-
Outside the Box
Stereograph 20882: Loading Drill-Holes with Dynamite, Preparatory to Blasting Near Empire on the Panama Canal Route. 1909. Gift of Bill Angrick. 2013.2.167. Note the wooden dynamite boxes. In the slideshow at the bottom of the Digital School Days blog post there is a photo of similar wooden boxes used to ship and carry explosives during the construction of the Canal being used as scrap material in a school shop class. This fall we are highlighting our past, present, and aspirational digitization efforts. Scanning two-dimensional documents and photographs can be pretty straight forward, but what about those atypical items or the incredible Panama Canal and Canal Zone artifacts that we have?
Audio Visual Recordings
One group of items that requires special treatment is audio visual (AV). These videos or audio recordings include official productions of Canal and Canal Zone documentation as well as home videos of everyday life, holidays, performances, events, and trips into many different regions of Panama. The ability to once again see and hear the sights and sounds of life in decades past adds a special layer. We receive items in all kinds of formats: 8mm and 16mm films, DVDs, VHS tapes, USB drives, and others. The older, film based items have to be digitized by a company that specializes in these materials and has the right equipment.
This video clip came from a home movie of an American family living at the Panama Canal, shot in between 1955 and 1965. It includes scenes of life and nature in rural Panama, the Chinese Gardens in the Canal Zone, the lottery, trips to Old Panama, and more. We had to edit the original 23 minutes down to a short 3:30 clip for the blog but you can view the full video in the Panama Canal Museum Collection digital collection.
Home Movie of an American Family or Group (possibly the family of Roy C. Stockham). c.1955-1965. Three objects in the AV queue that I am excited to see eventually made available online are: films of the Dillon and Rowley Families from the 1940s-1960s that include footage of holiday celebrations, nursery and Sunday school, and the Canal locks; home movies of William Hitchcock from 1930-1961 and a number of reels containing unknown audio recordings; and home movies of Edward Powell that include footage of life in Panama and the Canal Zone.
Do you have any movies from your time at the Panama Canal that you would like to share?
Panoramic and Large Format Photographs
Some of you might remember the 2023 blog post “Panoramic Panama” that detailed the return of some wonderful panoramic photographs from our conservation and digitization facility. A few of those photos were six feet long! It is not hard to understand how different the process of digitizing something of that size would be from a usual 4×6 family snapshot or 8×10 official photograph.
Because of the large and somewhat unwieldy size of many panoramic images they often come to us tightly rolled. They have to be flattened in a special process that slowly unrolls them without damaging the delicate surface.
The rolled photos on the right are safely stored together until they can be treated by our fabulous conservation team.
Watch the videos below to see the 24 hour process of flattening three PCMC photographs in about 1 minute!
Preservation Process Step 1: Humidity Chamber. Humidity is slowly introduced into the chamber which softens the curling of the paper.
Preservation Process Step 2: Flattening. Evenly distributed weight is used to flatten the paper.
A heartfelt thank you to Katie Smith, Jimmy Barnett, and April Helena of the Libraries’ Preservation and Conservation Unit who took these videos for us while they were working on our photos.
Check out their fabulous Instagram account @UFPreservation.
Panoramic Photo of Ft. Sherman, Canal Zone. By E.O. Goldbeck. Gift of Carol A. (Kellog) Cooley. 2000.92. Negatives and Slides
One great digital success is the availability of an album of negatives taken by A.G. Bedell during construction of the Canal. The negatives were scanned and you can view them as images in our digital collection. This allows people to see the pictures and it keeps the original negatives safe from repeated handling and use.
Bedell took selfies with his co-workers in their office, he took pictures of his adventures around the Canal Zone and Panama, and he appears to have had a good sense of humor. Click to view the full album, Panama Canal Negative Album by A.G. Bedell. Gift of Kenneth Roth. 2014.50.1.
We have 3 boxes of glass plate negatives, used in photography during the 1800s through around 1930. The fragile nature of the glass and the photo surface requires very special handling and scanning equipment.
On the right is a glass negative created by Frank E. Reed during the construction of the Panama Canal lock gates. 2012.1.1.
We have traditional 35mm slides too – approximately 10 more archival storage boxes like this one of slides waiting patiently to be scanned. There are incredible images hiding inside, but they don’t get much attention because of the time consuming process of looking through them one by one.
3D Scanning
Every once in a while we get to do something pretty fun with the UF Libraries’ Digital Services team. In 2022, they received an internal Strategic Opportunities Grant to purchase new equipment and test it out. Digital photographs would be used to create a 3D model through a process called photogrammetry. Below are three examples of objects from PCMC that were digitized using this method. Click on the images below to access the 360 view.
This baseball was signed by the 1955 Balboa High School Champs. Gift of Steward Brown. 2000.62.1.3.
Were you on the 1955 BHS baseball team? Do you have any stories to share from that season?
This Mindi Orange Drink Carton is one of the many food cartons that we have in the collection. Gift of Cleve Soper. 2001.119.1.3.
