The Sources Room · the museums of the Urbanicity house
The Glossary
One canon for all galleries — the terms a visitor meets on the floor, each with a working definition and its references in fine print.
Format sample — 16 terms. The canon grows gallery by gallery.
A
Albumen print The dominant photographic print of the 19th century, made on paper coated with egg-white (albumen) and light-sensitive silver salts.
Aquatint An intaglio printmaking technique that produces broad areas of tone, resembling a watercolor wash.
Articles of AgreementMuseum I · Gallery VII Pirate Democracy The written compact signed by a pirate crew fixing shares, discipline, and compensation; shipboard constitutionalism.
C. Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates (1724; ed. Schonhorn, Dover 1999) 211-13; M. Rediker, Villains of All Nations (Beacon 2004) 60-82.
B
Bessemer ProcessMuseum II · Gallery VI The Vertical Revolution Blowing air through molten iron to make cheap bulk steel (1856); the enabling metal of rails, bridges, and the tall city.
T. J. Misa, A Nation of Steel (Johns Hopkins 1995) ch. 1-2.
C
CareeningMuseum I · Gallery II Ship Construction Beaching and heeling a ship to scrape weed and worm from the hull; pirates depended on remote careenages to keep speed.
B. Little, The Sea Rover's Practice (Potomac 2005) 33-36; Rediker 1987, 87.
Central Business DistrictMuseum IV · The City (planned) The commercial core of a city — peak land values, maximum accessibility; the natural habitat of the skyscraper.
R. E. Murphy & J. E. Vance, "Delimiting the CBD," Economic Geography 30 (1954) 189-222; R. M. Fogelson, Downtown (Yale 2001).
Concentric Zone ModelMuseum IV · The City (planned) Burgess's 1925 diagram of urban growth in rings from the core — CBD, transition, workingmen's homes, residential, commuter.
E. W. Burgess, in Park, Burgess & McKenzie, The City (Chicago 1925) 47-62.
E
EnclosureMuseum II · Gallery IV Industrial Revolution The legal conversion of common land to private holdings; a driver of wage labor and urban migration in the revolutionary centuries.
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Gollancz 1963) ch. 7; J. M. Neeson, Commoners (CUP 1993).
F
FluytMuseum I · Gallery I Ships of the Golden Age Cheap, lightly-crewed Dutch cargo carrier of the 17th c.; its economics reshaped Atlantic freight and made fat targets.
R. W. Unger, Dutch Shipbuilding before 1800 (Van Gorcum 1978) 24-38.
L
Letter of MarqueMuseum I · Gallery VI Operations A government commission licensing a private vessel to capture enemy shipping; the legal line between privateer and pirate.
OED, s.v. "marque, n.2"; M. Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (CUP 1987) 60-64; A. Konstam, Piracy: The Complete History (Osprey 2008) 137-41.
Lithograph A print made from a flat stone or metal plate, using the mutual repulsion of grease and water; often hand-colored in the 1800s.
O
Omnibus A large horse-drawn public carriage, the forerunner of the city bus.
P
PrizeMuseum I · Gallery VIII Commerce A vessel or cargo lawfully captured at sea; adjudicated and condemned in an admiralty prize court before sale.
R. G. Marsden, Documents Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea (NRS 1915-16); A. P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (Naval War College 1988) ch. 2.
S
Spinning JennyMuseum II · Gallery IV Industrial Revolution Hargreaves's multi-spindle wheel (c. 1764) that broke the spinner's bottleneck and began factory textile production.
R. C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (CUP 2009) 182-216.
Stereograph A pair of images: two nearly identical photographs mounted side by side. Seen through a stereoscope they merge into one three-dimensional scene. Wildly popular from the 1850s; by 1900 parlor stereo cards were a mass medium of travel, news, and everyday life.
Z
Zincograph A lithograph printed from a zinc plate rather than stone — cheap and common in popular broadsides.