Exactly 70 years after the death of the modern world's most famous illusionist, photographs and documents from Houdini's legendary life appeared Oct. 31 on the Library's World Wide Web site.
The Houdini Collection is included in "The American Variety Stage," one of two new collections available on the Library's World Wide Web site. The other new collection is "Inside an American Factory: The Westinghouse Works."
Houdini, known during his life as the "Genius of Escape Who Will Startle and Amaze," bequeathed his collection of rare books and manuscripts on the history of magic and personal documents to the Library of Congress. Highlights are now accessible online as part of the National Digital Library Program, available at http://www.loc.gov/.
"The American Variety Stage" collection is a multimedia anthology illustrating vaudeville and other forms of popular entertainment, that thrived during the period 1870-1920. The materials include English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, souvenir playbills and programs, and paper print films. Theater posters and sound recordings will be added soon.
Early motion pictures of American factories produced from the Library's collections of rare paper prints are also also available on- line. (Before the amendment of the copyright law in 1912, motion pictures were registered for copyright protection following the procedure for still photographs. Motion picture producers were required to deposit with the Library paper contact prints made directly from the film negatives. These prints ranged in length from a few frames to the entire movie.)
The other collection, "Inside an American Factory: The Westinghouse Works" provides a glimpse of turn-of-the-century industrial life, including footage of working machinery and scenes of male and female workers on the job.
A detailed report on two new online collections will appear in a future issue of the LC Information Bulletin.
