Digital History in Review

Eight months ago I began the Public History program at the University of Western Ontario. I was wide-eyed and had no idea what to expect from any of my courses – especially digital history. It was the course that intimidated me the most, as it was the furthest from my comfort zone.

The first lesson of that class: Don’t panic. Professor Bill Turkel made it very clear that the year was going to be entirely manageable and that he would be there for advice and consultation whenever necessary. He encouraged us to sign up for various roles on our course wiki – anything from project manager, wiki editor, hardware specialist, or presenter, among many others. For my two roles, I chose wiki editor and hardware specialist. I can safely say that I am not a specialist just yet!

Wiki editor was by far the easiest of my two positions. There were straight forward directions available online from other wiki users on how to go about changing various things – adding in links, making sure your links went where they were necessary, etc. That I caught onto fairly easily, and even if I didn’t, I could fake it with all of the tutorials available!

The hardware specialist, meanwhile, was completely outside my comfort zone. Bill encouraged us all to sign up for something challenging and kept reminding us that if something didn’t work, that was okay, because we would still learn. I started Lady Ada’s Arduino tutorials to make sense of the tiny little computer I was given. I became quite comfortable with making a light flash – that seemed easy. But then I had to learn how to program the Arduino to respond when a button was pressed on a model, so that the Arduino could communicate with my computer and the Processing program.

This communication between the Arduino, my computer, and Processing was what really tripped me up. Thank goodness though for my classmate Chris Waring. He really saved the day and got my Arduino troubles all sorted out. Chris completed an undergraduate in engineering and is currently working towards a degree in history – an unusual combination perhaps, but I’m ever thankful that he decided to do the unusual!

Under Chris’s direction, I quickly figured out how to make the Arduino respond properly when a certain button was pressed. Now, where were these buttons coming from? Glad you asked.

The group that I worked with, as a part of our overall exhibit on William Harvey, was a model of the operating theatre at Padua University, as Harvey would have experienced it. There were three areas on this model – the anatomist, the body, and the student. The idea behind the exhibit was that individuals would be able to learn about the roles of the three individuals. My group worked to construct the theatre, with its six levels, out of foam core and I figured out how to make 2 inch figures out of papier-mâché. These little dudes initially looked like aliens, but after a quick paint job, they looked like people. The body on the operating table even had his chest cut open. I was especially proud of that one!

So once the theatre looked presentable, the group concentrated on wiring the model, so that the buttons at the three individuals would be able to relate the appropriate information to the visitor when pressed. Meanwhile, the appropriate slides were also put together, so that the visitor would be presented with visually interesting material. Putting this all together was perhaps the most difficult project of the year.

Our efforts to get Arduino to talk to my computer and to talk to Processing was complicated by the fact that I was running an out of date copy of Processing. Arduino communicated quite happily with my computer – the buttons sent the appropriate ‘1,’ ‘2,’ or ‘3’ when each was pressed – but Processing was rather non-communicative. Enter Chris to the rescue! He figured out that it was the out of date copy of Processing that was causing us grief (I should mention that this was all in the 2 hours before our public presentation). Once we got the right version of the program all was right in the world.

At our presentation of the Harvey exhibit, everything went off without a hitch – so long as you were there about 5-10 minutes after the exhibit started! Our visitors were able to press the button at the body and learn about where students and doctors got their bodies from (either dead criminals or snatched bodies), what the anatomists role was in instructing students, and what student life was like when Harvey attended Padua.

The end result of the exhibit was fantastic – it was nice to see a year of work come together, and work like it was supposed to.

I must admit though, I faked it was a hardware specialist – I couldn’t have done what I needed to without Chris’s help, so thank you sir! I appreciate you saving my skin and letting me fake it as a specialist!