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Bookplate Index by Library or Collector |
Paul E. Klopsteg Collection, University of Oklahoma, History of Science Collections The
bookplate featured on this issue's cover identifies the books of the Paul
E. Klopsteg Collection in the history and technology of archery. This
collection, assembled between 1930 and 1960 and presently part of the
University of Oklahoma's History of Science Collections, is one of the
outstanding bodies of material on this topic. Last year marked the
centenary of the birth of Paul E. Klopsteg, creator of this remarkable
collection. Outside of
archery circles, Klopsteg is best known as a scientist, engineer, and
administrator of various American institutions of science. Trained in
physics, he performed ballistics research during World War I at the army's
Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. In 1921 he went to work for the
Central Scientific Company of Chicago, a large supplier of scientific
materials and apparatus, and was company president from 1930 until 1944.
At the end of World War II Klopsteg became director of research at
Northwestern University Technical Institution. From 1951 through 1958 he
was an associate director of the National Science Foundation and was
president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
1958/59. Klopsteg
is assured a place in the history of archery through his scientific
investigations of the bow and the revolution in archery technology that he
launched. His introduction to archery came in the summer of 1929 when he
bought a primitive archery set for the amusement of his three daughters.
With his own training in physics and research experience in projectile
flight, Klopsteg found himself fascinated by the ancient art of shooting
arrows with the bow and quickly adopted the sport as his own hobby. Klopsteg,
with the trained eye of the scientist, questioned whether the traditional
English longbow—which had remained essentially unchanged for
centuries—expressed the bow's most efficient form. Following suggestions
made by Clarence N. Hickman, an archer with a similar background in
ballistics research, Klopsteg began experimenting with bows having limbs
of flat cross-sections, radically different from the traditional bow's
limbs of thick, U-shaped sections. Testing these bows with the
sophisticated instruments developed in ballistics research, Klopsteg and
Hickman at once recognized the superior qualities of this design. The new
bow produced higher arrow velocities with less drawing effort than the
traditional pattern; arrows launched with the new bow followed flatter
trajectories and could therefore be aimed with greater precision. While
there was initial resistance to the new style of bow, its ability to
outperform the traditional design soon made it the standard of American
archers by the late 1930s. This scientific investigation of the physics of
archery launched a revolution in bow design. Soon other archers were
successfully experimenting with manmade materials for both bows and
arrows, and the technology of archery is today very different from the
sport as Klopsteg first found it. Even so, the latest bows still possess
the flat limbs first advanced by him in 1931 and 1932. Simultaneously with his
scientific interest in bow design, Klopsteg began accumulating books about
archery. At first he bought then-current works on bow construction such as
James Duff's Bows and Arrows of 1927. In 1930 he bought a copy of
the 1928 Pinehurst edition of J. Maurice Thompson's The Witchery of
Archery, which introduced Klopsteg to some of the history and romance
of archery. Thompson had popularized archery in this country in the
1870s through the publication of stories of his adventures hunting with
the bow and arrow. This book, an anthology of Thompson's stories, had
first been published in 1878. Eventually Klopsteg added Thompson's first edition to his collection. From a fellow archer, Klopsteg
bought copy number four of a limited edition of Charles J. Longman's 1894 Archery
of the Badminton Library Series. With this purchase, Klopsteg became a true collector and
thereafter systematically sought out rare and special works of importance
in the history of archery. Ultimately the collection grew to contain
over two hundred titles along with various papers and photographs. The collection's oldest work is a second edition of Roger Ascham's Toxophilus
published in 1571. From the same period is a copy of John Smythe's Certain
Discourses of 1590 in which the superiority of archery over the
firearms of that day is vainly extolled. Because of Smythe's criticism of
English military leaders, his work was suppressed upon its publication and
copies of it are rare. An important and interesting nineteenth-century work represented in the
Klopsteg Collection is Horace A. Ford's Archery: Its Theory and
Practice. Ford adopted a style of shooting the bow in which the arrow
was drawn to the chin rather than to the ear. With this method, the
archer's eye lined up with the arrow and it could be aimed with precision.
