I have been devoted to local history for at least 60 years. Over those years I was introduced to many local Trenton newspaper writers who specialized in keeping history alive. As a young teenager back in the 1940's, "Trenton in Bygone Days" was the spark that lit my interest. Each Sunday in the Trenton Sunday Times Advertiser, Harry Podmore regaled us with incredibly interesting stories of persons, places, and things in and around Trenton. Harry's successor, the late Bill Dwyer filled Harry's shoes very admirably as he continued the Bygone Days column. Many years ago, I paged through a Podmore scrapbook in the Trenton Public Library. As I recall, Harry's Bygone Days columns were pasted in a scrapbook and the paste caused the scrapbook pages to ripple. Little did I realize at the time that I would have pristine copies of this fabulous column in its original form, before the advent of microfilm. In an effort to save the space taken up by those HUGE bound copies of newspapers, most libraries discarded them and went to microfilm. Through providence or some other mysterious reason, I saw the embryonic rise of computer technology back in the 1960's and knew these bound volumes would one day be a real asset to my collection. Today, I am able to pick and choose which original articles are of historic importance and can be scanned and digitized. The above graphic is an example of bringing the computer and local history into the twenty first century.
1 comment:
Did you know he wrote a book, although very few copies were printed ?
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