Stamp Collecting Research Articles

Photographica on Postage Stamps

Abstract Considering the impact photography has had on our culture, on science and on our everyday lives, the subject has long been treated as stepchild by the post offices of the world; however, this very fact makes assembly of the collection of photography-related stamps a relatively simple task.

Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments

* Winners and Losers * An Overview of Transactional Analysis * The Human Hunger for Strokes and Time Structuring * The Drama of Life Scripts * Parenting and the Parent Ego State * Childhood and the Child Ego State * Personal and Sexual Identity * Stamp Collecting and Game Playing * The Adult Ego State * Autonomy and Adult Ethics

The electronics industry on stamps

Many stamp collectors are taking a new approach to the world's most popular collecting hobby: thematic collecting. For anyone interested in electronics, the enormous gallery of stamps related to the industry can be an interesting and challenging topic.

Congenital Malformations, Papers and Discussion Presented at the Second International Conference. New York: The International Medical Congress, Ltd., 1964

This collection of the papers and discussion presented at the Second International Conference on Congenital Malformations fills the reader with awe and admiration for the immense strides made in the past few years in knowledge of this subject. Such an accumulation of learning, however, makes much of the book way beyond the capacity of the ordinary clinician, such as the reviewer, to fully understand, or at least to retain clearly in his mind. A lengthy first section deals with the chromosomes and their abnormalities and ably demonstrates how far research has gone in this field; perhaps it also demonstrates the limitations of the visual method of hunting for variations in chromosome appearance; its application in clinical medicine does tend to recall the old gibe about stamp collecting.

Early Islamic Glass Weights and Measures in Muntaza Palace, Alexandria

During a residence in Alexandria ten years ago as Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Alexandria, arrangements were kindly made through the Dean of the Faculty for me to examine a collection of Arabic glass weights and pharmaceutical measure stamps formerly in the royal collection and preserved in Muntaza Palace. Between January 18 and 30, 1954, I made several visits to the palace and took notes on all the glass objects in the collection. The majority were of the Fatimid and Mamluk periods, but 74 pieces were of the earlier period, that is of the 8th and early 9th centuries A.D., and it is these that are described in the following pages. I was unable to photograph these objects, but in most cases I made pencil rubbings and of course recorded diameters and weights. Attached by glue to all the pieces were bits of paper with letters and numbers, and these original inventory numbers are reproduced after the metrological data in the present catalogue. It should be observed that the weight of these scraps of paper and the glue, which I was not permitted to remove from the objects, adds one or perhaps two hundredths of a gram to the true weight of these specimens. While this collection is not a particularly large or outstanding one, it will be noted that there are no less than 22 hitherto unpublished pieces, and in any case the addition of all these pieces, with their recorded weights, to the corpus of early Arabic metrological objects, is of sufficient importance to warrant their publication. The following abbreviations are used in referring to published specimens : BM: Stanley Lane-Poole, Catalogue of Arabic Glass Weights in the British Museum (London, 1891). CAM I: George C. Miles, Contributions to Arabic Metrology, I: Early Arabic Glass Weights and Measure Stamps Acquired by the American Numismatic Society, ig^i-ig^6 (Numismatic Notes a d Monographs, No. 141, New York, 1958). CAM II: George C. Miles, Contributions to Arabic Metrology, II: Early Arabic Glass Weights and Measure Stamps in the Benaki Museum, Athens, and the Peter Ruthven Collection, Ann Arbor (Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 150, New York, 1963). Dudzus, 1961: Wolfgang Dudzus, Friihe umayyadische Glasstempel aus Agypten mit Beamtennamen in den Berliner Forschungen und Berichte, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 3/4, Berlin, 1961, pp. 18-24. Dudzus, Festschrift Kiihnel: Umayyadische glaserne Gewichte und Eichstempel aus Agypten in den Berliner Museen, Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst, Festschrift fur Ernst Kiihnel (Berlin, 1959), pp. 275-282. EAG: George C. Miles, Early Arabic Glass Weights and Stamps (Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. in, New York, 1948). EAG SuppL: George C. Miles, Early Arabic Glass Weights and Stamps: A Supplement (N mismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 120, New York, 195 1).

