Rauner Special Collections Library

We have a lovely first edition of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations published 250 year ago in March of 1776. A lot happened that year and the Enlightenment was having a pretty dramatic (one might say revolutionary) impact across Europe and into the colonies. Oddly, it had never occurred to me to think of Wealth of Nations as a product of the Enlightenment until about ten years ago when a faculty member in the Economics department asked me to talk about the book next to Diderot's Encyclopédie.

On a Tuesday in May of 1831, President Nathan Lord of Dartmouth sat down at his writing desk to pen an awkward letter to Reverend Jacob Cummings, a member of Dartmouth's class of 1819 who was a friend of Lord's and the minister of a small congregation in Stratham, New Hampshire. Cummings had written to Lord to inquire about a recent incident involving Daniel Clark, a member of the class of 1834 and a Stratham boy. Lord began by telling Cummings that although he was "unwilling to give pain", he felt "obliged to correct [Cummings'] impressions" about the story that Clark had told him.

A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to be near the path of totality for a total solar eclipse. Upper Valley residents may have dealt with traffic and crowds, but a jaunt north of about 56 miles would get you in range of something quite spectacular. Today we're looking at a pair of artifacts from someone who traveled much, much further to see the same kind of event. In August of 1896, a total solar eclipse took place that was visible from parts of Russia, Japan, and northern Scandinavia.