August 2009 Archives

Steve

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In 1987, I spent the summer working in D.C. as a college intern for the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution.  The purpose of the Commission was "to plan and develop activities appropriate to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787, the formation of the three branches of government, and the Bill of Rights."

I worked in the media department, and it was typical college intern work.  The highlight of my summer and the memory that remains was attending one meeting of the Commission. I sat around a long table with political powerhouses from the left, right, and center of the political spectrum. Chief Justice Warren Burger   chaired the Commission  (PDF) (incidentally, his voice sounded exactly like Gregory Peck), but other members of the Commission included Lynne Cheney, Phyllis Schlafly, Senator Strom Thurmond, and Senator Edward Kennedy, who sat across from me.

It was intimidating to say the least.

Why did these people choose to volunteer their time on this Commission? I'm sure they had enough to keep them busy. What resonates most with me is the noble idea that what brought all these people together to serve on the Commission was not just their belief in the Constitution as an important document in shaping our history, but in the importance of history itself.

Everyone in that room participated in the Commission because they recognized the relevance of the U. S. Constitution to the American way of life. Accomplishments of the Commission included sponsoring scholarly and educational programs all over the country, interviewing presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan on their insights into the Constitution, and creating the Trust for the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution to continue the mission of civic engagement.

For the next few days, the news media will recount the legacy of Ted Kennedy with his great accomplishments in the Senate  (PDF), but Kennedy did a great deal to preserve U. S. history. Notably, he helped secure the passage of legislation that preserved historic sites in Massachusetts, resulting in the expansion of the Minute Man National Historic Park, the National Trails System, and Lowell National Historical Park (more of his accomplishments are in the "accomplishments" link above).

Whether or not you choose to celebrate any number of anniversaries from Lincoln's birthday  to Oregon's sesquicentennial  to the Pony Express, history museums and heritage sites throughout the nation could use your help and participation.

Besides, you just never know when you sit at a table who might also be a fan of history .

Charles

Anonymous left this comment on my Lewis and Clark piece last week:

I was interested in the books you were reading. How about creating an on-going list of "What the WF Historians are Reading"? Could be useful for those with long commutes to/from work. Thanks.

First off, I invite everyone to tell us what's on your reading list. Let us know why they're good or bad.

That said, here you go, Anonymous:

Phyllis in Minneapolis

• Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California by Frances Dinkelspiel. Interesting, if sometimes too tightly focused.
• The Confusion: The Baroque Cycle Volume Two  by Neal Stephenson. An "historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love-story." Stephenson is one of my fave authors.
• Hard Road West, History and Geography along the Gold Rush Trail  by Keith Heyer Meldahl. Just finished this. Fabulously readable historical science — loved it!
• The War of the World, Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West  by Niall Ferguson. Stalled in the middle of this stunningly good scholarship, but Holy I-Need-Anti-Depressants-Now, Batman!
• The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung, A Chinese Miner in California, 1852  by Laurence Yep. Looking forward to this young adult book. I heard from a visitor that it references Wells Fargo, so I've got to check it out.

Steve in Portland
(Currently reading on the MAX  to and from work.)

• "Ho for California! Women's Overland Diaries" from the Huntington Library , edited by Sandra L. Myres. From "Museums and Schools" Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2009)

Glen in San Francisco

• The Victorian Internet  by Tom Standage. A fascinating comparison between the invention of the telegraph and the internet. A good, light read.

Allan in San Diego

• Returning to Earth  by Jim Harrison. Recently finished this historical fiction of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, told from four perspectives in a mixed race family, whose patriarch is dying. One of Harrison's best.
• Strangers in a Stolen Land  by Richard Carrico. Just started this story about the Indians of San Diego County.