Chemical Plant Taxonomy.T. Swain

Previous articleNext article No AccessNew Biological BooksChemical Plant Taxonomy. T. Swain Herbert SternHerbert Stern Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 38, Number 4Dec., 1963 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/403969 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Kristin Johnson Natural history as stamp collecting: a brief history, Archives of Natural History 34, no.22 (Oct 2007): 244–258.https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2007.34.2.244

The Surprises in Somerset Maugham

"I CANNOT bring myself to judge my fellows," Somerset Maugham writes in The Summing Up, the review of his own long literary career. "I am quite content to observe them." He is decidedly averse to "preaching"-in other words, to a literature of ideas. He has made a creative principle of the observer's position in literature. If we are to believe him, Maugham has never passed judgment on people for what is evil in them and never praised the good. He has tried to remain dispassionate and objective, persistently cultivating the quality of tolerance-a virtue which suggests, if not insensibility, at any rate a certain lukewarm quality. With characteristic candor Maugham admits that human beings interest him only insofar as they furnish material for his work. It would seem therefore that he collects characters as the stamp collector collects postage stamps. Thus Maugham has long had the reputation of an astute, ironic and unerring master of his art, a gentleman writer who with a certain aloofness and indulgence takes stock of the vicissitudes of his fellow men.

A Letter of Clemenceau to His Wife by Balloon

Georges Clemenceau wrote the following letter to his wife during the siege of Paris in 1870-71, when he was the Mayor of Montmartre and she was living in a small town in western France. In showing his tenderness for his wife and infant daughter it reveals a gentle side of Clemenceau's character neglected by his biographers. The letter was carried out of Paris on the balloon General Chanzy, which departed from the Gare du Nord in the early hours of December 20, 1870. It came to earth in enemy territory, near Rothenburg, Bavaria, and the letter was never delivered. Eventually it fell into the hands of a stamp collector, M. Wesmann, and in 1933 he presented it to Michel Clemenceau, the son of its author.2 Clemenceau wrote the letter in good English, which he had perfected during his years of residence in the United States after the American Civil War. It was here, too, that he met the young lady to whom the letter was addressed-Mary Plummer Clemenceau. She was a student at Miss Aitken's Academy in Stamford, Connecticut, when he taught French and riding there. Differences in religious beliefs were at first an obstacle to their marriage, and he returned to France without her, but in June 1869 he came back, and the couple were married in a civil ceremony in New York. The marriage lasted for seven years, and three children were born of the unionone son, Michel, and two daughters,3 the elder of whom is the 'little Maddie of this letter.

U.S. Good Will Abroad Built Through Stamp Collecting

U.S. Good Will Abroad Built Through Stamp Collecting

Hugh Scott, 1885-1960

Hugh Scott was born on 16 September 1885, at Lee, London, S.E., the son of William Edward Scott (1855-1920), of the London Stock Exchange and grandson of George Robert Scott (1817-1888), also of the London Stock Exchange. His mother was Edith Truscott, daughter of James Chapman Amos Truscott, M.Inst.C.E., and of Jane Wyatt Truscott. On his father’s side he was a direct descendant of the family of Scott of Scot’s-Hall in East Kent, a family which has been traced back for some centuries. Hugh Scott’s own family circumstances were at first modest but his father prospered and in 1896 moved to London. The parents were cultivated, fond of art, music and literature and lovers of travel but had no particular interest in any branch of natural history. Scott’s development as a naturalist cannot in fact be attributed to any family or ancestral influence. Like many boys, he began to collect butterflies—at about the age of seven—but while this kind of thing is usually a passing phase, like stamp collecting, it became, with Hugh Scott, his life-interest. However, his special passion, the love of natural history expeditions, was probably fostered by the frequent vacation journeys on which he accompanied his parents, from about the age of ten. Throughout his life Hugh Scott was handicapped by rather vague but no less real ill-health. This caused his removal, first from a preparatory school in Blackheath and then from Westminster School to which he had won a classical entrance Exhibition, but left after little more than a term. Nevertheless, under a private tutor, he passed the London Matriculation 1st class, in 1903 and the Cambridge ‘Little-Go’, the same summer. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1903, passed the first M.B. examination in 1904, won an Exhibition at Trinity in March 1906 and a First Class in the Natural Sciences Tripos, Part I, in June 1906.

