Collections at the British Library, has written a companion piece to the BL’s exhibition “Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art,” his personal selection of ten of the greatest– “Ten Maps that Changed the World“; for example:
click here for enlargement
The infant USSR was threatened with invasion, famine and social unrest. To counter this, brilliant designers such as Dimitri Moor were employed to create pro-Bolshevik propaganda.
Using a map of European Russia and its neighbours, Moor’s image of a heroic Bolshevik guard defeating the invading ‘Whites’ helped define the Soviet Union in the Russian popular imagination.
From the Henricus Martellus World Map (1490– used to convince Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile to support Columbus), the Evesham WorldMap (1400- the birth of English nationalism and patriotism– think Henry V and Agincourt), and the Chinese Globe (1623– exaggerated the size of China and placed it in the middle of a world that otherwise consisted mainly of small off-shore islands) to the London Underground Map and Google Earth, see them all.
(TotH to Flowing Data)
* Oscar Wilde
As we turn to plot our courses, we might recall that it was on this date in 1865, in the market square of Springfield, Missouri, that Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.
Expressing (among other emotions) gratitude…
On this Day of Thanks (here in the U.S. in any case), it behooves one to call out– indeed, to celebrate– those things that bring warm happiness, that nourish the soul. Your correspondent humbly nominates “The Book of the Month,” a service of the Special Collections Department of the Library of the University of Glasgow.
There’s no “negative option”– so no unwanted deliveries as a result of failing to post the refusal card– just one wonderful book showcased after another. This month’s featured tome, appropriately to the anniversary celebrated in (R)D two days ago, is Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).
Man, Terrified
Chimpanzee, Sulking
Visit the Book of the Month archive and enjoy!
As we browse to our heart’s content, we might recall that it was on this date in 1864 that Oxford mathematician and amateur photographer Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson– aka Lewis Carroll– delivered a handwritten and illustrated manuscript called “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” to 10-year-old Alice Liddell. The original (on display at the British Library) was the basis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland…
Now that’s something for which to give thanks!
Blessed are they who preserve and share…
From The Great Library and Mouseion at Alexandria and the Bodleian at Oxford to the The British Library and the Library of Congress, an illustrated (and linked) tour of “The 7 Most Impressive Libraries From Throughout History” (well, in the Western Tradition anyway)…
As we rush to renew our library cards, we might recall that it was on this date in 1909 that Colonel Tom Parker, (in)famous manager of Elvis Presley, claimed to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia. Elvis’ biographer, Albert Goldman, suggests rather that the Colonel was born Andre van Kuijk in Breda, southern Holland, and entered the USA illegally. It was (and is) widely-believed that Parker never owned a credit card and had no passport– possibly to avoid checks that might expose his lack of genuine ID.
Colonel Tom and the King (source: Virgin Media)
Hark!…
The British Library conjures images of rows and rows of books– and indeed, as a copyright depository, it’s home to acres and acres of them. But its curatorial role extends beyond print to audio. And its creativity in applying new technology to its collections (c.f., here and here, e.g.) is making it’s recordings available in new ways too.
The BL’s Archival Sound Recording Project has already processed over 21,000 recordings– everything from spoken word performances of works in the print collection (often by the authors– c.f., here) to the sounds of amphibians (mostly frogs and toads) around the world (here); and it is experimenting with mash-ups, laying the recordings on maps, e.g., the music of India (here).
But perhaps the most immediately useful (or, at least, amusing) is this map of accents and dialects from all over Great Britain, “illustrated” by over 700 recordings.
As we offer thanks to the librarians among us, we might recall that it was on this date in 1911 that later-to-be Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann visited the Lido in Venice and crystallized the idea for his haunting novella Death In Venice. While Mann was adamant throughout his life that the protagonist, Aschenbach, was in no way autobiographical, his posthumously-available diaries suggest that Mann was in fact infatuated at the shore with a young Polish boy (the 11 year old Wladyslaw Moes ) who became the model for Tadzio.
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