COUNTLESS CONNECTING THREADS. MIT'S HISTORY REVEALED THROUGH ITS MOST EVOCATIVE OBJECTS A Catalog of the MIT 150 Exhibition presented by the MIT Museum as part of the Institutes's Sesquicentennial Celebration in 2011.

"[T]hese countless connecting threads, woven into one indissoluble texture, formthat ever-enlarging web which is the blended product of the world's scientific and industrialactivity." -- William Barton Rogers, 1860, Objects and Plan of an Institute ofTechnology

Inspired by an exhibition of 150 objects created by the MITMuseum to mark MIT's sesquicentennial, this lavishly illustrated volume is a unique collection ofvisual and written meditations about the making and meaning of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. The story of MIT is more than a simple tale of a founder's vision. It is greater thanthe sum of all the stories that have been or are yet to be told by the hundreds of thousands whohave a direct personal connection with the Institute. Yet, with the assistance of the collectiveintelligence of the MIT community, the Museum was able to capture some of those "countlessconnecting threads" -- from a towering module for the first real-time digital computer to thefamous Baker House Piano Drop. Part history, part catalog, part souvenir, CountlessConnecting Threads invites readers to (re)discover, through some of the Institute's mostevocative objects, the essence of the vast and varied tapestry that is MIT.

Deborah G. Douglas is Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum. She was the curator and project director for the MIT 150 Exhibition.