Medical Philately-Reply

<h3>To the Editor:—</h3> Dr. Bohrer's widespread effort to locate "Medical Pathfinders on Postage Stamps" indicates more than a casual interest in the subject, and is most pleasing to the writer. Unfortunately, this material has not been put into printed form. The vignettes which have been used byThe Journalare taken from an exhibit, so entitled, in the Scientific Assembly at the 1960 annual meeting of the AMA in Miami Beach. Additional items have been sent to the editor, and more will be provided if reader interest warrants. Dr. Bohrer's suggestion that the persons and places on stamps used on the Foreign Mail page be identified is an excellent one. This information is now being included in the footnote at the bottom of the page. Many of the physicians who visited the exhibit at Miami Beach expressed interest as stamp collectors. However, a surprisingly large number were not philatelists but

MEDICAL FILMS

Medifilm Report II: 16 mm., black and white, sound, showing time 33 minutes. Produced in 1960 by Fordel Films Inc., New York for the Schering Corporation and the American Medical Association. Procurable on loan (no service charge) from American Medical Association, Motion Picture Library, 535 North Dearborn St., Chicago 10. Produced for physicians who were unable to attend the 109th Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, this film features scientific exhibits, lectures, and panel discussions. Host-narrator is Dr. Ralph Jones, Jr., of the Dade County (Florida) Medical Society and Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami. Exhibits covered include those of Dr. E. Sterling Nichol of the Miami Heart Institute, who discusses long-term use of anticoagulants for the prevention and treatment of recurrent myocardial infarction; Dr. Donald Berkowitz of Philadelphia, who explains the difficult problems of diagnosis and management of the patient with chronic functional diarrhea; the Illinois State Medical Society, which presents a history of medicine in an unusual collection of postage stamps; Dr. Robert A. Kuhn of Morristown, N.J., who describes the diagnostic technique of retrograde brachial angiography in patients with stroke; and Dr. Gordon McHardy of New Orleans, who presents "current concepts of duodenal ulcer." Panel discussions are presented through interviews with Dr. Robert E. Olson, who reports on the nutrition symposium; and Dr. J. Walter Wilson of Los Angeles, who moderated a panel which discussed the use of griseofulvin in the treatment of certain fungous infections of the scalp, nails, groin, and feet. Viewers will also meet Dr. Philip Thorek of Chicago as he lectures on the importance of differentiating between duodenal and gastric ulcers, since "every gastric ulcer is a potential carcinoma until proven otherwise."

CYCLIZINE LACTATE (MAREZINE??)

*Section of Anesthesiology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas. ☆PAUL H. LORHAN, M.D., was born in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1931, and his doctor of medicine degree from Creighton University School of Medicine in 1935. Doctor Lorhan is Past President of the Kansas Society of Anesthesiology, Chairman of the Committee of Anesthesiology for the Kansas Medical Society and Chairman of the Subcommittee of Medical Schools of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. He was Past President of the Kansas City Society of Anesthesiology and Vice-President of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in 1955. He is the author of Geriatric Anesthesia. He received a silver medallion from the University of Santander for conducting a graduate course in anesthesiology in 1953. Doctor Lorhan is Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a member of Sigma Xi and A.O.A., and he is a stamp collector, with a special interest in collecting stamps pertaining to the history of medicine and archery. He and his wife, Grace, have one daughter and four sons.

