Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected
Object highlights from the exhibition
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
As a means of packaging text and images, books have appeared in many different forms over the centuries.
Publishers and printers have always produced objects which are not quite books, but still convey information or entertain and have all the features of a publication.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
Entertaining ephemera
Printing technology and commercial distribution networks are as effective for producing and selling games and educational aids as they are conventional books.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
Comprising illustrated discs and a handle with a spindle, the Victorian Fantascope , or Phantasmascope, is regarded as the first widely available form of moving image.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
Rocking the boat
Small, flimsy, ephemeral, quick to produce, easy to distribute, read and hide, pamphlets like these were intended for the streets and not for libraries.
Printed in Glasgow, The Revolution was a cheaply-produced but attractively-presented magazine intended to woo young people to the cause of Socialism.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
Mathematical models
Models were widely used by academic mathematicians in the 19th century, as tools to visualise and develop concepts in the geometry of solids and curves.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
These models are by Alexander Brill, a Professor at the Polytechnische Schule in Munich. He devised a technique to produce flexible models of interlinked strips of card.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections. The University of Edinburgh
Creative currency
In the years immediately after World War I there was a shortage of metal in Germany and coins became scarce. To allow their local economies to keep functioning, many towns and cities issued their own emergency money called Notgeld .
The notes were often beautiful examples of printed illustration, showing local history or industry. They were overtaken by the hyperinflation which hit Germany in 1922.
Rare Books? Expect the Unexpected (2018-11-30/2019-03-02) by University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections The University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh's Rare Books collections are vast, varied, and full of unexpected objects like these. Click here
to discover more in the exhibition guide.
