History of science weblinks - Online exhibitions and miscellaneous
• A labour of Love : History of midwifery in NZ
• http://www.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/currentexhibitions/midwifery/introduction.shtml Archives New Zealand publishes A Labour of Love, an online exhibition celebrating 100 years of professional midwifery in New Zealand. The exhibition uses an interesting range of primary source material to illustrate the history of midwifery from the passing of the 1904 Midwives Act to the present. The exhibition is divided into three main sections profession, practice and place, which touch on topics such as legislation, training, pre and ante-natal care, and St Helens hospitals. There is also a gallery of all of the documents digitised for the site, which include documents, letters, advertisements, cartoons and photographs.
• A thin blue line : the history of the pregnacy test kit
• http://www.history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/index.html The Thin Blue Line is an online exhibition published by the Stetton Museum, Office of National Institutes of Health (NIH) History in collaboration with the Centre for History and New Media. It looks at the history of the home pregnancy test kit in the United States, and the researchers who contributed to its release in 1978. On the site are interviews with Judith Vaitukaitis and Glenn Braunstein who worked at the NIH during the 1970s on reproductive hormone studies and hCG research, and were instrumental to the development of the pregnancy test. A timeline on the site charts pregnancy testing over the centuries, and the advertisements section features digitised images of several 1970s and 1980s magazine ads. Along with the glossary and suggested reading, there is also a forum where people can submit their own stories of using home test kits, building up an archive of first hand accounts.
• A romantic Natural History
• http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/ This is the website for A Romantic Natural History, which has been developed by Ashton Nichols of Dickinson College in the United States. The site aims to survey relationships between literature and natural history in the century before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Natural Species (1859). The site provides background information on the work of natural historians from Aristotle and Pliny in the ancient world, through to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This survey takes account of landmark scientific developments, and the interplay between science and mythology. The main focus of the resource is the development of natural history during the Romantic period. Ashton Nichol looks at the impact of particular scientists on the imaginations of writers such as Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, John Keats and William Wordsworth. The site is constructed so that it is possible to search literary authors by name, or through a list of major scientists of the period. These include Erasmus Darwin and Henry David Thoreau. The site is attractively designed with interesting images relating to early natural history. There is also a searchable list of artists' names for those working on pictorial representations of the natural world in the Romantic period.
• A short History of the development of ultrasound in ob&G
• http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/history.html This site has been created by Joseph Woo. It provides a chronological overview of the history of the development and use of ultrasound in obstetrics and gynecology. Much of the information on the site has been written by the site creator, although links to external sites are also used where appropriate. As well as providing a chronology the site has an index which divides the information into the following categories: Early developments in ultrasonics; Short histories of the developement of medical ultrasonics in pioneering countries; Biographies and mentions; Gray scale and scan converter; The Real-time Scanner; The Transvaginal Scanner; Early Doppler ultrasound; Applications; Amniocentesis; Three dimensional ultrasound; Tissue characterization; Bio-safety; and Others.
• AIDS History Project
• http://www.library.ucsf.edu/collres/archives/ahp/ The AIDS History Project has been established by a collaborative group with the aim of safeguarding and preserving material related to the history of AIDS in San Francisco. This website, published by the University of California at San Francisco, provides a home page for the project, which is working to compile a history of the establishment of community support and care networks in the city during the first years of the AIDS crisis. These services have come to be known as the 'San Francisco model' of AIDS care, and this site publishes details of the current research being undertaken into this area and links to resources on the AIDS epidemic in 1980s San Francisco. There is also a useful chronology of events, spanning from the advent of the disease in the United States in 1981, until 1988 when the epidemic in the United States reached its peak.
