Whether Apple was actually started by two guys in a California garage may be debatable, but what's certain is that the pioneering computer maker turned consumer electronics juggernaut has come a long way. Four decades after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak set out to turn computers into a tool that anyone could use, Apple has become the most valuable brand in the world, with some of the most successful products ever made. For full story click here.
Month: April 2016
Why Love Oral History?
Today we return to our ongoing series in which we ask a variety of oral history professionals and practitioners how they ended up in the audio world and why they love oral history. Today Adrienne Cain discusses how she went from future astronaut to oral historian, and the value she sees in preserving the spoken word. For full article click here.
Fiji Oral History Map
Bula! Welcome to the Fiji Oral History Map. The Map is a user-generated database of video, audio and written testimonials of Fijians worldwide. Whether you currently live in Fiji or come from there and now live in Australia, the United States, or elsewhere, whether you are Native Fijian, Indo-Fijian, other Pacific Islander, White, Chinese, or mixed-race, whether you are young or old or somewhere in between, we want to hear your story. The goal of the Fiji Oral History Map is to reflect the diversity and expansiveness of the Fijian community worldwide and to provide a forum for members of the community to share their stories and connect globally. See website here.
Seattle’s Working Women of World War II
After Pearl Harbor, the United States went to war, and Seattle became a total blackout town – no lights anywhere at night. Spotters scanned the skies and scoured the waters of Puget Sound, looking for Japanese war planes and submarines. People of Japanese descent were sent to internment camps inland. Soon, everything became scarce, from butter to sugar to cloth. And Seattle’s industries mobilized to produce the machines of war, with women leading the charge to build them. For full story click here.
Kevlar Research & Development
Wilmington, Delaware — March 2016 — How a novel polymer in the laboratory became a socially transformative product in the marketplace is the topic of a new oral history prepared by Hagley Museum and Library. “Kevlar R&D: An Oral History” features 13 hours of reminiscences that form a rich study in the business and technology of innovation, going back to chemist Stephanie L. Kwolek’s 1965 discovery of Kevlar. Through many surprising twists, the six subjects talk about how they helped make Kevlar serve the complicated and occasionally contradictory interests of the DuPont Company, scientific inquiry, the marketplace, and the general public. The order of the interviews follows the development of Kevlar from a laboratory oddity to the production line. The six are chemists Herbert Blades and Wesley Memeger, Jr.; engineers Donald Sturgeon, Bob Wolffe, and Ted Merriman; and executive Irénée du Pont, Jr. For full story click here and video oral histories click here.
Goodnight John-Boy
"Good night, John-Boy." If those words mean nothing to you, you're probably under 40. If they do, you're probably a boomer, to whom they are unforgettable, bound to bring back visions of a better time and a better place, an era, in the words Thursday of one fan of The Waltons, when "family was so much more appreciated." That era, however, wouldn't be the '60s or the '70s. The setting of The Waltons, from which "Good night, John-Boy" derived fame, belongs to the Depression, where it was set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, just below the "taller ridges … rimmed with a fading autumn silver," as Earl Hamner Jr wrote in his semi-autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain, from which The Waltons was based. For full story click here.