Chapter 1 Links and Resources: Historical Material

A cursory look at the endnotes reveals that many of our sources are available online. During the course of our research, we came across other sites that we want to bring to your attention. Even if your area of specialization or interest is not the ancient Middle East or antique machines, these sites are worth a look because they reveal both the depth and the creativity of online sources.

1. The Perseus Project: An Evolving Digital Library on Ancient Greece at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ is a growing database that contains a vast array of information, including texts, lexicons, images and maps on ancient Greece.

2. HyperHistory On-line at http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html presents three thousand years of world history with a combination of colorful graphics, lifelines, timelines and maps.

3. WWW History of Telecommunications at http://www-stall.rz.fht-esslingen.de/telehistory/ offers a comprehensive summary of the history of telecommunications created by a team of communications engineering students at Fachhochschule für Technik Esslingen, Germany.

4. The Early History of Data Networks at http://tmpwww.electrum.kth.se/docs/early_net/ is the Web version of a book about the optical telegraph by Gerard J. Holzmann and Björn Pehrson.

5. The Telegraph Office—for Telegraph Key Collectors and Historians at http://fohnix.metronet.com/~nmcewen/ref.html is a comprehensive site for collectors and telegraph historians. It contains annotated lists of many telegraph resources from Web sites to print resources.

6. The Labyrinth: A World Wide Web Server for Medieval Studies at http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html is widely considered the standard starting point for medieval studies on the Internet.

7. The Library of Congress Vatican Exhibit at http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/Main_Hall.html presents approximately two hundred of the Vatican Library's manuscripts, books and maps, "many of which played a key role in the humanist recovery of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome. The exhibition presents the untold story of the Vatican Library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of Rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the Renaissance."

8. A Hundred Highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The National Library of the Netherlands) at http://www.konbib.nl/100hoogte/hh-en.html is the Web site that accompanies A Hundred Highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, published in 1994. It is a jewel of Web site design as well as a fascinating collection of a hundred of the finest examples of book culture in the Netherlands. As the creators of this site acknowledge: "these objects,...except for temporary exhibitions, hardly ever leave their bookcases or cabinets because they are extremely vulnerable. A most regrettable state of affairs, for what is the use of having such treasures if they can not be displayed and admired."

9. The Classic Typewriter Page at http://xavier.xu.edu/~polt/typewriters.html is the creation of Richard Polt, an assistant professor of philosophy at Xavier University and collector of antique typewriters. A rich and well-designed Web site on the history of typewriters.

10. Charles Babbage Institute at http://www.cbi.umn.edu/ is a comprehensive source of scholarly information on the history of computing. The site is maintained by the Charles Babbage Institute Center for the History of Information Processing, a research and archival center at the University of Minnesota.