24 August

Born in 1847—Charles Follen McKim, American architect.

Above: Bates Hall, the reading room of the Boston Public Library (1895), designed by McKim

Also, born in 1899, Argentine writer and translator Jorge Luis Borges.

Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.