Past Forward

Activating The Henry Ford Archive of Innovation

Posts Tagged 16th century

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No one knows how it came to The Henry Ford. Last fall, it appeared on the cataloger’s desk. She noticed the book’s age, but she didn’t think much of it.

Recently, the curators went looking for the oldest items in their respective collections. I joined in on the mission, setting out to find our oldest book. I even used the card catalog in the reading room, which is not something one has to do very often these days.

For an American history institution, the result was surprising: It was a French version of Vegetius’s De Re Militari (Concerning Military Matters), published in Paris in 1536. Continue Reading

Europe, 16th century, by Alison M. Greenlee, books