A Small Meteorite Lands at the Library
One of my favorite aspects of my job is searching for rare books to add to our collection. While browsing the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair in late 2023, I was invited to view a curious copy of a book that ended up being a good fit for our rare book collection. The book, a brief autobiography of American rocketry pioneer Robert H. Goddard, printed in miniature, was not particularly rare or noteworthy; however, this particular copy is bound in meteorite.
Considered the father of modern rocketry, Goddard is the inventor and creator of the first liquid-fueled rocket, which was successfully launched at Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of that first launch, Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, Holland, printed a run of 1,926 copies of Goddard’s autobiography, bound by Proost en Brant N.V., Holland. From this printing, four copies were bound in meteorite under the direction of Dr. Arno Gschwendtner.
The unique binding uses slices of meteorite as the front and back boards. Gschwendtner spent more than 100 hours researching a suitable meteorite, ultimately deciding to use octahedrite from the Muonionalusta Meteorite, which fell on Northern Scandinavia circa one million years BCE. More than 40 pieces of the meteorite are known to have been recovered, with some weighing in excess of 40 pounds.
Gschwendtner quickly realized that traditional bookbinders were ill prepared to utilize such a strange material, so he recruited Roland Meuter, who was trained in using meteorite in watch dials for Rolex and Jager LeCoultre, from Switzerland for the task. Meuter’s slices display a pattern distinctive to the octahedrite Muonionalusta meteorite, composed of iron, nickel, gallium, and germanium. The high iron content in the meteor makes this one of the few books in our collection that we ask patrons to use gloves while handling.
Goddard, Robert Hutchings et al. The Autobiography of Robert Hutchings Goddard, Father of the Space Age : Early Years to 1927. Worcester, Massachusetts: Achille J. St. Onge, 1966. Print.
