when henry phillip tappen proposed this building, he was approached by some folks in detroit who were willing to help him do the fund-raising. and they literally raised money by subscription. people would pledge $50 or $100. $500 was a huge amount of money. when tappen was sure that he was going to have enough money to build it, he himself went to europe to choose the instruments. on his way to europe, he stopped in new york city and contracted with henry fitz to build a big telescope in the dome, and then he went to broad and consulted with astronomers. and they suggested that this instrument, the transit instrument, be gotten from one of the firms in berlin. so it's a prussian instrument. this is before the german state. so pistor and martens in berlin contracted with tappen to make this instrument. all of it's still functional. you can still open the hatches. tappen had a budget of about $24,000, give or take. and most of that money actually went into the instruments. so he's really concerned with taking a pretty modest budget and making it look much more impressive than the budget

and that's because henry phillip tappen didn't dream small. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring ann arbor, michigan. our local content vehicles recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about ann arbor and c-span's local content vehicles at c-span.org/localcontent. you're watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >>> when george wallace was governor of alabama during the 1960s, he fiercely supported segregation in his state, famously standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent the enrollment of black students at the university of alabama. wallace later retracted these views and apologized for his segregationist policies. in this program, historians dan carter, glen eskew and angela lewis discuss the life and legacy of wallace. they look at whether political concerns or racism motivated wallace to oppose integration. this event took place at the birmingham public library in birmingham, alabama. it's about 90 minutes. >> in birmingham, they love the governor. this line from lynyrd skynyrd's 1974 song "sweet home a