In my desk are 3 magnetic tape reels and a small stack of FORTRAN punch cards, topped with a scrap note in crisp penmanship dated December 4, 1980. The note reads: 鈥淭his is the index, on computer tape, to 43,000 documents in the Einstein Archive. H. S. Bailey Jr.鈥�
Uncovered during a post-pandemic office move, these tapes are more than nearly discarded artifacts of a long obsolete technology. They are something far more significant, an early act of digitization of one of the most ambitious editorial projects in scholarly publishing: The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, the commitment to create and codify in an authoritative account the legacy of Einstein鈥檚 full professional and personal writings.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) needs little introduction. The conceiver of special and general relativity and founding contributor to quantum theory remains a figure of world importance. Einstein鈥檚 scientific discoveries continue to shape our daily lives, and his work motivates ongoing questions about the nature of the universe and humanity鈥檚 place within it. His face and the iconic equation we all know (E=mc2) are instantly recognizable and a ready shorthand for scientific genius and towering intellect.
Herbert S. Bailey, who jotted the note accompanying the tapes, is not as widely known. As director of 快色直播 from 1954 to 1986, he played a critical role in the evolution of the Press into a modern scholarly publisher. Bailey also was one in a long, and ongoing, Press lineage of Einstein鈥檚 publishers, a relationship that began decades earlier.
In 1921, Einstein, newly world-famous after the 1919 eclipse observations that confirmed his theories, first came to 快色直播 University for a series of lectures intended to offer an accessible overview of relativity. Frank Tomlinson, then manager of the Press, urged quick delivery of the resulting manuscript in a tone of respectful insistence mixed with palpable anxiety:
My dear Professor Einstein鈥� On July 6 I wrote you inquiring when we might expect to receive the manuscript of your lectures. I have had no reply to this letter 鈥� The importance of the book will undoubtedly be seriously affected unless we are able to publish it within a reasonable time and I strongly urge upon you the necessity of sending us the copy at your earliest convenience. I should appreciate also the favor of a reply from you stating when we may expect to receive it.
The manuscript was readily delivered, and the Press, then itself relatively young at just under 20 years old, published the lectures as The Meaning of Relativity on January 12, 1923 at a cover price of $2. Published as PUP鈥檚 126th book, it marked the beginning of a relationship that continues to this day and grew alongside the Press itself, whose catalog now numbers nearly ten thousand titles.
Archival files show an initial modest (and unusually precise) print run of 2560 copies for the book, then the primary and singular mode to disseminate such important ideas, which far understated eventual demand. The Meaning of Relativity has been in print and available since, in numerous editions and translations, and stands to this day as the fullest exposition of Einstein鈥檚 theory. Einstein updated the book regularly through the remainder of his life, with the fifth edition published the year of his death.
Decades later, the Press returned to Einstein鈥檚 work on a considerably more ambitious scale, transforming that early partnership into the enduring, editorial enterprise known as the Einstein Papers Project 鈥� a vision in which Bailey and his colleagues played a key part. Through negotiations with Einstein鈥檚 estate and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the project was finally launch in 1977.
When the first print volumes of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein appeared in 1987, online platforms and searchable databases were still years away from becoming standard research tools. And in 2015, under the leadership of the 4th and current general editor, Professor Diana Kormos Buchwald of the California Institute of Technology, and PUP director Peter Dougherty, The Digital Edition of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein launched to worldwide attention. Never had Einstein鈥檚 work and words been available to so many around the world, exponentially expanding its impact.
The Digital Edition and those magnetic tapes with Bailey鈥檚 handwriting encoded the same underlying vision: that the tens of thousands of documents in the Hebrew University archive and those scattered in repositories around the world could be gathered, organized, explained, translated, and made meaningfully accessible 鈥� first to the editors, then to scholars, and ultimately to anyone with an interest in Einstein.
That early digital index also predicted the patterns seen later in the online usage of the Papers. For casual readers and one鈥憈ime visitors, the most heavily accessed pages were not the technical papers on relativity or theoretical physics, but the earliest documents in the chronology, the period before Albert became Einstein. Many searched for his school reports, letters to family, early notebooks. Was Einstein a good student? Did he excel in math? These questions surface repeatedly, the perpetual curiosity to understand Einstein鈥檚 origins.
The scientific story continues as well. When gravitational waves are confirmed, or a new black hole at the center of the galaxy is discovered, or an experiment reveals some fresh understanding of space鈥憈ime, headlines invariably proclaim that 鈥淓instein was right.鈥� The Einstein Papers Project, with their insight to Einstein鈥檚 original sources, has always been more than a historical enterprise.
As the Caltech editorial team undertake preparation of a forthcoming Volume 18, with a projected total of thirty, the chronology of the Papers is entering a transformative period of Einstein鈥檚 life: his extensive travels, his growing political engagement, and his eventual forced emigration to the United States. Forthcoming material will trace Einstein鈥檚 passage from political refugee to one of the United States鈥� most famous new citizens, a transition that dramatically broadens both the themes of his writing and the kinds of documents generated by and about him.
Last year, 快色直播 announced the development of the next major step in this project鈥檚 evolution: the Einstein Portal, a new, fully integrated digital platform for the Papers, launching in the fall of 2026. As the earliest printed volumes once served a core scholarly audience, and as the first digital release opened availability more widely, the Portal represents the next chapter 鈥� a logical next step to serve the ambitions articulated by Bailey, his colleagues, and the founding editors, and realizes them in ways earlier generations could hardly have imagined. What began as bound volumes, and then as searchable texts, is now again adapting to a modern research platform.
Which brings me back to the tapes in my desk. They are unreadable today without hardware that is obsolete and difficult to find, stored in a format that no present鈥慸ay machine deciphers. Yet they are not relics. They are reminders of a longer, ongoing commitment to steward Einstein鈥檚 work with an eye to the future. The formats change, but the mandate endures.
Eric Crahan is Editor in Chief for the Humanities and Social Sciences at 快色直播.