Created by the German priest Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879, Volapük ("World's Speech") was the first artificial language to gain wide spread popularity as a prospective form of universal communication. During the 1880s, Volapük clubs were formed throughout Europe and the Americas, with a particularly active center in eastern Massachussetts, however it was gradually replaced by its somewhat less elaborate rival, Esperanto. The Volapük Collection includes printed materials, ephemera, and small number of letters and postcards written in Volapük. Assembled by F. L. Hutchins of Worcester, Mass., a leading American Volapükist, the collection reflects the brief, but intense international interest in the potential of Volapük to become a lingua franca of business and a medium for exchange across borders, and it conveys some of the excitement its adherents felt at its potential.