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What Lord Kelvin Saw in Schenectady
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Yesterday we tried to identify the many, many scientific, engineering and industrial luminaries pictured in this photograph, taken at the Schenectady General Electric Works. So, what were they all up to? In September of 1897, Lord and Lady Kelvin were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Trask “at their country seat on Union…
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A Meeting of the Minds in Schenectady
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This picture of Schenectady’s industrial past, taken in 1897, pops up from time to time, usually vaguely captioned as “Lord Kelvin visits the General Electric works.” That Spencer Trask is in the picture is sometimes mentioned. (The New York Public Library has one decent source for the photograph.) That the captions rarely identify the…
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Albany’s Five State Buildings
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The Gazetteer and Business Directory of Albany and Schenectady counties for 1870-71 reported that there were five State buildings in Albany at that time: The Capitol, State Hall, State Library, Geological and Agricultural Hall, Normal School and State Arsenal. Of those five, exactly one survives. The first was the old State Capitol, which the…
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Albany’s Horse-Drawn Trolleys
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1893’s Street Railway Journal said that Albany was “one of the first cities in the United States to rise to the dignity of passenger transport by means of a street car system.” But street car didn’t yet mean electric trolleys; the earliest trolleys in Albany were actually horse-drawn, run by two different companies. The…
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American Express, Wells Fargo, and Albany
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Did you ever get hit with something you feel like you really should have known, something that should just be common knowledge, and yet you had no idea? So here’s one of those things: American Express was started in Albany. And, there was a Wells Fargo connection as well. (Have to give thanks to…
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It’s NOT 40 Miles from Schenectady to Troy
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Among the greatest songs of Gustave Kerker (No. 14 on the Honor Roll of Popular Songwriters, according to Billboard magazine, back in 1949) was a tune he wrote, with lyrics by Hugh Morton, for an 1896 show called “In Gay New York” that was featured at the Casino Theater in New York City. Even…
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The State Agricultural Society
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OR, WHERE TO SEND YOUR CORN STARCH Earlier this week we talked about how the original State Museum was in a space crunch from the first. It couldn’t have helped that it shared space with the New York State Agricultural Society in Geological Hall at State and Lodge streets. You might wonder just how…
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Kids These Days
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Are there any boys nowadays? We have sometimes been inclined to doubt it. Real, child-like, fun-loving boys, we mean; such as some we used to know in our early days; eager questioners upon subjects of natural history, and upon the mysterious complicities of strange machines, and upon the wonders of the earth and the…
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The State Museum and the Geological Hall
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Invariably, it seems that any discussion of the current New York State Museum engenders moans and wails from those who miss the “old” museum in the State Education Building, now nearly forty years gone, a magical place of dioramas, mastodon bones, and endless varieties of arrowheads. Well, there were earlier generations who may have…
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The Country Gentleman
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We’ve talked about some of the other popular newspapers from when Albany was awash in newspapers, but we’ve rarely mentioned The Country Gentleman. At one time, The Country Gentleman was one of the leading publications for the agricultural world, published in Albany. Luther Tucker was a Vermonter, born in 1802, who apprenticed as a…