Today's Guest Contributor on Round and Square is Amara Pugens. Amara is from Brookfield, Wisconsin, and recently graduated from Beloit College with a B.A. in history and anthropology and a minor in museum studies. She is currently working with four other Beloit College graduates to digitize, process, and research the William Edgar Geil Collection at the Doylestown Historical Society in Pennsylvania.
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Please note that all items marked "DHS" are property of the Doylestown Historical Society, and used with DHS permission. If you wish to use an image, you need permission of the Society. Please contact Robert LaFleur (lafleur@beloit.edu), and he will put you in contact with the appropriate people.
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| [b] The Perfect 2 AP |
I have created the perfect "2."
In image [b], there are three number "2"s; the second "2" (the first of "2" in the number .0220) is the most beautiful "2" I have every written, and I drew it without any conscious effort. I simply wrote the catalog number, looked down again, and saw the amazing "2." The moment I realized what I had done I was sharing it with the rest of my co-workers. “Look. Look at this "2." Is that not the most perfect "2?" Look at how amazing it is, and I didn’t even try to make it look beautiful like that.” It looks exactly like a typed "2;" there is a perfect round top, and a little wavy tail at the bottom.
In image [b], there are three number "2"s; the second "2" (the first of "2" in the number .0220) is the most beautiful "2" I have every written, and I drew it without any conscious effort. I simply wrote the catalog number, looked down again, and saw the amazing "2." The moment I realized what I had done I was sharing it with the rest of my co-workers. “Look. Look at this "2." Is that not the most perfect "2?" Look at how amazing it is, and I didn’t even try to make it look beautiful like that.” It looks exactly like a typed "2;" there is a perfect round top, and a little wavy tail at the bottom.
I was very proud…until I realized this obsession with numbers is sort of, kind of, like…Geil.
Geil is not only obsessed with the number five (though it is favorite, discussed in Rachel Johnson's post "Thinking in Fives"). Throughout his archives are numbers—many, many numbers. These numbers are receipts of money spent or documentation of distances traveled. They are written on envelopes, receipts, in journals, on books, and they line the margins of manuscripts.
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| [c] Documenting money DHS |
Geil used numbers in a variety of ways. First, he took great care in documenting money and financial transactions. In 1919, for example, he noted the entire cost of his journey through China, down to the five-dollar present to the king. Secondly, Geil documented different foreign cities by the distances they were from one another. For example, he wrote that “Hêng Shan” was 1500 li from Tai, 2100 li from Hua, 5800 li from Hêng (Nau Yo), 2100 li from Sung, and 700 li from Perking. Lastly, Geil used numbers to quantify his understanding of different communities. For example, in vague comments about “Chitawbo’s Village,” he noted the community to be the “‘3’ of Africa” with “7 colors.”
Why would Geil take notes in such a mathematical way? Traveling in a country with little knowledge of the lands, peoples and cultures, Geil could have used numbers as a means of understanding the unknown or the unfamiliar. By documenting the distances of surrounding communities and the price of food, he took control over his travels, even if he did not know the essentials of where he was traveling. Because Geil did not have the in-depth cultural knowledge of an anthropologist, he instead used numbers as a way to think about the different cultures he encountered, and as the medium through which he explained what he observed. For example, Geil did not need to meet “Mr. Cocoli, the millionaire of the island…reputed to be worth the extraordinary sum of 20,000 pounds sterling or $100,000” to deduced “this rich man [was] not an aristocratically appearing person, but a man upon whom riches + honor sit lightly,” because Geil “saw him sipping coffee with his coat off, in company with his less wealthy neighbors…[and] he had] a democratic behavior.” With this idea of numbers as knowledge, Geil used his calculations as a type of persistence of culture, taking on power beyond its meaning.
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| [d] Mr. Cocoli DHS |
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