hraness

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A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

by Center for Land Use InterpretationThe Center for Land Use Interpretation

Hraness cites a source capture. The source author remains the source.

gist

The Center for Land Use Interpretation presents a 13-slide gallery of photographed rolodex cards rather than a catalog essay. Each slide is numbered; the first photograph is a Gardner Cryogenics Corporation card for Albert F. Cox, a cryogenic sales engineer in Glendale, California. Two notches cut into the bottom edge mark it as a rotary-file card, a desk tool from the lab's vendor network. The page treats those physical cards as the collection.

ideas

  • The gallery is the catalog. Thirteen numbered photographs stand in for a written inventory; CLUI publishes the cards themselves.
  • A rolodex card is hardware. The first card's two bottom notches show a rotary-file interface, not a wallet card.
  • Vendors had products and cities, not lab titles. Gardner Cryogenics' Albert F. Cox is a Glendale sales engineer selling into Los Alamos.
  • Corporate marks are the other record. The mid-century Gardner logo is why the cards are photographed as graphic objects.