You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Long before it became a premier residential community and a social, cultural, and commercial center, Birmingham was a pioneer village in search of an identity. The first three settlers, John West Hunter, Elijah Willits, and John Hamilton, established taverns within shouting distance of one another on a trail used by Native Americans and trappers. The isolated outpost was soon a fledgling village with a railroad, mill, and foundry. Early leaders had high hopes that Birmingham would one day become an industrial center to rival its namesake in England. But the Industrial Revolution largely bypassed Birmingham, instead landing on four wheels at nearby Detroit and Pontiac. By the 1920s, the quiet and cozy village of church bells, ice-cream socials, and tidy storefronts was well on its way to becoming one of the most desirable communities in the country.
None
An extensive work, this is based on original records, mainly of the Congregational and Episcopal churches of the period 1651-1800. About 30,000 marriages are recorded, arranged by town and thereunder by church, and they give the full names of the brides and grooms, and the marriage dates. Each of the seven volumes is indexed.
Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman investigate an array of instruments from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century that seem at first to be marginal to science--magnetic clocks that were said to operate by the movements of sunflower seeds, magic lanterns, ocular harpsichords (machines that played different colored lights in harmonious mixtures), Aeolian harps (a form of wind chime), and other instruments of "natural magic" designed to produce wondrous effects. By looking at these and the first recording instruments, the stereoscope, and speaking machines, the authors show that "scientific instruments" first made their appearance as devices used to evoke wonder in the beholder, as in...