The Papers of Thomas A. Edison

Recipient: Israel, Paul B (Piscataway, NJ 08854-8049 USA) in affiliation with Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA)

Goal: Preparation for the print publication of Volumes 7 and 8 of the papers of inventor Thomas A. Edison, covering the period of July 1883 through December 1887. (36 months)

Description: The Papers of Thomas A. Edison is a fifteen-volume book edition that will contain 6,500 transcribed and annotated letters, notebook entries, experimental drawings, legal agreements, equipment specifications, marketing plans, autobiographical writings, and other documents from Edison's lengthy career. This proposal seeks funding to complete "Losses and Loyalties" (Volume 7, July 1883 - December 1884) and to work on "New Beginnings" (Volume 8, January 1885 - December 1887). These volumes cover the pioneering era of the electrical industry founded on Edison's technical and business contributions and provide a detailed picture of the day-to-day struggles and innovations that delivered electric light and power into the world marketplace. During this period Edison also survives the crises of his first wife's death, remarries, returns to work on telecommunications technology, and opens his last and largest research and development laboratory.

Grant: 196533 / RQ-50364-09,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2009

One Week, One Tool: A Digital Humanities Barn Raising

Recipient: Scheinfeldt, Tom (Fairfax, VA 22030-4422 USA) in affiliation with George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030 USA)

Goal: A one week institute for twelve participants on the principles of humanities-centered tool design, development, and implementation, followed by a year of development support.

Description: For one week in June 2010, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University will bring together a group of twelve digital humanists of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and practical experience to build a useful and useable software tool for digital humanities research. A short course of training in principles of open source software development will be followed by an intense five days of brainstorming and development. Following the workshop will be a year of continued development, testing and evaluation. The group members will be comprised of designers and programmers as well as project managers and outreach specialists. The group will conceive a tool, outline a roadmap, develop and disseminate a prototype, lay the ground work for building an open source community, and make first steps toward securing sustainable funding for the project.

Grant: 197336 / HT-50021-09,   Division: Digital Humanities,   Program: Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities,   Year Awarded: 2009

The Wider Scope: A Survey of Early Telescopes and Images, and their Scientific and Cultural Contexts

Recipient: Bolt, Marvin Paul (Chicago, IL 60605 USA) in affiliation with Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum

Goal: Expansion of an electronic research database on the history of the telescope to include literary and art-historical materials as well as examples from Asian collections.

Description: The United Nations' declaration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 to mark Galileo's use of the telescope signifies the extraordinary impact of the telescope on the sciences and the humanities. The observations it enabled transformed our cosmology and raised awkward questions about our place in the universe. As well as informing astronomy, theology, and philosophy, it inspired the literary and visual arts, and impacted military and maritime practices by changing the conduct of war and the practice of navigation. Telescopes were also objets d'art, intended to be looked at as much as looked through, to be displayed as a symbol of knowledge, patronage, and status. Through collaborations with museums and scholars around the world, we will create a census of surviving telescopes and telescope images made prior to 1750, photograph and catalog them, determine their optical and physical properties, and disseminate this information via a database on a museum website.

Grant: 196524 / RZ-51106-09,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2009

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin

Recipient: Secord, James A (Cambridge, England) in affiliation with American Council of Learned Societies (New York, NY 10017 USA)

Goal: Preparation for the print publication of Volumes 18-20 of the British naturalist Charles Darwin's correspondence, covering the years 1870-72. (36 months)

Description: This proposal seeks funding from the NEH for the period of August 1, 2009 through July 30, 2012, to support the scholarly edition The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. The Darwin Correspondence Project is an independent, binational scholarly undertaking, jointly managed by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and Cambridge University, with the object of providing the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. The Project's output is in the form of both a comprehensive print edition, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (F. Burkhardt et al. eds), and a fully searchable Online Database (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/); letter texts and explanatory notes are incorporated into the Online Database four years after print publication. When complete, the print edition will comprise thirty volumes, two of which will be two-part volumes.

Grant: 196557 / RQ-50388-09,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2009

Digitizing Darwin's Library

Recipient: Kohn, David (New York, NY 10024-5192 USA) in affiliation with American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY 10024 USA)

Goal: The digital reconstruction of Charles Darwin's working library as it stood at the end of his life, to include the presentation of the complex array of annotations throughout his working texts.

Description: This project which aims to reconstruct, digitally, Charles Darwin's working library as it stood at the end of his life's journey, will open up and make accessible to students of the humanities and the sciences whole new dimensions of Darwin's thinking. Over 700 of Darwin's most heavily annotated books are held at Cambridge University Library. The abundant hand-written notes on these books were painstakingly transcribed in the late 1980s. Now, thanks to high-resolution digital imagery, and an international partnership of Cambridge, the Natural History Museum in London, the Biodiversity Heritage Library-a consortium of natural history libraries, and the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution-an online scholarly edition of Darwin's manuscripts based at the American Museum of Natural History, Darwin's transcribed marginalia will be digitally married with scanned books from his own library and with scanned surrogate volumes of the exact editions Darwin owned from the partnership's libraries.