In Memoriam: Theodore Sherman Palmer

ADMITTED to the American Ornithologists' Union at its fifth meeting, in 1888, and elected Fellow in 1901, Doctor Palmer was member or chairman of the Committee on Biography from 1915, and Secretary of the Union for twenty years (1917-1937). He was born at Oakland, California, January 26, 1868, his father being Henry Austin, and his mother Jane Olivia Day, Palmer. In 1886 they moved to Pomona, California, where the father started a bank. He desired that his firstborn follow a business career, which Theodore did in vacations and immediately after graduation from college, but other interests soon prevailed. Among boyhood hobbies were the collecting of stamps and of the eggs and skins of birds. His natural history collections, upon his departure from the state, went to the California Academy of Sciences, where they were destroyed in the catastrophe of 1906. Stamp collecting was continued throughout life and his accumulations of 54,000 varieties, with duplicates and associated materials, were presented to the United States National Museum.

Mexican Films: Their Past and Their Future

IN MEXICO, there is something about the way the light falls, about those immense sweeps of desert and the bald mountains shaped like the landscapes of another planet, about the cactus leaves made liquid by reflections, the photogenic hats, serapes, rebozos, the donkeys punctuating the loneliness, that has always, since before Eisenstein, attracted the film director and the cameraman. Indeed, by right of initiative, if not by ownership of the dollars to follow up the initiative, the true birthplace of the cinema industry might have been Mexico; and Hollywood might have been established not in California but on the High Plateau. In the early days of the camera when the French brothers Lumiere were experimenting with moving pictures, a young Mexican named Salvador Toscano Barragain, attracted by an advertisement, wrote to Paris and acquired a combination cameraprojector (he had to sacrifice his stamp collection to pay the duty), with which he began to exhibit newsreels and shorts imported from Europe. A flair for showmanship brought him a good profit and allowed him to make his own local newsreels as well. Yet

Surname Frequency and Stamp Collectors

Surname Frequency and Stamp Collectors

Lewis, Roger. Stamp collecting. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. 44 p. $1.50

Science EducationVolume 38, Issue 2 p. 183-183 Book Review Lewis, Roger. Stamp collecting. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. 44 p. $1.50 First published: March 1954 https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.3730380229AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume38, Issue2March 1954Pages 183-183 RelatedInformation

X-rays in philately.

As is well known, radiography provides a means for non-destructive analysis in many fields outside of medicine and medical research. Perhaps the industrial applications have received the most publicity, but x-rays have been similarly employed in such fields as archaeology, paleontology, geology, biology, conchology, zoology, and entomology. One of the best known non-medical and non-industrial uses of radiography is in art museums, where paintings are examined for analysis of the paint, canvas, paper, or wood base. Quite recently similar investigations have been made in the field of philately, or stamp collecting. A postage stamp consists basically of a design printed on a small piece of thin paper. It is important to the collector to be able to differentiate various characteristics of stamps. These include: (1) the method of printing, such as intaglio, letterpress, offset, photogravure, or other process; (2) the type of paper—woven, laid, ribbed, pelure, etc.; (3) watermark, if any, in the paper. Such information is essential in cataloguing stamps for collections or sales. Many stamps are of high value, selling for hundreds and even thousands of dollars if in good condition and genuine. Years ago clever counterfeiters created reproductions of quite a few of these high-value stamps. Nowadays the unscrupulous artisan will not forge an entire stamp, but he is able to increase the value of a genuine stamp by repairing torn or thin areas of the paper, adding paper to narrow margins (Fig. 1), replacing perforations that have been torn off, and chemically removing cancellations. He also will redraw the design where damaged (Fig. 2). Such repairs frequently are impossible of detection by the naked eye, the microscope or ultraviolet light. Hence, such alterations may be overlooked even by the advanced philatelist. The application of x-rays has made it possible to study the minute details of the design, paper texture, watermark, and cancellation of the postage stamp. One can facilitate determination of authenticity by comparing the radiographic image of a genuine with that of a questionable stamp. Repaired areas will usually show as clearly on the radiograph as would a fracture of a long bone. Such analysis is made possible by the use of three different technics: low-voltage radiography, autoelectronography, and electronography. Each procedure reveals certain aspects of the stamp not readily apparent with the others. Technics Low-Voltage Radiography: Because postage stamps are printed on such thin paper and offer so little absorption, x-rays of very long wave length must be employed. We have found that a beryllium window tube operated at 6 kv. is most satisfactory. The designs and cancellations of stamps are printed with inks whose color is derived from metallic pigments such as mercuric oxide, lead oxide, etc., or from organic substances such as carbon and the aniline dyes.

