The Vault

Russell Banks’ notes about his early experiences writing on a word processor. Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.

On this sheet of paper, the novelist Russell Banks, who was working on an early version of the book that would become Affliction (1989), made some free-form observations—the beginning of what he called a “running journal”—about his reactions to his new word processor. Writing and learning to word process, he wrote, were “inextricably linked” at that point in his life, so he would “indulge [him]self in observations like these from time to time, just to work out how to use the thing to do the thing.”

Image courtesy of Stephen Romano.

Charles Dellschau, a Prussian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1853, was a butcher who lived in Houston. He spent the years between the turn of the century and his death in 1923 working on these scrapbooks, which combined news clippings, text, and art in visions of fantastic flying machines.

"Country's fuel shortage led to problems for motorists in finding gas as well as paying much more for it, and resulted in theft from cars left unprotected. This father and son, made a sign warning thieves of the possible consequences." Portland, OR, April, 1974. Photograph by David Falconer. National Archives.

This photo of a belligerent citizen and his son advertising their shoot-first attitude toward gasoline thieves is part of the Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored Documerica project (1971-77). The Documerica photographers were hired to record American relationships with the environment. Because they were on the job during the 1973 oil crisis, they ended up getting a great visual record of people’s reactions to gasoline scarcity.

Courtesy the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

These cards, collected by Langston Hughes and held with his papers in Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, advertised “rent parties” to be held in Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s.

Leather case for Charlotte Brontë's manuscript of Something About Arthur. The tiny manuscript sheets measure 5.7 cm by 9.3 cm. Photo by Anthony Maddaloni. Images courtesy of Harry Ransom Center.

Before they wrote world-famous novels, the four Brontë children—in descending order of age: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne—constructed elaborate fantasy worlds. The family was reclusive, and the children were educated at home; they spent most of their time with each other. Together, Charlotte and Branwell (who was the only Brontë brother) created a world called Angria, while Emily and Anne concentrated on an island they named Gondal. As part of their play, the siblings wrote many books, poems, and magazines.

This recording captures Harry Houdini delivering an introduction to his Chinese Water Torture Cell trick. The performer spoke into Thomas Edison’s phonograph in 1914, creating one of the only known records of his voice. The audio allows us to hear Houdini’s measured cadence and careful enunciation. (Houdini did star in several silent films demonstrating his escapes. You can see a few on YouTube.)

Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Online Archives, Broadsides & Ephemera Collection.

There is a persistent but erroneous belief that before the 1970s American women stayed out of the workforce. Here are two charts that bust that myth. They were published by the Women’s Bureau of the US Department of Labor, summarizing data from the 1920 Census on the number of women, single and married, in particular professions.

J.R. Eyerman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

These photos of Montgomery Clift reacting to his own performance in the 1949 film “The Heiress” were taken by LIFE photographer J.R. Eyerman. Shot with infrared film over two hours in a screening room, the strangely intimate images capture the star shifting around in his seat, pulling his legs up under himself, and watching the screen with his face partially shaded by his hands, as though apprehensive of what he might see.  (You can see all available frames from this shoot by browsing “related images” here.)

In this photo from April 1965, LBJ took two visitors to his Stonewall, Texas, ranch on a ride in his Amphicar. A West German firm built 3,770 of these land-to-water vehicles between 1960 and 1968, and the President loved his lagoon-blue model.

Brochure: "To all the Klans and Klansmen." C.T. Gilliam and the Kool Koast Kamp. Illustrated by Al Pearson. ca. 1924. Duke's "Emergence of Advertising in America" online collection.

This brochure advertises a Ku Klux Klan summer resort, to be convened in 1924 near Rockport, Texas. The pamphlet offers KKK members a roster of family activities, including swimming, “watermelon parties,” and “big game fishing.” The excursion would even be educational: Klan members might “learn…what is a hammerhead, a dog fish, a sea urchin, blow fish, a drum or a porpose [sic].”