History in the Deep-Freeze                          3

had played major roles in the history of New York City and State.

The first stress was laid on political history, and George
McAneny consented to be the initial interviewee. He was followed
by Henry Bruere, Frederic R. Coudert, Raymond B. Fosdick,
William A. Prendergast, Frederick C. Tanner and George S. Van
Schaick, who filled in great gaps in the known history of New
York from the days of Low and Odell to those of LaGuardia and
Lehman. Then the scope was broadened. Doctors Joseph Collins
and Haven Emerson contribnted material on early medicine;
Lawrence Veiller and Homer Folks recorded much on the httle-
known story of social work; while Martin Saxe and Lawson Purdy
told of New York taxation and finance.

As the work began, the interviewer laboriously wrote down by
hand quotations and key sentences, rushing to his typewriter when
the interview had ended to fill in from memory the 80 per cent
balance which he had missed. The swiftly flowing comments and
witticisms of Charles C. Burlingham proved the undoing of this
method. The first tape-recorders were straightway purchased
early in 1949 and the "Experiment" became a Project.

The mechanization of the "two men and a lead pencil" made it
quickly apparent that a vastly expanded concept of the work was
in order. First, an office had to be found and two professors wryly
gave up a study room on the ground floor of Butler Library. Next
came the employment of a secretary, then transcribers to trans¬
form the recorded tape into manuscript. The perplexed trustees of
the Bancroft Fund released an additional six thousand dollars.
Special desks to hold transcribing tape-recorders and all the other
paraphemaha of a business office brought to the academic halls of
Columbia Library something quite apart from traditional research
apparatus. Now, bulging its original quarters with a staff of twelve,
the OHEO burst into an adjoining office, and two more academic
administrators retreated to the higher reaches of the building.

Nevertheless, beneath outward growth and change in house¬
keeping effects, the Project was setting operational procedures
from which it has never deviated.