What memories can you share about Mindi Dairy?
This Carnival mask from Colon is one of two that came in as a gift from Elizabeth Brandenburg, II.2018.41.1. The other mask was too difficult to scan using this method because of the fine details – specifically the eyelashes!
We have so many amazing artifacts and items of outside the box sizes and shapes. We hope you enjoyed learning about some of our ongoing digitization efforts and dreams for the future. Stay tuned for more…
This post is part of a fall campaign to raise awareness about our two-year initiative to digitized more of the collection. The goal is to hire a new member of our team whose only job will be to digitize items related to the Panama Canal – that means more memories and research material online for everyone to enjoy! Click here to learn more about our digitization campaign.
-
Hidden Treasures in the Telephone Book
“The Panama Canal telephone directory is a gold mine of information. It’s an almanac, a history, and, if one wishes to be prosaic, it can even be used to look up a telephone number…it’s size and content have reflected the growth and organization of the Company…In a very real way, it tells the story of the Panama Canal.” – Panama Canal Review, Spring, 1975
This fall we are highlighting the digitization efforts of the Panama Canal Museum Collection. Every year we get numerous emails from individuals traveling to Panama that want to know the former addresses of friends and family that lived in the Canal Zone. The telephone books are usually our first stop. Because we know they could make such an impact, they are near the top of our priority list of items to scan and make accessible online.
E.N. Nelson. Gang No.1 Telephone and Telegraph Relocation. Gift of Linda Adelsberger. 2011.021.001. 
In 1882, the French company working to dig a canal across the Isthmus installed a telephone system. The U.S. inherited that system in 1904 when they took over the construction project. The first telephone models had wooden cases and used a crank to signal the operator.
In 1909 the installation of telephones in most residences was permitted. Apparently the phones were a big hit because in 1912 an order was issued that telephone calls must be limited to five minutes.
Image on left: Antique Magneto Telephone from Canal Construction Site. c. 1908. Gift of Shirley Million Muse. 2005.55.1.
Telephone Card of A.L. Robinson. Gift of Tony and Nancy Michel. II.2024.16.4 
Telephone Card of A.L. Robinson. Gift of Tony and Nancy Michel. II.2024.16.4 The first edition of the Panama Canal phonebook was printed in December 1915. It was a small 59 page pamphlet printed locally at the Panama Canal Press in Mount Hope. For two years the phonebook was printed twice a year but as the cost increased the decision was made to reduce it to only once.
These early books of course include recognizable names. If you wanted to call George W. Goethals, the Canal’s Chief Engineer, at the office, the number was Balboa 230. If it was a social call or after hours emergency and you needed to reach him at home, it was Balboa 300.
Multiple surnames appear in the telephone books decade after decade, documenting the second, third, and fourth generations of families that lived and worked at the Panama Canal.
The image on the right is from the Winter 1977 issue of the Panama Canal Review.
The earliest edition in our large collection of telephone books is 1941 so we are missing the incredible information printed in the first 25 years.
I am pretty jealous of Communications Manager James W. Riley’s complete collection, seen on the left in a image from the Panama Canal Review, Spring 1975.
Do you have any of the missing editions that you are willing to share with us? If so, contact us at jnemmers@ufl.edu.
As seen in an office photo from 1919, at that time the directories were required to have a hole punched in the corner and a wire loop provided so that the user could hang it on a hook near the telephone.
Panama Canal Review, Spring 1975 Our 1945 directory still has a loop attached to it, and in comparing multiple editions it looks like maybe 1961 was the last year that they punched holes. See the photo below of the 1945, 1961 and 1962 directories.
Significant features of the directory came and went. A decision to stop including the tide tables, a long debated issue, was finally made in 1965. In 1972, the telephone books became bilingual, printing information in both English and Spanish.
The maps appeared for the first time in 1959. Most directories contain maps of Canal Zone townsites, Panama City, and Colon.
In addition to the blank maps, our digital collection includes three sets of Canal Zone maps with the names of former residents written on the buildings where they lived. The map of Margarita on the right is from Hometowns of the Canal Zone. Hometowns of the Canal Zone: An Interactive Display, Memory Lane, and Mapping Memories.
The images below show people hard at work to keep the Canal and the Canal Zone connected. Move through the slideshow with the left and right arrows.
Did you every work on the telephone system or on printing the directory at the Panama Canal?
Below is a quick scan we made of the 1974 phonebook so that people can get an idea of what they are missing! (When our digital services team scans them the quality will be much better). Use the + sign on the top tool bar to zoom in or download a copy with the link below the document.
We hope you enjoyed this post about the telephone books. Once we are able to have them scanned they will be put into our digital collection and they will be text searchable – you can type in a name, place, or business and discover!
This post is part of a fall campaign to raise awareness about our two-year initiative to digitized more of the collection. The goal is to hire a new member of our team whose only job will be to digitize items related to the Panama Canal – that means more memories and research material online for everyone to enjoy! Click here to learn more about our digitization campaign.
