Retrospection
Aero Meet Poster
Poster of the Harvard-Boston Aero Meet, Harvard Aviation Field, Atlantic, Mass., September 3-13, 1910. HUD 3123 (Box 2), olvwork366836. Harvard University Archives.
A Brief History of Ec 10
To the many undergraduates who take it, and the many graduate students who teach it, Ec10 is—for better or worse—a pillar of Harvard’s liberal arts education, perennially popular but oft-critiqued.
Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet Photos
Photographs of the Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet, September 3-13 1910. HUD 3123 (Box 1). Harvard University Archives.
When Air Racing Was a Collegiate Sport
Three extra days of dropping eggs out of aeroplanes had to be added to the academic calendar.
A 'Great, Grave, Noble Hall'
This saga began when the Barker Center was not the humanities mecca it is today, but rather the Harvard Union—a new social club on campus.
The Fraught Courtship of Harvard and MIT
Beginning just a year after MIT’s inception in 1861, Harvard introduced several proposals to combine the two schools. Forty-two years later, the schools were considering their sixth alliance attempt, and it looked like this one might actually succeed.
Operation Match
In 1965, two Harvard students created the very first computer-based matchmaking service in the United States. They called it Operation Match.
A Tale of Two Statues
"Someone tipped off Committee members about what they considered a scandalous secret: It had been designed by a woman."
When "Knock-Me-Down Fever" Hit Harvard
President Lowell knew he had a hard decision to make—one that would set a precedent for other institutions of higher education. He could either heed the warnings of doctors across the country or risk the health of his students.
Playing Their Cards Right: Lawsuits and Protecting The Harvard Brand
For the University, trademark infringement lawsuits are less about money and more about reputation. Harvard rarely seeks damages; its motivation is protecting the brand, not extracting money from usually small-time businesses and entrepreneurs.
Whispers in the Walls: The Story of Kirkland's Hicks House
Now eerily quiet, the building was once punctuated by the voices of revolutionaries, scholars, artists, and monks.
"Just One of the Boys": Edwin Land and The Polaroid Corporation
The photo, as well as approximately 1.5 million other Polaroid-related documents, resides in the Baker Library’s special collections, where Land left his company’s archive in its entirety after his death.
A Look at the Dark Room Collective and the Psychedelic Club
When the poet Kevin Young ’92 wrote in his book of cultural criticism, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, that “once you’re in, you’re in forever,” he did not mean Harvard, or his house, or a final club. Young meant the Dark Room Collective, one of the dozens of unofficial intellectual societies that have cropped up at Harvard over the centuries.
No More, America
The transcript of the debate was published as a small booklet shortly after. It is one of the only debates for which the entire transcript is available in the Harvard Archives.
Reaching Across Harvard's 'Color Line'
Segregation in sports went largely unchallenged until the end of the 1920s. One of the first to call for change was William Clarence Matthews.
Harvard's Real "Lasso of Truth"
Marston’s Lasso of Truth is just a comic book depiction of an earlier creation of his: the systolic blood pressure test, a precursor to the modern-day lie detector.
Apocalypse Then: Surviving Y2K at Harvard
“We were sitting there, stroke of midnight, watching it progress across the world."
A League of Her Own: Professor Alice Hamilton
By 1916, Hamilton was the world’s premier authority on lead poisoning research. Led by academic as well as humanitarian motivations, she worked in Chicago and Paris before receiving a letter in the mail she most likely thought would never come: an offer to work at Harvard University.
Godless Harvard
At the time, attendance at Harvard’s religious services was harshly enforced. Monitors sat in the back of the church, checking for absentees. According to the second chapter of the Laws of Harvard College, those who were late to Prayers were subjected to a “one Penny” fine and those who missed Prayers were fined “two Pence.”
The Harvard Men's League for Women's Suffrage
Olmsted and his peers were following the lead of Radcliffe women down the street. Maud Wood Park, a Radcliffe alum, had founded the College Equal Suffrage League—a club that became a nationwide organization—at the women’s college a decade earlier.