A Text-Book of Geometry
Published 1890, used 1892-93
Printed book with blue ink, black ink, and graphite additions
Gift of Josephine Haskell Aldridge in memory of Richard Aldridge (Class of 1952)
AC STUDY 1996.01
This exhibition includes historically significant, two-part sketch in the geometry textbook that sixteen year-old Ernest Haskell used while attending Woodstock Academy in Connecticut.
Haskell made drawings on almost half of the 242 pages of his geometry textbook; some are integrated into the mathematical diagrams, while others exist as distinct compositions in the margins. These drawings are similar to the “idle scratchings” that sparked his career as a newspaper illustrator in New York.
Animated athletes, popular song references, violent historical scenes―and the occasional mathematical notation―decorate the pages of this book. This slideshow offers a small sampling of its contents with close-up views at individual entries.
Visitors may request to see this object in the Mead’s William Green Study Room when it is no longer on display in the museum.