LINDA HALL LIBRARY HEDGEHOGNUMBER 66 • FALL 2020 THE Te chnolog y of Print INSIDE Books about Books page 3 Green Mars page 4 The Beagle Library page 12 President’s Message Library News During the COVID-19 mandated shutdown, I thought a lot about our reliance on technology. I spent days in my book-lined study and realized how dependent I had become on electronic communications technology to keep the Library’s work moving forward, to meet virtually with colleagues throughout Kansas City, to stay in touch with family and friends, and to access the latest information about the plague that has affected all of our lives. The Boy from Oz Have you heard about the boy from Oz? The clash of technologies became very apparent to me. Print, No, not the one who sang, danced, was an inherently ancient technology, had played a central role in my discovered by Judy Garland, and later life and education as a literature student whose work consisted married Liza Minnelli.1 This young man is of the close analysis of printed texts on paper. Yet, everything I a prodigiously curious fellow, and while do today has become almost completely dependent upon digital he loves to sing, at nine years of age he is communications technologies. These invasive and pervasive too short to join the Radio City Music Hall tools have supplanted their predecessor medium, analog paper- Rockettes’ famed kick line and way too based printing. When paper-based printing will disappear is not young to marry anyone. known, but the time cannot be distant when young children will look at printed books in the same way their slightly older peers Joshua Walsh hails from Victoria on have viewed vinyl long-playing records, reel-to-reel film and Australia’s Surf Coast where he is growing tape, video cassettes, and typewriters. up with his equally talented thirteen-year old sister Tahlia. Joshua came to our The Linda Hall Library is dedicated to the continuing survival attention a few months ago when he began and use of scientific information in print. But more than that, it submitting questions for several of our is a library that documents the history of technology. Devoting Zoom program participants to answer. We space in this issue of the Hedgehog to essays about the became curious how this lad from Down history of printing, the hundreds of books that accompanied Under learned about the Linda Hall Library Charles Darwin on his voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, and and how he acquired his interest in all a recent donation of books that were produced by some things ‘science.’ At our invitation, Joshua of Europe’s earliest printers, is not only appropriate but and his mum, Alison, agreed to answer necessary during this troubling and perplexing time. some questions for the Hedgehog. As we increasingly look to science to find the answers that HEDGEHOG: When did you first become will lead to treatments and cures for the coronavirus and interested in science? vaccines for its prevention, and as our reliance on electronic communications technologies increases by the day while JOSHUA: I became interested in science we remain socially distanced, an increased appreciation of when I was two when my sister Tahlia printing history may soothe, reassure, and lend perspective. started distance education. I wanted to do what she was doing in science! When I Stay well, everyone. was four, I remember doing an experiment story continues on page 19 1 Peter Allen (1944-1992) Australian-born singer, songwriter, entertainer whose life was the subject of the 2004 musical, Lisa M. Browar, President The Boy from Oz. Allen is the only male dancer ever invited to dance with the Rockettes. 2 Library News Books about Books: Library Patron’s Gift Expands Printing History Collection arpsichordist, bibliophile, and book collector, Elinor the semicolon and italic type. HEisemann is a woman with very specific interests. Manutius was responsible Long-time Library supporters, Elinor and her late husband for the first printings of some Gustave, were seen frequently in the audience at Library of the most important Greek programs, and today Elinor is an avid consumer of our texts. Elinor’s copy of Niccoló virtual programs. From time to time, she has volunteered Perotti’s commentary on the her time and expertise working on rare book cataloging Roman poet Martial, titled projects in the History of Science Collections. Cornucopia, includes both italic typeface, and Aldus’ When Elinor called in July with an offer to donate any now famous printer’s mark. titles from her personal collection that would augment It joins five other Aldine press Mark of the Aldine Press from and enhance our collections devoted to printing history printed titles in the Library’s Niccolò Perotti’s Cornucopia.1 and technology, she had us at ‘hello.’ collection. Additionally, Elinor’s gift includes four leaves (pages) all printed before 1500, Elinor produced a title list of her printing history collection, including a page from the Polycronicon (a universal each book assiduously cataloged with detailed history concentrating on Britain) printed by William Caxton, descriptions. The range of material was impressive. thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press Examples of early printing from the 1400s and selected into England in 1476. issues of the historic periodical devoted to print history, The Colophon, were obvious additions for our In total, Elinor Eisemann’s gift to the Linda Hall Library collections. and a complete text printed in 1517 in the consists of 204 titles, each of intense interest to anyone print shop of noted Venetian printer Aldus Manutius exploring the history of printing as a technology. We easily got our attention. look forward to sharing them with others wishing to know more about the fascinating history of books and Students of printing history will know that Aldus Manutius printing. Anyone who views these books will certainly created some of the most beautiful typefaces ever. He join the Linda Hall Library in expressing great thanks to popularized the idea of the printer’s mark and invented Elinor Eisemann for this magnificent gift. 1 Perotto, Niccolò, Cornucopia. Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andree Soceri, 1517. Transitions Although the Linda Hall Library was closed to the Paula Volk public for three months, its work continued and that Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration included saying farewell to several long-time staff Paula Volk retired at the end of April after 31 years members and welcoming several new faces. To our of service. Paula arrived from the banking world retired colleagues we extend our thanks and best to oversee the Library’s investments. In time, her wishes, and to our newly arrived colleagues, a portfolio of responsibilities grew to include those of hearty welcome! chief financial officer, and supervision of the Facilities, story continues on page 20 3 An illustration from Kenneth Heuer’s Men of Other Planets. 4 GREEN MARS BY JORDAN BIMM, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Chicago n 1953, Hubertus Strughold, a German physiologist and We all know Mars as the Red Planet, but what was medical doctor working for the U.S. Air Force (USAF), Strughold’s Green and Red Planet? Where did this Ipublished The Green and Red Planet: A Physiological idea that Mars is a planet of plants come from? How Study of the Possibility of Life on Mars. For millennia, did the expectation of vegetation on Mars shape early philosophers and astronomers have speculated about astrobiology and plans for human exploration? These life elsewhere in the cosmos, but Strughold was the first were the questions I had when I arrived at the Linda modern life scientist to take up this question. As the title Hall Library in January 2019 as a Residential Fellow. of his book suggests, he predicted that there was life My plan was to use the Library’s extensive holding on Mars, but that due to the planet’s apparent lack of of rare astronomy texts to provide the deep historical water, atmospheric pressure, and heat, it was limited to context for Strughold’s mid-century modeling of a Green simple, hardy vegetation, similar to lichens. To test this and Red Planet. hypothesis, Strughold invented a device that has since become a central tool for scientists studying potential The idea of Mars exclusively home to lichens is extraterrestrial life – the Mars Jar. unfamiliar today, but back in the 1950s most of the world’s top astronomers expected the first robotic Beginning in 1956, Strughold used a set of airtight glass missions from Earth to discover vast swaths of this containers to simulate the extreme environment thought vegetation. For example, in a 1955 edition of National to exist on his lichen-lined “Green Mars.” Inside each Geographic, American astronomer E.C. Slipher wrote Mars Jar was a thin atmosphere, arid soil, and freezing “many astronomers now feel sure the large dark areas temperatures. Then, a team of Air Force scientists [on Mars] represent vegetation.” In the history of ideas sealed different microbes, lichens, and mosses inside about life on Mars, “Green Mars” attained its zenith in to see if any could survive. After 100 days, they found the 1950s, between Percival Lowell’s fantastical fin du that some microbes not only survived but actually siècle vision of an intelligent canal-building civilization, multiplied. Strughold called this new field of research and our current much more modest hopes for microbial “astrobiology” (the name the field goes by today), but life, or fossils of it from the distant