I am laura shepard, director of events and im pleased to welcome you to our author event for comers new book grothman. In conversation with San Francisco columnist, we are pleased to have them here for the first time. I would like to find out how many of you have been to the Mechanics Institute before and how many are new . Please come back and we will give you a free tour of the library and show you the Incredible Library on the second and third floors. The International Chess club is down the hallway and we will tell you about our history. We were founded in 1854 and at the Mechanics Institute we have ongoing author events like this one, the International Chess club with their ongoing lectures and tournaments and book clubs and writers groups and on friday nights, we hope you will join us for all our cultural events. I would like to introduce our guest Roland De Wolk, an Investigative Reporter in print, broadcast and online journalism and a historian university adjunct and author. Du
The lower wood high is within inches of where the original ceremony was held on may 10th, 1869. Included on this high is a plaque that lists many of the dignitaries from that company. Including Leland Stanfords name. Another thing you can see here at the site is the connection with the resources and that wouldve been available. The two companies building the railroads we have mocked up everything to try to make it as authentic as possible. If you look on the west side you will see precut ties. The Central Pacific had plenty of wood in the serum that is and because of that they had sawmills and they cut all of their ties and brought them down from the mountain. The Union Pacific coming from the east had to hand cut their ties wherever they can find wood. Not a lot available in the areas so they you can see them right here how they would just cut them and bring them out when they could. The Transcontinental Railroad was happening at the end of the victorian age as you are going into the
Completed. This spot right here marks by the lower wood high is within inches of where the original ceremony was held on may 10th, 1869. Included on this high is a plaque that lists many of the dignitaries from that company. Including Leland Stanfords name. Another thing you can see here at the site is the connection with the resources and that wouldve been available. The two companies building the railroads we have mocked up everything to try to make it as authentic as possible. If you look on the west side you will see precut ties. The Central Pacific had plenty of wood in the serum that is and because of that they had sawmills and they cut all of their ties and brought them down from the mountain. The Union Pacific coming from the east had to hand cut their ties wherever they can find wood. Not a lot available in the areas so they you can see them right here how they would just cut them and bring them out when they could. The Transcontinental Railroad was happening at the end of the
Thats facing all of the Museum Managers and people that are responsible for generating, producing, and collecting objects that would likely go into a museum sitting such as this is how much do we need to keep . How many things do we need to have to tell the american story and its the great conundrum of our protection. There are those who believe that maybe the time has come to start reducing the amounts of things we collect and be more judicious in how we collect them and what we collect. Is it inappropriate to use representative samples, say at an archaeological site, where things are left at the Vietnam Veterans memorial. Do we need to keep everything . And there are those in the professional field that think we need to keep everything and theres others who think sampling is the more judicious and longterm strategy. Because there is a point of diminishing return. It costs money. There is an inherent cost to storing all of these objects. In many cases the costs can be prohibitive and
And because of that, they had saw mills and they would cut their ties, brought them down from the mountains. Pas the Union Pacific coming from the east had to hand cut their ties wherever they could find wood. Not a lot available in many of the areas so they would split them. You can see how they would cut them and bring them out when they could. The Transcontinental Railroad was happening at the end of the victorian age, as you were going into the industrial age. And it was a perfect time for the United States because when that Transcontinental Railroad was completed, it made a major impact in the Industrial Development of this nation. The complete construction took just over it was about six and a half years. So from 1862 to 1869. The time period before they started building the railroad would have been when a lot of people were coming out after the gold rush, silver rush was really taking off. We were also in the middle of the civil war when the act was signed to start this project.