• Alan Turing.net
• http://www.alanturing.net/ This website from the Turing Project may be viewed via the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, or the University of San Francisco. This dual hosting is designed to make accessiblity straightforward for researchers globally. The site makes available online digital facsimiles of key primary texts in the history of computing, with special reference to the pioneering work of Alan Turing (1912-1954). The articles are indexed under four main headings, within which they are listed chronologically. In addition, the site offers various reference articles concerning the life and career of Alan Turing, as well as information about conferences and discussion groups, although it is not updated regularly enough to ensure that these are current. A list of links to other relevant sites is also available.
• Alexander G. Bell's path to the Telephone
• http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/albell/ Alexander Graham Bell’s Path to the Telephone is an innovative attempt to characterise the process of "invention" or creative discovery leading to a recognisable finished artefact, taking as its case study the telephone, as developed by Alexander Graham Bell (1847 –1922) in the 1870s. The site depicts the process using a flowchart structure, with clickable image maps providing successive levels of detail: through a mixture of diagrams (often reproduced directly from Bell's work), commentary and symbolic illustration, the viewer can trace the complex influences and developments involved. The site was created by a group of faculty and students connected with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia [US], led by Michael E Gorman. Historians concerned at the teleological approach suggested by the site's title will hardly be reassured by the authors' early contention that Bell's route to the telephone was "more linear" than his competitors' on account of his "scientific" approach; in fact, however, the content is by no means historiographically simplistic. On the contrary, the introduction contains a thoughtful discussion of how the influences leading to an invention might be characterised: a series of "mental models" are proposed, but it is made clear that these are not to be taken as prescriptive. The purpose of this method of analysis is to trace the roles of diverse sources of inspiration in Bell's thinking, such as the apparatus developed by Helmholtz to simulate vowel sounds, Bell's role as a teacher of the deaf and human aural anatomy. Other important features of the site are an unannotated list of sources on Bell, the telephone, and the art of invention; and a complete transcript and facsimile of the first patent taken out by Bell on a telephonic device (dated 7 March 1876). A link to the text of a follow-up patent, stored elsewhere on the University of Virginia server, was broken at time of cataloguing: the site is now several years old and has a number of problems due to outdated links, the most serious being an inoperable search facility. While the site may be of some help to students seeking background detail on Bell and the telephone, it is not chiefly designed for this purpose, and is more useful for its contributions to the representation of invention. The analytical material will be of interest to research academics in the history or philosophy of technology, and the site might easily be used to provide inspiration for student work.
• American social Higiene Posters
• http://special.lib.umn.edu/swha/IMAGES/home.html American Social Hygiene Posters is an online database of public health poster images dated between 1910 and 1970 illustrating various U.S. government edicts to the public over issues of morality, heath, and hygiene. The posters are taken from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University Libraries Social Welfare History Archives collection. The images can by searched by keyword, title, subject or ID, or browsed by period, which covers 1910 to the 1950s, or by subject. Amongst the subjects covered are dance, family health, friendship, health, health education, home economics, hygiene, mental health, military education, physical fitness, prostitution, reproduction, sexual abstinence, sexual transmitted diseases, women, and health posters from the First and Second World Wars. There are also posters of Robert Falcon Scott, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt as examples of healthy role models. Each poster image is accompanied record information such as when it was published, where it's held, and its title and identifier. The images can be enlarged, but unfortunately for many of the posters not to a size large enough to read the text on them easily.
• Anesthesia and pain history resources on the Internet
• http://www.anes.uab.edu/aneshist/anesnet.htm Anesthesia and Pain History Resources on the Internet is a long page of links to various sites relating to the history of anaesthetics. Some of the links are to external sites, but many are to resources held within the University of Alabama's Department of Anesthesiology. Of particular interest are the texts of about 20 nineteenth-century accounts and treatises on the use of anaesthetics, the earliest dating from 1846. Other local resources include: lists of historical papers delivered to the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) annual meeting; bibliographical updates from the Bulletin of Anesthesia History; and an anaesthesia history calendar. The site also hosts a discussion forum with searchable archives. The external links direct the user to societies, essays, and other such resources. It appears that links are not updated very regularly but the the list of www links is impressive http://mla-hhss.org/histlink.htm
• "Bring back your party safe " : Medecine and Health on the Lewis and Clark expedition
• http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/historical/medical_history/lewis_clark/ Bring your party back safe" is an online exhibition created by the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia. The exhibition looks at the 1803 Lewis and Clark exploration into the U.S. West, concentrating on the medicine and medical theory employed by the Corps of Discovery to promote health and prevent disease and injury throughout the expedition. The site is easy to navigate and the text is engaging and well-written. Amongst the areas covered are the background to the expedition, and biographies of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Sacagawea and York. Most of the information relates to the medical aspects of the expedition, discussing accidents, injuries and diseases, the treatments for these, the medical supplies brought on the journey, and Native American relations.