Grant: 197568 / PX-50026-09,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009

Across the Pacific

Recipient: Lyons, Stephen E (Arlington, MA 02476 USA) in affiliation with Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc. (Waltham, MA 02453 USA)

Goal: Development of a two-hour documentary about one of the great milestones in the history of flight: the 1935 crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a Pan American Airways flying boat called the China Clipper.

Description: This is a request for a 75,000 scripting grant for a two hour documentary about one of the great milestones in the history of flight: the 1935 crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a Pan American Airways flying boat called the China Clipper. The Pacific crossing was a technological achievement that captured public imagination in much the way the space program did a generation later. It also began the era of transoceanic flight, an era that would lead to profound changes in American foreign policy, commerce and the way Americans saw the world. Produced by one of the makers of Forgotten Genius, NOVAs NEH funded, Emmy Award winning biography of black chemist Percy Julian, Across the Pacific will combine dramatic reenactments, interviews with scholars, and films and photographs drawn from the rich archival record about the early days of commercial aviation. The film is intended for primetime broadcast on PBS or cable TV. The Smithsonian Channel has already expressed interest.

Grant: 197088 / TD-50100-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Media Makers Development,   Year Awarded: 2009

Galileo, the Medici, and the Age of Astronomy

Recipient: Wint, Dennis M (Philadelphia, PA 19103 USA) in affiliation with Franklin Institute Science Museum

Grant: 196621 / GE-50132-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning,   Year Awarded: 2009

Disease and Disability in the Middle Ages

Recipient: Green, Monica H (Tempe, AZ 85287-4302 USA) in affiliation with Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85287 USA)

Goal: A five-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty to study the connections between Western medieval medical history and the social and cultural implications of health, disease, and disability.

Description: Based at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London, and the Wellcome Library (the world's premier research center for medical history), this Seminar will gather scholars from across the disciplines interested in fundamental humanistic questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. A primary goal will be to explore how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) can inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Equally important will be to demonstrate how understanding traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine can inform modern scientific studies of disease.

Grant: 191912 / FS-50189-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for College Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison

Recipient: Israel, Paul B (Piscataway, NJ 08854-8049 USA) in affiliation with Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA)

Goal: Completion of Volume 7 and editorial work on Volumes 8 and 9 of the Papers of Thomas A. Edison. (36 months)

Description: The Papers of Thomas A. Edison is a fifteen-volume book edition that will contain about 6,500 transcribed and annotated letters, notebook entries, experimental drawings, legal agreements, equipment specifications, marketing plans, autobiographical writings, and other documents from Edison's lengthy career. Each volume contains sketches and drawings from notebooks, photographs and drawings of artifacts, and illustrations from contemporary publications. When published in this scholarly edition, they reveal not only how Edison achieved such success but illuminate the contexts for his innovations and the growing importance of technology to modern life. The Papers of Thomas A. Edison make the complex documentary legacy of Edison more generally comprehensible while improving access to the daunting mass of Edison-related documents and objects that exist in historical sites and private collections worldwide.

Grant: 186277 / RQ-50272-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2007

The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein

Recipient: Buchwald, Diana Kormos (Pasadena, CA 91125 USA) in affiliation with California Institute of Technology

Goal: Preparation for publication of Volumes 11, 12, and 13 of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and expansion of The Einstein Archives Online website. (36 months)

Description: We seek support for editorial research and publication of 3 volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and for the refinement and expansion of our www.alberteinstein.info website that presents 900 Einstein manuscripts and a database of the Einstein Archive. The project will carry out research for the period 1921-1923. A Cumulative Index Volume 11 will be published in print and on our website. The expanded electronic resources will include revised and expanded access to more than 70,000 archival holdings from which the edition proceeds and an authoritative Einstein bibliography. We will prepare the infrastructure for the expansion of web-available Einstein documents. Volumes 12 and 13 will contain significant previously unknown and unpublished writings and correspondence for an important period in Einstein's life and work: e.g. his research on a unified field theory, on superconductivity, trips and lectures in Japan and Palestine, and his involvement in the League of Nations.

Grant: 186272 / RQ-50267-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2007

FREEDOM, ECONOMICS AND RELIGION: Race and African American Experience in the Atlantic World: The Case of Petersburg, VA

Recipient: Philipsen, Dirk Peter (Petersburg, VA 23806 USA) in affiliation with Virginia State University (Petersburg, VA 23803 USA)

Goal: Four workshops on the history of Petersburg, aimed at developing a model for teaching local history in a global context.

Description: VIrginia State University proposes a collaborative effort between University faculty and staff, community leaders in the City of Petersburg, the Governor's School and outside scholars to develop a program on Race and the African American History in the Context of the Atlantic World - Case Study Petersburg, VA. Our goal is to create a field of specialization for the VSU Graduate Program in History. Significant resources, instructional materials and pedagogical approaches will also be made available to regional k-12 schools and scholars worldwide through a newly created website. Petersburg represents an illuminating case study showing, in an international context, the development of race relations and the African American experience in the U.S.

