"Books and Babies: Communicating Reproduction," Exhibition, Cambridge University Library, Through December 23, 2011

Picture books teach children the facts of life. We are always reading about reproduction. Reproduction also describes what communication media do—multiply images, sounds and text for wider consumption. This exhibition is about these two senses of reproduction, about babies and books, and the ways in which they have interacted in the past and continue to interact today. Before reproduction there was generation, a broader view of how all things come into being than passing on the blueprint of a particular form of life. Before electronic media there were clay figurines, papyrus, parchment, printed books and journals. The interactions between communication media and ideas about reproduction have transformed the most intimate aspects of our lives.

This from the new exhibition "Books and Babies: Communicating Reproduction," which will be on view at Cambridge University Library through December 23, 2011. For those of you who are unable tovisit in person (like myself!), you can console yourself with the excellent web exhibition--from which the above images are drawn--by clicking here. You can find out more about visiting the exhibition here.

Thanks to Nick Hopwood and Eric Huang for sending this to my attention!

Images:

1. Aristotle’s Works: containing the Master-Piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-Bearing Women. With various useful remedies (c.1850). Private collection, frontispiece and title page
2. From Omnium humani corporis… (1641), an anatomical booklet made up of woodcut illustrations copied from earlier books under the supervision of Walther Ryff, a prolific producer of texts intended for a broad range of readers.
   
3. Plate from Cesare Lombroso's textbook L’Uomo Delinquente ... (1889)

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" Like Victorian Baby Talk: Edison's Monstrous Talking Doll, circa 1890

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like Victorian baby talk. Especially when it sounds like this.

More, from the Go Report website:

While we may never know what the ‘must have’ Christmas gift was in 1890, we do know that it most assuredly wasn’t Thomas Edison’s talking doll.

Using miniature phonographs embedded inside, these “talking” baby dolls were toy manufacturers’ first attempt at using sound technology in toys. They marked a collaboration between Edison and William Jacques and Lowell Briggs, who worked to miniaturize the phonograph starting in 1878.

Unfortunately, production delays, poor recording technology, high production costs, and damages during distribution all combined to create toys that were a complete disaster, terrifying children and costing their parents nearly a month’s pay.

Edison would later refer to the dolls as his “little monsters.”

To hear this wee monstrous baby reciting, we are led to believe, "Little Jack Horner," click here. To read the entire story from which the above excerpt is drawn, click here. Sound from Archive.org.

Thanks to my lovely friend Matt Murphy for this charming holiday tale about a rare Edison commercial misfire.

"Bocal I and Bocal II," Ludovic Levasseur, Drypoint, 20th C

From top to bottom: Bocal I and Bocal II, by Ludovic Levasseur, Drypoint, 20th C.

Click on images to see larger versions. Via Elettrogenica.

Internal Medical Examination of a Woman, Circa 1800

Lovely images for which I could locate no attributions--any ideas?

Found on the wonderful E-L-I-S-E blog. Click here to see original post.

Click on image to see larger version.

"Traité complet d'accouchemens", A.A.L.M. Velpeau (1835)

Found on the wonderful E-L-I-S-E blog. Click here to see original post.

Click on image to see much larger version.