A ebook checked out of the library in New Bedford, Massachusetts was returned lately, greater than 119 years after it was first checked out.
On Valentine’s Day 1904, an unidentified individual took “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity,” by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell, first printed in 1881, out of the New Bedford Free Public Library — however by no means introduced it again.
Over the following century, the ebook ultimately made its means into the gathering of West Virginia University, the place the curator of uncommon books seen that whereas it was overdue, it had not been marked “withdrawn.”
This meant that the ebook, regardless of its tardiness, nonetheless belonged to the New Bedford library.
“This is a new one for me too. I told [them] I’d be happy to pack it up and send it back and that’s what I did,” curator Stewart Plein informed WBOY-TV.
The ebook was nonetheless in good situation, indicating to New Bedford library workers that it had been stored as a part of a household assortment.
“This came back in extremely good condition. Someone obviously kept this on a nice bookshelf because it was in such good shape and probably got passed down in the family,” New Bedford Free Public Library Director Olivia Melo informed the Associated Press Friday.
The library has a five-cents-a-day late price — nevertheless it caps out at $2. If the cap was not in place, the return of the Nineteenth-century information to what was then the brand new science of electrical energy would have value an individual over $2,100.
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