Grant: 184618 / AB-50024-07,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Humanities Initiatives for Faculty: HBCUs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Liberty, Paternalism, and Equity: Public Health and the Legacy of John Stuart Mill

Recipient: Bayer, Ronald (New York, NY 10033 USA) in affiliation with Columbia University (New York, NY 10027 USA)

Goal: A conference to examine the impact of the philosophy of John Stuart Mill on the ethics and practice of public health in the United States (12 months)

Description: 2006 will mark the bicentennial of the birth of the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, a principle figure in the development of modern liberal thought. For this occasion we will convene a two-day conference of historians, philosophers, legal scholars, and public health experts to discuss the impact of Mill's legacy on the ethics and practice of public health in the United States. A volume based on this conference will be published. The project will involve an examination of how Mill's perspective has influenced debates over the scope of public health. Our goal will be to confront the question of whether Mill's antipaternalism is compatible with the protective functions of public health in a liberal democratic society.

Grant: 181583 / RZ-50636-06,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2006

Preservation Needs Assessment

Recipient: Mandelbaum, Miriam (New York, NY 10029 USA) in affiliation with New York Academy of Medicine

Goal: A preservation needs assessment of the academy's library facility and the preparation of recommendations for a comprehensive preservation plan, with particular focus on materials that chronicle the history of medicine.

Grant: 179161 / PA-51723-06,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2006

Edition of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin

Recipient: Secord, James A (Cambridge, England) in affiliation with American Council of Learned Societies (New York, NY 10017 USA)

Goal: Work on Volumes 16, 17, 18, and 19 of an edition of the correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Description: Preparation of a definitive edition of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, including approximately fifteen thousand letters he wrote and received, edited according to modern textual principles and practices.

Grant: 176315 / RQ-50154-05,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2005

Preserve and Create Online Access to Historic Acetate and Nitrate Negatives within the GE Photograph Collection

Recipient: Hunter, Christopher George (Schenectady, NY 12308 USA) in affiliation with Schenectady Museum Association

Goal: Digitizing and cataloging 12,000 General Electric Company photographs dated 1892-1971, and developing a Web site featuring the images, which depict the impact of electric power on 20th-century American life. Additionally, purchase of cold storage units, boxes, and folders to rehouse 68,000 acetate and 12,000 nitrate negatives.

Description: The Schenectady Museum & Planetarium will create an educational web site, "Inventing Modern America," utilizing images from the Museum's GE Photograph Collection and additional materials from the Museum's International Technology Archives. The Museum will preserve, re-house and refrigerate or freeze more than 81,000 acetate and nitrate negatives that have been identified by a photograph conservator as being at-risk. The Museum will create access to the negatives by digitizing and cataloging a selection of 12,000 negatives and creating a searchable online database for its collections.

Grant: 174523 / PA-51398-05,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2005

Cataloging Botanical Literature from the 15th through 20th Centuries

Recipient: DeBuhr, Larry E (Glenco, IL 60022 USA) in affiliation with Chicago Botanic Garden (Glencoe, IL 60022 USA)

Goal: Cataloging 3,537 rare books, serials, and monographic series related to the history of horticulture and landscape design in the Western world from 1400 to 1900.

Grant: 174431 / PA-51306-05,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2005

Cleveland Landmark Workshop: History of Steel in America

Recipient: Pershey, Edward J (Cleveland, OH 44106 USA) in affiliation with Western Reserve Historical Society

Goal: Two one-week workshops for 50 community college faculty on the history of the steel industry and its role in nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial America to be held at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.

Grant: 174556 / BI-50014-05,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Landmarks of American History for Community Colleges, WTP,   Year Awarded: 2005

The First Generation of British Industrialists: Scientific Culture and Civic Life, 1780-1832

Recipient: Jacob, Margaret C (Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA) in affiliation with University of California, Los Angeles

Goal: Production of a web site, and publication of articles and a book, that will document the scientific education of early British entrepreneurs and the ways in which their knowledge facilitated the industrial revolution. (36 months)

Description: This historical study, a collaboration between Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart and two summer graduate research assistants, sees industrialization as part of a cultural process with scientific knowledge playing a central role. Because of previous collaborative work by Jacob and Stewart, historians and development experts now know much more about the cultural resources available to cotton manufacturers or steam engine makers. Now the humanistic study of industrial life has revealed the depth and sophistication of human agency, a model that contradicts a mechanistic vision of economic activity. The proposal will make the archives of ten industrial sites available on the www, and result in six or more articles and a co-authored book.

Grant: 176211 / RZ-50395-05,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2005

Preservation Needs Assessment for the Library Archives

Recipient: Murphy, Fawn Colleen (East Haven, CT 06450 USA) in affiliation with Hagaman Memorial Library (Meriden, CT USA)

Goal: A preservation assessment of 165 linear feet of archives related to the history of East Haven, Connecticut, and surrounding areas.

Grant: 172333 / PA-50917-05,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2005

Preservation Microfilming of Collections Related to the History of Science

Recipient: Verba, Sidney (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA) in affiliation with Harvard University

Goal: The preservation microfilming and enhanced cataloging of embrittled volumes on the history of science published between 1820 and 1950 that focus on the histories of medicine, astronomy, forestry, scientific biography, and scientific expeditions.

Grant: 168184 / PA-50811-04,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2004