Posted on 02/18/2005 12:18:43 PM PST by NormsRevenge
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Since being founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the American Philosophical Society has collected just about every kind of trinket, piece of Americana and oddity imaginable.
The problem is, much of it has never been on display. So after trolling through its vast collections, the group has assembled and put on exhibit a broad array of artifacts, historical documents, inventions and other items, many of which have been tucked away for decades.
"It's extremely broad in that way," curator Sue Ann Prince said of "Treasures Revealed: 260 Years of Collecting at the American Philosophical Society," which opened Friday and runs through Dec. 11. "What we did was do a lot of looking through our collections."
The results are so broad they're hard to put into categories.
A New Testament bound in human skin - likely that of an executed convict - is displayed in glass casing not far from the portrait of George Washington that appears on the dollar bill.
Blueprints for ENIAC, an early electronic digital computer developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, hang steps away from a map depicting the Revolutionary War's deciding battle of Yorktown.
An unknown photographer's painful images of atomic clouds rising up after the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests share a room with pages of negotiations between American Indians and Pennsylvania colonists from the mid-18th century.
Divided into themed sections, the displays cover natural history, the nation's founding, art, inventions, technology, artifacts and other areas.
There are chicken feathers saved by poultry geneticist Hubart Goodale and John I. Hawkins' patent polygraph, an early 19th-century device with two mechanically linked pens that allowed an author to have a replica of his writings created. The idea never took off.
The society, located in the heart of Philadelphia's historic district, was founded by Franklin "to promote useful knowledge" and served as a national library, patent office, museum and academy before the nation's capital was moved to Washington, D.C.
Today, it remains a source of research in biology, genetics and other revolutionary sciences. Invitation-only members from a variety of fields include Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, architect I. M. Pei and 93 current Nobel laureates.
In November, the society wrapped up a yearlong exhibit of the nation's natural history, including early examples of taxidermy, dried plants and seeds from Lewis and Clark's expedition, and illustrations by famed naturalists John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson.
Congressman Billybob
Thanks for the post. This should make for a nice little trip this summer.
Do hope they display Franklin on how one rarely comes across any Infidels or Atheists here in America-though not
part of his Philosophic society work it would be sure to
catch the interest of the so called Freethinkers and stinkers.
A good display would be Franklin and Jeffersons submitted
ideas for the National seal. Would tend to beard the
current crop of mere politicians trying to maintain their godless secular society.
"Do hope they display Franklin on how one rarely comes across any Infidels or Atheists here in America..."
Interesting. How anyone can have even a passing knowlege of the founding of our nation and not believe that "Separation of Church and State" is nothing more than a liberal fabrication positively escapes me.
A bit of trivia:
"A dying man can do nothing easy." - Benjamin Franklin's last words.
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