Description: [edan-image:id=siris_arc_287602,size=250,left]As a child in England in the 1930s, Oliver Sacks enjoyed playing with his Uncle Abe’s spinthariscope. It was, he would later recall, “a beautifully simple instrument, consisting of a fluorescent screen and a magnifying eyepiece, and inside, an infinitesimal speck of radium.We take a look at the spinthariscope at the Smithsonian.
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives will be celebrating African American History Month throughout February with a series of related posts on THE BIGGER PICTURE. “I have engaged in almost Every Branch of work that is usual and unusual about S.I.”[edan-image:id=siris_sic_5597,size=150,left] These words, written by Solomon G. Brown to Secretary Spencer F. Baird on August 12,