Author Archive: Charles Keller

Collectible Antique Scientific and Quack Medical Devices

Six years ago, I researched and cataloged a collection of antique scientific and quack medical devices for Dirk Soulis Auctions, gathered over a span of thirty years by biology professor Dr. Leland Keller (no relation). Dr. Keller used many of these…
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Still Playing With Dalis: Surreal Scholarship

Works by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) – one of the 20th century’s most famous and controversial surrealist artists, can be a rather challenging project for an art appraiser. And I mean challenging in the sense that educating your client about the…
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NIST Stations WWV, WWVH, WWVB and “The Empire Strikes Back”

Being a nostalgic soul, and one that still owns his old Candle shortwave radio, inherited from an aunt, I like to set time on my watches and library clock to the shortwave radio station WWV, an atomic clock-driven time interval…
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In Brief: Criterion Collection’s “Island of Lost Souls” DVD

Image courtesy of Criterion Collection What is the Law? Law No More! There are a couple of ways I watch Erle Kenton’s 1932 Island of Lost Souls film classic. One, which is the most successful, is as a snapshot of…
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Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium

My wife won a ‘flash contest’ on Facebook yesterday (meaning you had to pick up your winnings within a couple of hours of notification) for UMKC men’s basketball tickets that evening. I’m not a basketball fan, but the game was…
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Georges Méliès and the Dawn of Cinema

Before we subscribed to Netflix a couple of years ago, it had been decades since I had seen a complete version of Georges Méliès’ influential La Voyage dans la lune, also known as A Trip to the Moon (1902). The short…
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Detecting Inpainting in Artwork

If you’ve spent time around artists, museums, or artwork in general, you have probably heard the term “inpainting.” Simply put, inpainting is a process that reconstructs deteriorated portions of a painting or image. The term can be also be used…
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History’s Stylus Remains Stuck in the Same Groove

The 2016 presidential election seems the most contentious of my lifetime. The amount of cognitive dissonance and outright hypocrisy among supporters of the front runners is, well, staggering.  My fellow Americans seem unable or unwilling to shake off the shackles…
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