A few months ago I came across two wax cylinders in an antique shop in my home town of Rochester. They both had beautiful cardboard tube covers, one for Edison Bell, the other for Clarion, though as I was to discover the cylinders inside did not match the desciptions of the music on the outsideRead More
Blogs are addictive things. I’ve set up some five or six over the past few years, not to give my petty views of the world but instead devoted to individual subjects where I could report on research discoveries. A couple did quite well – The Bioscope provided information on early and silent cinema and wasRead More
I’ve been dreaming of going to the Olympic Games since I was eleven. The 1972 Games were such a thrill, not only for the sports themselves, but for the discovery of Olympic history. My heroes were the Olympians of years past: Ray Ewry, Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi, Jesse Owens, Wilma Rudolph, Abebe Bikila. I alsoRead More
This is the first post of my personal blog. I’ve maintained several blogs over the past few years – on silent films, poetry, online Shakespeare, moving images at the British Library, and a collective site that aimed to bring all of this activity into one place. It’s been too much. I’m simplifying what I writeRead More