Casey in San Diego

• Historic Resource Study: Pony Express National Historic Trail  by Anthony Godfrey, Ph.D., for the National Park Service. A little dry, but a good overview of the founding and running of the Pony Express. Includes biographies of William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell, founders of the California Overland Mail Company & Pikes Peak Express (a.k.a. the Pony Express).
• A New Look at Wells Fargo, Stagecoaches and the Pony Express  by W. Turrentine Jackson. More pamphlet than book, it is a well-written defense of Wells Fargo's role in western stagecoaching and the Pony Express.
• Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express  by Christopher Corbett. Love it! This book is a great history of the Pony Express. The author uses many different sources and presents many different sides to the stories and legends that have been built around the Pony Express. The book is written with a sense of humor and without stuffy "historian speak."
• A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express: With Other Sketches and Incidents of Those Stirring Times  by William Lightfoot Visscher.
• Pony Express Versus Wells Fargo Express, or Hoof Prints That Can Not Be Eroded By Time  by Waddell F. Smith. A counter-argument to Jackson.
• The City of the Saints; And, Across the Rocky Mountains to California  by Sir Richard Burton, a stage rider along the Pony Express route and documenter of Salt Lake City and the Mormons.
• Seventy Years on the Frontier  by Alexander Majors, co-founder of the Pony Express.

Tom in Anchorage

• Fifty Miles from Tomorrow  by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley. Willie Hensley grew up on the shores of the Bering Sea, at a crossroads between ancient and modern ways of life. His descriptions of hardships — living under 9 months of winter, the severity of accultration, and the transformation of a territory into a state — are enlightening at the very least.
• Physics for the Rest of Us  by Roger S. Jones. Exploring ways to describe time and relationships in nature, to young people, led me to this wonderful book. It is filled with great explainations most anyone can understand.

Juan in Los Angeles

• Pony Express: The Great Gamble  by Roy S. Bloss. Getting caught up on the PX before next tear's sesquicentennial.

Bev in San Francisco

• The Great Influenza  by John Barry. Thought I would get ready for fall flu season by re-reading this one. The book is great: Who knew the history of a flu epidemic could be so thoughtful and intriguing?

Bill in San Francisco

• American Made: The Enduring Legacy of the W.P.A. , by Nick Taylor. Although definitely favorable to FDR and the New Deal, there are some interesting parallels to current events here.

Amanda in Phoenix

• 1491: New Revolutions of the Americas before Columbus  by Charles Mann. Currently reading. It is a few years old and has been on my reading list since it first came out. Very interesting insight into the lives and cultures of native peoples.
• Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War  by Tony Horwitz. I recently finished this one, which I thought was a truly unique look into Southern Civil War culture.

There you have it, Anonymous. You asked, you got!

Charles

In August, 1774, Meriwether Lewis was born. Four years earlier in August, William Clark was born. (Both in Virginia.) In August, 1803, Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery  was moving its way up the Missouri River. A year after that, the men prepared to meet with the Shoshone  people of Sacagawea , their guide.

I am reading Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage:  Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. (New York: 1996) Ambrose is a fine storyteller, arguably the most important attribute for an Historian (Social Sciences strictures  notwithstanding).

Now, I'm also reading Blue Highways: A Journey into America  by William Least Heat-Moon (Boston: 1982) and David M. Kennedy's Freedom from Fear:  The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945  (New York: 1999). The three have in common a talent for narrative — the way these writers tell the story is as compelling as what they are telling.

Anyway, Lewis  and Clark  took their Corps across the continent and back, over a three-year journey that mapped waterways, noted terrain and encountered original Americans. The expedition hunted a lot — I mean both often and in volume. The 30 or so people on the trek seemed to bring down several deer in several hunting parties. Either they ate a lot or wasted a lot, I can't be sure.

The expedition spent 4-month winters in camp, but moved as soon as possible and kept on till the last possible day. The Corps kept volumes of journals , accumulated a grand amount of scientific specimens, and sent the lot of it back East regularly. When they ended up in Oregon, watching the Columbia River meet the Pacific, they were as awestruck in that moment as you hope they'd be.

I remember learning of Lewis and Clark in elementary school. They are surely names in the American canon, and everyone knows they explored the country way back when, before the U.S. got further than Pennsylvania.

What we find out, though, with a little historical investigation — I just went to the library for a half hour — is that the Lewis and Clark expedition was a really big deal. They found out everything that people in 1805 wanted to know, in order to start rushing west and cutting down forests. The expedition took years, and they walked the whole way.

And they consumed venison like nobody's business.