This practical change in shooting inspired a widespread enthusiasm for
target archery in England and is credited for the modern rebirth of
archery as a popular sport after years of languid interest. Editions of
Ford's work were published in 1856 and 1859; each was soon sold out in the
face of growing demand. Ford himself, however, lost interest in the sport
following his last of twelve national championships. In the Klopsteg
Collection is a second edition of Ford's book formerly owned by James
Sharpe, an editor of the sporting paper the Field. In it is pasted
an 1871 letter from Ford to Sharpe canceling his subscription to the paper
with the conclusion that archery "bores me." Most of the books in the Klopsteg Collection reflect the English
antecedent
of archery. However, the importance of Native American archery to the
present-day sport is revealed through the various books written by Saxton
Pope in the 1920s. As Maurice Thompson had popularized archery in this
country in the late nineteenth century, Pope generated renewed interest in
archery and established its popularity on the West Coast in this century.
While Pope adopted the traditional English longbow, he had been taught to
shoot and hunt with the bow and arrow by Ishi, the last of California's
Yana Indians, who had been taken to the University of California where
Pope taught medicine. Pope successfully hunted African big game with the
bow and arrow and wrote about his adventures in such hooks as the Adventurous
Bowmen of 1926. In addition to his research into the efficient design of the bow,
Klopsteg pursued an academic investigation into the history and technology
of Turkish archery. The various German and Turkish sources Klopsteg
consulted are in the collection along with the published result of his
research, Turkish Archery and the Composite Bow. The publication of
this book contributed to the adoption of the composite bows of reflexed
shape in the late 1930s. One of the collection's copies of this work is
number one of the 1934 limited edition of one hundred. Along
with works on the history and romance of archery, Klopsteg collected
various sources relating to the technology of archery. Much of the
technological development of archery is recorded in the various journals
and periodicals held in the collection. These include the complete series
of the
English Archer's Register for the years of its issue from 1864
until World War I. The runs of Ye Sylvan Archer, Archery Review, and
the American Bowman/American Bowman Review from the 1920s and 1930s
contain the many articles written by Klopsteg on the scientific
investigation of archery technology. The July 1938 issue of Ye Sylvan
Archer contains Klopsteg's account of his book collecting. All of
the works in the Klopsteg Collection are indicated in the 1974 A
Bibliography of Archery by Fred Lake and Hal Wright Paul E.
Klopsteg chose the University of Oklahoma as the repository of archery
collection as a result of his association with Duane Emerson Roller. Both
were among the founders of the American Association of Physics Teachers in
1930 and maintained contact through the 1950s in connection with the
National Science Foundation. As president of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, Klopsteg was expected to provide an address at
the association's annual meeting. Relying on his contact with Roller,
Klopsteg turned to his son, Duane H. D. Roller, curator of the University of Oklahoma's History of Science Collections,
for material to be used in this address. The relationship thus generated
between Klopsteg and the History of Science Collections led, by 1964, to
the donation of the Paul E. Klopsteg Archery Collection to the University
of Oklahoma. Klopsteg took pride in his collection of archery books and chose to mark
them with a special bookplate that reflects the subject of his interest.
The bookplate bears the archer's target framed by bows, arrows, a forearm
guard, and a quiver. The engraved plate measures 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches,
and the dimensions of the illustration are 4 1/2 by 5 3/4 inches. The
artist who created this bookplate is identified only by the "D. D." in
its lower margin. A possible clue to the identity of this person is a
pencil caricature of an archer found among the various papers donated to
the University of Oklahoma along with Klopsteg's books. The drawing is
inscribed "sketched from life by Dorothy Duggan at the Century of
Progress Tournament Chicago 1933." Duggan was an archer from Greenwich,
Connecticut, who had set a world record score in 1931. Perhaps Duggan was
the creator of Klopsteg's bookplate—the sketch reveals her artistic
ability and the fact that Klopsteg retained it indicates some friendship
between them. The engraved steel plate from which the bookplates were
printed is still kept with the Klopsteg Collection. Wendell W.
Huffman History of
Science Collections University of Oklahoma
[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 25, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 269-272.] |
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