Pieces of history

This interview appeared in the Fall 2018 Letters & Science magazine.

The Vulcan bowling pin holds histories within its curvy shell. If the object could talk, it would tell you that its maker, the Vulcan Corporation of Antigo, Wisconsin, was one of the biggest manufacturers of bowling pins during the sport’s midcentury heyday.

It could explain that Vulcan also owed its success to its patented plastic coating and the abundance of sugar maple trees nearby — a handy coincidence given that the American Bowling Congress, headquartered at the time in the “Bowling Capital” of Milwaukee, required that pins be made of that wood.

It might sidetrack into stories of northern Wisconsin’s lumber industry, which developed with the expansion of the railroads in the 1880s.

Or it could regale you with tales about how bowling boomed in Japan in the 1960s and ’70s, after a business delegate visited — you guessed it — the Vulcan Corporation.

“There’s something about things that helps bring history to life,” says Sarah Thal, a professor of history. “They can offer a truly relatable window into larger issues in both the past and the present.” 

In 2014 Thal and Thomas Broman, an emeritus professor of history, launched Wisconsin 101: Our History in Objects, a multimedia project that explores the state’s diverse history through its items. 

Undergraduate students submit many entries, but so do teachers, historians and regular folks throughout the state. Logged on the Wisconsin 101 website and shared in segments of Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life show, each object is linked to related items and histories, leading to ever-more-surprising connections between things, people, communities and time periods. 

Currently, about 30 objects — an 1890s bicycle, a Civil War draft wheel and a Babcock butterfat tester among them — are featured, with more to come. And the program is building up its outreach e orts and materials for educators, all with the goal of inspiring more Wisconsinites to understand their shared past and that history is all around them.