English Speaking Settlement of the Western Caribbean

1954of Pacific Coast Geographers ENGUSH SPEAKING SETTLEMENT OF THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN* James J. Parsons University of California, Berkeley By Way of Preface From Herodotus to Heyerdahl the far-off and seldom visited lands that have been but little known or understood have been a particular concern of geographers. The public is still apt to think of geography primarily in terms of geographical discovery and exploration and it is often a bit disillusioned upon learning how seldom geographers actually are concerned with far-away and romantic places and peoples. This, I think, is rather unfortunate. Certainly it was the prospect of satisfying deep-seated curiosities about distant and dimlyknown corners of the earth that lured many of us initially into this thing we call Geography, stimulated perhaps by a childhood collection of stamps or rocks or by those wonderful pictures in the National Geographic. When we saw that there was a chance to make a living at this sort of thing we became professionals. In the beginning we have had a good bit of the unabashed hedonist in us. The trouble seems to be that somewhere along the line we "get religion," we spend less and less time on the problems and areas that really excite us, the things we really would like to do, and more and more time doing the things that we are asked to do or feel we should do, usually because they seem to bear on local and contemporary problems for which answers are being demanded. We start taking ourselves too seriously, we seem to tense up, and we begin to merit the charge of the editor of that excellent new magazine of the human geography of the Southwest called Landscape that professional geographers as a group are inclined to be somewhat dull lot whose capacities for wonderment are not being properly exercised. As we concern ourselves increasingly with enumeration and description, we stop asking "why" and "how". What is worse, our descriptions too often lack life and imagination. The dearth of widely-read, semi-popular books on geography in America is in embarassing contrast to the situation in Europe. Nor can all the blame be laid to high publishing costs. Good writing, of course, requires practice as well as imagination and persistence. This may be why newspaper experience has been in the background of so many of our most respected geographers — Ratzel and Reclus, to name two. In the days when German geography was great, one or more field seasons or wanderjahre in an unfamiliar physical and cultural environment in one of * Presidential address of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Pullman. Washington. June 24, 1954. Th^ _':eld work on which this paper is based was carried out in the Spring of 1953 and vas supported by the Geographic Branch, Office of Naval Research. 4 Yearbook of The AssociationVol. 16 the further reaches of the earth was almost a requisite of graduate training. To be thrown into the midst of a totally unfamiliar setting, preferably one that has not been picked over too much by the "experts", and faced with the task of pulling together observations into a meaningful pattern and interpretation is certainly one of the best tests of geographical competence. I should tonight like to put in a good word for the thesis that to know ourselves and our own culture such a point of reference in other lands, in other cultures and even other times puts us on much firmer ground. And further, that the time to stake them out is in graduate student days, when enthusiasms and physical endurance are at full strength, before children, house payments, and heavy teaching loads make arm-chair geographers of us by force of circumstances or habit. At Berkeley, in a certain measure through the influence of Carl Sauer, we have found in Latin America a convenient and relatively inexpensive proving ground for graduate students which has been curiously little exploited by American geographers. It offers not only areas of rich geographical content but enticing problems in systematic geography as well. Moreover, a thesis based on extensive field study in Middle America or the Caribbean frequently has opened the door to a teaching job...

Stamp Collecting for Classicists

Stamp Collecting for Classicists