• History of geology and geosciences
• http://veneux.ensmp.fr/cofrhigeo//en.htm This site host information on the history of geological sciences and activities of the French Cofrhigeo (Comité français d'Histoire de la Géologie). It is organized in several parts: an introductory page with a search engine • News: Information on forthcoming meetings, congresses and exhibitions devoted to Earth science history ; program of the Cofrhigeo meetings. • Publications: Presentation of the Cofrhigeo publications, in particular the "Travaux du Comité français d'Histoire de la Géologie" (with tables). • Books: Presentation of about a hundred books in French, English, Italian, Spanish or German. • Information and links: with approximately 150 links for other Web sites, with a search engine. • Messages: You can read and make announcements on your activities and publications related to the Earth science history. • Bibliography: This bibliographical data base contains bibliographical references related to the history of geology, mainly in France and neighbouring countries.
• Paleontology without walls *
• http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/index.php The University of California Museum of Paleontology website provides a vast amount of information on the diversity of life, the history of life on earth, biographies of contributors to evolutionary thought, online exhibits and more. There is also a glossary and web lift for quick help. With nearly 2000 pages dense with information, it is one of the best resources for organismal biology on the web.
• Selection of letters : Florence Nightingale
• http://clendening.kumc.edu/dc/fn/ This website currently provides access to nearly forty letters written by Florence Nightingale. The site has been created by the Clengening History of Medicine Library at the University of Kansas in order to make its collection of Florence Nightingale letters freely available.T he original letters have been scanned and are available from the site as facsimile images. These images are accompanied by a transcription of the text. Further research is being carried out on the letters and as this information become available footnotes are being added. The letters can be viewed chronological, alphabetically or can be searched. The site also has a list of links to other sites related to Florence Nightingale.
• Vatican exhibit
• http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/Vatican.exhibit.html ROME REBORN: THE VATICAN LIBRARY AND RENAISSANCE CULTURE presents some 200 of the Vatican Library's most precious 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. The exhibit will be on display in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress from January 8, 1993 through April 30, 1993. The online exhibit will be available by anonymous FTP and the World Wide Web indefinitely. (The current location of the World Wide Web exhibit may change, however.) The exhibit is divided into nine (9) sections: The Vatican Library, Archaeology, Humanism, Mathematics, Music, Medicine & Biology, Nature Described, A Wider World I: How the Orient Came to Rome, and A Wider World II: How Rome Went to China. Each section contains exhibit text and separate image files for each object. This online exhibit includes not only objects from the Library of Congress exhibit, but also the alternate objects (brought from Rome to be used if there were a problem with one of the primary objects) and items omitted later in the planning process. The exhibit text consists of the captions used in the exhibit at the Library of Congress (LC). Each caption includes the Vatican Library's accession number, the pages displayed (where appropriate), the Online Exhibit Number (which is the corresponding image file's filename), and the Object List Number (used in setting up the exhibit). A 336 page catalog, "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture" is available from the EXPO Book Store There is a complete list of objects found in both the exhibit and the catalog. This index is organized by the Vatican Library's accession number and for each object lists a brief title, the Plate Number (used in the catalog), the Online Exhibit Number (image filename), and other control numbers used in planning the exhibit at LC.