On February 14, 1904, someone curious about the emerging possibilities of a principal force in nature checked James Clerk Maxwell’s “Primary Treatise on Electricity” from the Bedford Free Public Library.
It took 119 years and the appointment of a librarian in West Virginia before the scholarly text finally found its way to a Massachusetts library.
The discovery occurred when Stewart Blaine, curator of rare books at West Virginia University Libraries, was sorting through a recent donation of books.
Blaine found the treatise and noted that it was part of the collection at the New Bedford Library and, more importantly, was not stamped “withdrawn”, indicating that although it was much late, the book had not been disposed of.
Blaine contacted Judy Goodman, a special collections librarian in New Bedford, to alert her to the discovery.
“This has come back in very good shape,” Olivia Melo, director of the New Bedford Public Library, said Friday. “Apparently someone kept this on a nice bookshelf because it was in good shape and may have been passed down in the family.”
The letter was first published in 1881, two years after Maxwell’s death in 1879, although the cranberry-coloured copy now back in the New Bedford Library is not considered a rare copy of the work, Mellow said.
The library sometimes receives books 10 or 15 years late, she said, but nothing anywhere close to a century or more.
The letter was published at a time when the world was still growing to understand the possibilities of electricity. In 1880, Thomas Edison was awarded a landmark patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp.
When the book was last in New Bedford, the nation was gearing up for its second modern world championship, incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to winning another term, and Wilbur and Orville Wright had made their first flight just a year earlier and New York. The city was celebrating its first subway line.
Milo said the book’s discovery and return is evidence of the durability of the printed word, especially in a time of computing and instant access to unfathomable amounts of information.
She said, “The value of a print book is not digital, and it’s not going away. Just holding it, you get the feeling that someone has had this book for 120 years and is reading it, and there it is in my hands.” “It will still be here a hundred years from now. A printed book will always be valuable.”
New Bedford Library has a late fee of 5 cents per day. At this rate, someone who returns a book 119 years late would face a hefty fee of over $2,100. The good news is that the library has a maximum late fee of $2.
Another lesson from the discovery, according to Milo? It’s never too late to return a library book.
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