A preliminary online guide to the Collector Exhibit Area at ANA in Anaheim is available at:
www.chicagocoinclub.org/events/2016/ana/ex/all_by_cl.html

These are the exhibits that we expect to be ready for public viewing when the bourse opens at 10am on Tuesday, August 9. Scan the list, find some that interest you, and stop by.

Bill Hyder and I are about half way done with our next book, titled So-Called Dollars from the Pacific Coast Expositions. The book is going to be part story book, part catalog. We want collectors to get excited about collecting So-Called Dollars, and story books do that. There were eight expositions held on the Pacific Coast, starting with the 1894 Midwinter, the 1915 PPIE, etc. Our book is going to tell the story of those expositions, and catalog all of the So-Called Dollars struck at each.

I could not agree more with the sentiments expressed by David Sundman. British museums should be deacquisitioning rather than acquiring coins, pictures etc of which they already have far too many to display or study.

I found this recent listing on eBay for an 1809 document which has William Woart's notary seal. I would expect he had another seal for his Justice of the Peace position - which may or may not be a match to the mystery token. But I thought this may be of interest.

Grace Hopper was mentioned in an earlier issue of The E-Sylum. I had the pleasure of meeting her in the mid-1980s when she gave a talk at one of the U.S. Navy installations in San Diego (I'm the one with the beard).

I specifically asked her about the coining of the word 'bug'. She told me that back in the late 1940s, one of the mainframe computers stopped working and the Command wanted to know what was wrong. She had a technician open the back of the computer and found that a moth had gotten in and caused a short with its wings contacting various vacuum tubes (remember those?). So, in her response, she wrote that there was a bug in it. She taped the moth into her log book and she told me that it was on display in the Smithsonian.

She also handed out pieces of wire that were 11.8 inches long. This length represented the distance light travels in one nanosecond. Then she told us if we wanted to know how fast light traveled in a picosecond, we should spill some pepper on our hands and pick out one grain. Grace Hopper was a very intelligent and interesting person.

By the way, the Newman Numismatic Portal is fantastic. I find myself looking there every day.