Welcome to the Centennial Medals Cabinet!  My intent for this website is to share with all collectors the information about 1876 Centennial medals that I have learned since starting to collect these lovely and interesting bits of historical sculpture.  I also hope that this website will become a central point for my fellow collectors to share with me and each other their knowledge about Centennial medals.  With your help and through your collaboration, we can make this site the most complete and comprehensive reference possible.

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This limited access, invitation-only, web-book is a work in progress.  Though it will always be so in the sense that it will be constantly updated, it is especially so now until you, my gracious editors and proofreaders, decide that it is ready to be opened up to collectors who will trust this work to guide their collecting of Centennial medals.

Even after it goes public, this book will be subjected to constant scrutiny and update as new medals are discovered, new information is brought to my attention, and errors are corrected.  Unlike traditional paper books, whether press-run or on-demand, this web–book can and will be updated in real time as often as necessary.  What you see online will always be the latest version, but you can freeze any latest version at any time by downloading one or all of the chapters and printing them or viewing them locally.  Later versions will be just a download away.

The model for this web-book is a cabinet.  The cabinet constitutes the catalog, and each drawer

represents a chapter (or category of medal) within the catalog.

 

Copyright Notice

 

All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Triton Shareware, LLP or in the case of third party materials, the owner of that content. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.

Everything on this website is copyrighted by Ron Abler, 2012, and protected by United States

copyright law.  All rights are reserved.  It may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without my prior written permission, except for the following:

 

You may print or download PDF files to your own local hard disk for your own personal use only.

 

You may not transfer any of the content, physical or electronic, to anyone else.  However, you

may direct others to this website, from which they may print or download PDF files to their own local hard disks.

 

You may quote or reference material contained on this website, but only if full credit is given

with each quote or reference.

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You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content.  Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system, except your own local hard disk for your own personal use.

 

In other words, the information contained on this site is free for your personal use.  Please share the website (i.e., its web address), but not the electronic files you download or the copy you print for

your own personal use.

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Some Background

 

Believe it or not, the last attempts at a comprehensive catalog of Centennial medals were in 1876!  In that year, William Holland serialized his catalog in several consecutive issues of the American Journal

of Numismatics (AJN), and Edouard Frossard did the same in the Coin Collectors Journal (CCJ).  Both works are in the public domain, and reprints of each are provided for your convenience in the Appendices.  (Once again, the information in those works is in the public domain, but my reprints of them are subject to the copyright explained above.)

 

Many authors in the last 135-plus years have included Centennial medals in their catalogs, but only peripherally, never comprehensively.  Thus, most of the Centennial medals that depict George Washington can be found in the Russell Rulau’s and George Fuld’s excellent redux Baker work in Medallic Portraits of Washington.  There are two chapters that include Centennial medals in R.W. Julian’s Medals of the United States Mint.  Bill Swoger’s recent tome on National Commemorative Medals covers the Centennial Commemorative Medals in great detail.  And then there’s Hibler-Kappen’s book on So Called Dollars that includes many Centennial medals (as long as they are about the size of a silver dollar).  A casual glance at the Bibliography in the Appendices will give you an

idea of just how many authors have dabbled in Centennial medals, but this cabinet is the first to concentrate exclusively on Centennial medals since 1876.

 

Website vs. Book (i.e., is this a website or a book?)

 

It’s both.  It's and iBook.  It’s as close to a paper book as I could make it.  By that I mean that it reads like an eBook, but can be turned into a paper book by anyone who chooses to print it out.  All of the sections and chapters that would go into a paper volume are contained on this website as PDF files.  For that reason, you must have Adobe Reader or equivalent to read most of this website. 

 

When you select one of sections or chapters that is presented in Adobe Reader, you can read the information and you can download and/or print the info as well.  The pages are formatted for

8-1/2” x 11” paper.  You can print them single-sided or double-sided and than bind them any way you wish (most easily in a 3-ring binder.  Or, you may take your electronic copy of the files to a photocopier and have them reproduce and bind the pages.  To make this easier for you, I have included three techniques to make your task easier:

 

• First, all of the files that make up the page block of the paper book are numbered consecutively in the order that they should be collated.

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• Second, to facilitate back-to-back printing, a blank page has been inserted at the end of any

• section that contains an odd number of pages, ensuring proper collation even if the files are printed as a batch.

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• Third, the page in each section are number so that they can be referenced and collated correctly, even if you choose to print out only a few sections.

 

Finally, if there turns out to be enough demand, there will be a full-color limited edition of this work.  Please see the Contact page to email of your interest.

 

Configuration Tracking (aka version control or configuration management)

 

Because an iBook permits easy and frequent changes to accomodate additions, corrections, and new discoveries, one  of the challenges is keeping track of those changes, both to the website itself and

to the printable book, for which the website serves as navigator.  This double challenge requires a two-fold solution:  tracking the configurations of the site and the editions of the book.  To

accomplish this, I use the dates of changes (in the format of YYMMDD) as the version number of the website (in the lower left-hand corner of the Home page) and as the edition number (in the footers) of the documents that combine to make up the book.

 

The Configuration Tracking is summarized in the document named 31 Configuration Tracking. This document is itself tracked, so its name ends with the document's most recent YYMMDD date.  The Configuration Tracking document is a table with website data to the left and document data to the right.  Thus, changes to the website are tracked at left and changes to individual documents are tracked at right.  Not only is this good software discipline, but it lets users determine whether or not their downloaded copy of the book is current or not.  If not, Configuration Tracking will help them determine which, if any, changed documents should be downloaded and/or printed to keep their books cuurent.

 

For viewing convenience, the Configuration Tracking table is sorted with the most recent changes at the top.

 

Rules of the Road

 

I have tried to make this website as simple and straightforward as possible, as well as to make it “vanilla” enough to run on as many browsers as possible.  (I have tested it on Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer.)  In addition, I offer the following hints for navigating the website.

 

Menus: There are four types of menus on the site:

 

• Each webpage has a horizontal menu at the top of the page that allows you to select every web page.

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• Some web pages (notably the Introduction, the text-only Medal Cabinet, and the Appendices) also have vertical menus that allow you to select certain sections of the book.

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• The Medal Cabinet presents the medal chapters as drawers.  Click on the desired drawer label to open the selected category of medals.

 

Windows and Tabs:

 

The website is programmed to open book sections (the PDF documents) according to the settings in your browser.  Therefore, web pages and PDF documents will open either in the same window, in a separate window, or in a separate tab.  If a PDF document opens in the same window, use the “Back” arrow to return to the prior web page.

 

Printing:

 

Print any of the book files as you would any PDF document.  The documents are formatted to print back-to-back correctly.  If you print single0sided, there will be a blank page at the end of any section that has an odd number of text pages.

 

To be in full compliance with copyright law, you should ensure that the document Title and Copyright pages are included in your final print package.

 

Troubleshooting:

 

If you have problems viewing or navigating the website, please email me at the address on the

Contact page.