Casey

As any fan of "Antiques Roadshow"  knows, there are two moments that we all relish. One, when someone brings an item that they purchased at a yard sale for $1.50 to find that it's worth $10,500. The stunned looks, the shaking, the "Are you kidding me?!" — all priceless.

The other is that moment when a person finds out that great-grandma's vase, supposedly purchased from Tiffany , was actually purchased at Woolworth's.  The stunned looks, the shaking, the "Are you kidding me?!"— priceless.

Well, just the other day I had my own "Antiques Roadshow" Moment. Since my great-grandmother never claimed to have purchased anything from Tiffany, I was not the receiver of bad news, but the giver.

A gentleman came into the museum in Old Town San Diego, proudly holding a belt buckle in his hand. He walked up to me and said quite confidently, "I have this brass buckle from Wells Fargo Express. Says 'Made in England' on it and has the royal seal. Can you tell me about it?"

I took a deep breath, knowing what I had to do.

I said, "Unfortunately, sir, it's not an antique Wells Fargo belt buckle."

You see, Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express never made nor commissioned belt buckles.  Wells Fargo Bank did make belt buckles in the 1970s as gift items, but these are clearly marked as "commemorative." Apparently someone in the UK, operating with the name "Tiffany's of London" made tens of thousands of buckles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For decades, hundreds of dealers have pawned them off as "authentic," antique Wells Fargo Express belt buckles. One story has it that these buckles were worn by Wells Fargo agents.

The only problem is: There were never tens of thousands of agents.

Charles

Les Paul died. 

Les Paul  was a guitarist who innovated technique, sound and construction in music and instrumentation. He lived in Westchester County — a nice suburb of New York City — and did all his work from there, pretty much. He is an entertainment legend who didn't work out of Hollywood or New York or London. He worked in his basement.

Paul started out in the 1940s, working in bands and jazz ensembles. He was a great guitar player, but he was one of those guys who was driven to make the sound better , as much as he was driven to be a better player.

Paul is also one of the all-time great nerds, up there with Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs, who work to improve what their art does as much as how they do their art. So great, they define a unique kind of cool.

He invented a solid-body electric guitar  that became its own type of instrument, not simply a way to amplify a traditional guitar. The sounds Paul was able to get out of that thing moved him to experiment with multi-track recording , the gear and method where several recorded tracks play back simultaneously. He pushed recording gear makers to develop technology and devices that would allow him to realize the sounds he knew were possible.

With his wife, guitarist and singer Mary Ford , Paul created a signature sound that was electronic and futuristic — and popular. Ford's awesome voice and Paul's killer ability were still musically honest: The pair recorded good songs, even if the sound was innovative.

Before Paul, bands had to add players and/or parts to widen the sound. With multi-tracking, a band with set members could expand the song by simply adding new parts on extra tracks, turning a four-piece into a 6-piece, maybe, or a lead vocalist into a choir. Rock music has used that as the core of its production technique. Band after band has used multi-tracking to make a song or album a total aural experience beyond the "1-2-3-4!" execution of the thing.

This is how things are done even in the present, even though the technology has gone far beyond what Paul used.

Finally, the guitar that bears his name is unquestionably one of the principal greats of Rock 'N' Roll. You got Elvis, you got Woodstock, you got hip hop, you got the Les Paul. The Les Paul is as important to Rock history as, say, U2 , and more important than say, the Bee Gees  (who are also important — no slight is intended.)

Did the Les Paul make Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin? Could be. 

The point is, Les Paul's importance — his greatness — continues far beyond his medium, his time.

Awesome.

Ryan

What fascinates me most about collecting national bank notes is that they run the gamut from the largest, most well known institutions to the smallest, most personable institution. Because I live in Yolo County, California , just west of Sacramento County, I am intrigued with the four national banks in Yolo County that issued national bank notes.

One of these is The Bank of Woodland, National Association.

Bank of Woodland was Yolo County's first banking institution when organized in 1868, with $100,000 in capital. Founding stockholders came from across the county and included merchants, farmers, and millers. While urban banks used images of industry or liberty on their checks, the Bank of Woodland paid tribute to its agrarian customer base with a picture of a bull prominently displayed on its checks. It was one of those checks that cost the bank dearly.

