By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes Title :  Dr. Neesen's book on wheeling by Victor Neesen, M.D. From :  New Amsterdam Book Company, 1899 What is it? A book about riding bicycles that addresses the debate about whether bicycling is healthy, for whom, and under what conditions.  The author, Victor Neesen, M. D., was a gynecologist who decided to step into the debate of the times about the health concerns regarding bicycles.  He largely argues that there are great medical benefits from "wheeling" but it can cause problems if not done right. It may also aggravate other existing ailments. Still, he believes it is a virtue to "wheel" so long as a woman is of right moral character or as he puts it on page 90: "To sum up the morality of wheeling it may be tersely said that  'a lady is a lady wherever she is.'"  Chapters cover essential topics like: Hygiene, Diseases and Ailments, The Bicycle for Women, Morality of the Bicycle, and an Appendix. It clock...

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes Title :  Adam Watters, importer of, & wholesale & retail dealer From :  microfiche, originally from 1800s. What is it? This is an advertisement for Adam Watters , an importer, wholesale,  retail dealer  in Upper Town, Quebec City . The brochure identifies a range of imported goods, including meats, soups, fish, and hams, and notes relationships with  suppliers from Portland, Boston, and Guelph . This type of advertisement was typical in 19th-century newspapers, serving both as promotion and public notice of commercial credibility. Thoughts There's two layers of interesting elements to this artifact.  The first is that it is microfiche that has been then added to the archive.  This makes me wonder how much of the archive is microfiche which is something I hadn't considered before.  Also, we know this because the first few pages are essentially meta-data related to the microfiche, which also tells us it...

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes Welcome to this new series where I explore random artifacts from one of my favorite places on the Internet, the Internet Archive .  Its biggest claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, where you can look at what a website looked like at some point in the past.  So you could go look at what the USA.gov website looked like in December, 1999 or see what this blog looked like in 2015 !  But the amount of artifacts deeply stored within the Internet Archive is endless! Why do this? Well, I'm a big fan of the public domain and open access.  I wrote an entire dissertation about making things more widely available and I spend a good part of January the last few years putting up new public domain films on my YouTube channel , which includes having to submit appeals to YouTube because companies are still claiming copyright. I like the idea of reminding folks of what's already out there to play with. I also needed a new challenge or focus for thi...