August 23 is the birthday of the sculptor Alexander Calder. You’re thinking of the big steel mobiles and abstract constructions on exhibit in airports and concert halls. But no, it’s not that Alexander Calder.
Oh, right, you say, you must mean Alexander Calder who sculpted the Washington Square Arch in New York; the one with the big statue of George Washington. Well, no, it’s not that Alexander Calder either.
The Alexander Calder I’m talking about was born today in 1846, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He emigrated to the US in 1868, settled in Philadelphia, and studied art. His best known work is the statue of William Penn that’s still on the top of the city hall there. Even though it’s on the top of the building’s tower, it’s easy to see from street level. It’s 37 feet tall.
Alexander Calder’s son (Alexander Calder) was the sculptor who created the George Washington sculpture in New York. And his grandson (also Alexander Calder) was the one who designed kinetic sculptures in the 20th Century.
His father and grandfather had both studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, but when Alexander Calder (the youngest one) was old enough, he found out his parents (his mother was a famous portrait artist) didn’t want him to become an artist. So he got a degree in mechanical engineering instead. It should be perfectly easy to tell Alexander Calder from Alexander Calder from Alexander Calder, of course, because only one of them was born today. Alexander Calder’s birthday, on the other hand, was yesterday. The Alexander Calder in the middle? Completely different; he was born in January.
If you look up the middle Calder, though, you might find him listed as “A. Stirling Calder;” he often went by his middle name. You’d probably be doing your research on the world wide web — and this is a good day for it. It’s the anniversary of the day the web opened to the public in 1991.
Something else many people research on the web — well, eventually — are tire chains. The ones you put on your car tires in the winter. Not so much any more, but you could. You might not research them today, since you’re probably not going to need them (it being summer and all), but oddly enough today’s the day tire chains were patented, in 1904.
It’s a little odd that they were patented in summer, but the rest of the story is surprising too. They were patented by Harry Weed, who lived in a little town in upstate New York. In 1904, particularly in small towns and rural areas, cars wouldn’t be used in the winter. For one thing, they typically didn’t have heaters (although the car heater was invented in 1893 by Margaret Wilcox, so there may have been available). For another, small towns and rural areas didn’t plow the roads in the winter. The snow was rolled to make it easier to travel the way everybody did in the winter — by horsedrawn sleighs. Besides, there weren’t any motorized plows; they weren’t invented until 1913.
Cities were quick to adopt snowplows — New York had some right away in 1913. The roads were paved, there were already quite a few cars in use, and having a horse in the city was getting less and less convenient. After all, 1913 was a big year there. Grand Central Terminal had just reopened to be the world’s biggest railroad station. The Woolworth Building opened — it was the tallest building in the world for the next decade. And the Rockefeller Foundation was founded when John D. Rockefeller endowed it with $100 million.
But not everything in 1913 happened in New York. August 23 is a big day in the world of sculpture, after all, and in Copenhagen, it was the day “The Little Mermaid” statue was finished in 1913. Alexander Calder was busy being in charge of the Department of Sculpture for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, but Alexander Calder didn’t really accomplish much of note that year. He was a high school student. As for Alexander Calder, he was retired.