In the days before electronic banking, the surest way to guarantee a check's value was for a merchant to use a safety mechanism that punched a check's value on or through the paper. In the 1890's, one of Bank of Woodland's customers wrote a check for twelve dollars — but a forger took the twelve dollar check and recast it as a twenty-two thousand dollar check! The forger even used a pin to punch meticulously the supposed safety values through the check.

Only later was the fraud discovered....

Trudy

My 2 ½-year old grand-daughter already scrambles up on my lap when I sit down in front of the computer, and asks, "Are you checking your e-mail?"

Even at her young age, she isn't intimidated by technology. Her generation's baby and toddler toys  are geared to emulate or teach or entertain using technology. It stands to reason that today it would not be necessary for a bank to try and "humanize" its automated teller machine by putting a pretty face and cute name on it.

That's because no one is afraid of technology now — except me.

First National Bank of Atlanta , a Wachovia predecessor, was concerned that the relatively new automated teller machine (ATM) it introduced in 1974 would appear cold and difficult to use.

In those days, customers were accustomed to walking inside a bank and chatting with a pleasant teller. So First National named their ATM "Tillie the All Time Teller,"  and put the face of a smiling blonde girl on the front of the machine. "Tillie" looked inviting to customers and suggested that the machine was highly user-friendly.

Did it work? In a word, yes. Tillie launched one of the most successful ATM systems in the banking industry.

In their efforts to promote Tillie, First National hired a blonde actress who wore a red and white polka-dotted dress in TV ads. She sang: "I'm Tillie the All time Teller, I work for First National Bank" as she stood beside the machine. In another Tillie ad, a balding, middle-aged man approached the machine singing, to the tune of the classic "If You Knew Susie": 

Oh, if you knew Tillie like I know Tillie
Oh, oh, oh, what a girl!
She works to please me, to make life easy
Oh, oh, she makes my banking smooth and breezy
Day or nighttime, I don't care
When I need money, I know my all-time teller's there!
If you knew Tillie, like I know Tillie
Oh, oh, oh!

Charles

Wells Fargo has always delivered service to customers in innovative ways , from stagecoach and steamship, to telegraphic transfers of money, to today's on-line banking. In l865, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican  described Wells Fargo as

the omnipresent, universal business agent...Its offices are in every town, far and near. It is the Ready Companion of civilization, the Universal Friend and Agent of the miner, his errand man, his banker, his post-office. It has grown very much into the heart and habit of the people.

The story of the ATM, a latter-20th-century "omnipresent, universal business agent," demonstrates Wells Fargo's ongoing development of faster, better, more convenient service.

ATMs go back a long way. In fact, the first mechanical cash machine debuted in New York City in 1939. But the "ATM era," so to speak, would not begin for another generation.

In 1970, Wells Fargo installed Self Serv teller machines at a few branch locations. These early cash machines accommodated a specially-issued Wells Fargo Master Charge card and PIN number.

Because these were linked to credit card accounts, they probably weren't precisely ATMS as we know them today. In 1976, Wells Fargo piloted ATMs with three Silver Service machines installed in Southern California.

In the summer of 1978, ATMs as we know them were introduced. Wells Fargo installed "Express Stop" automated teller machines in ten locations. Customers could make deposits, transfer money between accounts, and make credit card and loan payments seven days a week, 24-hours a day.

Wells Fargo added additional machines in the next few years — there were over 200 in 1981, many equipped for use customers with disabilities.

Wells Fargo innovated with technology that made it possible to buy postage stamps and other conveniences at ATMs. (Hey, ski lift tickets were available from ATMs in the 90s!) In the new century, more customers are using ATMs for a wider range of financial services.

Envelope-Free technology at Wells Fargo ATMs means customers don't have to have a pen handy or even key in a deposit amount — the machine sorts and counts the bills and verifies the amount. These machines can accept deposits of up to 50 bills in different denominations and up to 30 checks at one time.

Wells Fargo is the first bank to use that particular technology, and the first to get an ATM manufacturer to meet the requirement.

And here's one for ya: Wells Fargo's most northerly ATM is in Barrow, Alaska. The most southerly ATMs (a Guinness Book of World Records record holder by the way) are at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. There are over 7,000 miles in between.