HistoryofScience.com Blog

Those who have used the From Cave Paintings to the Internet Timeline understand my interest in the history of information and media, including the history of news media, leading to a few observations on what took place today:

Apart from the historic election of Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States, from the standpoint of the history of information and media, one distinctive aspect of this election and the campaign that preceded it was the blending of its coverage by broadcast media and the rapidly evolving interactive media on the Internet. Television networks repeatedly referred viewers to their websites for interactive news stories and additional information. While we watched the election on television or radio we received information in emails, from websites, and from blogging and microblogging sites like Twitter. A few minutes after polls closed on the West coast and the election was decided by computer programs at news media, I received an email from the Obama campaign signed by Barack Obama. Online newspapers updated election results in real time. Perhaps most remarkably, even the Wikipedia article on the United States presidential election was updated in real time on the web as soon as election results were available. This I learned from reading a blog in The New York Times online--an online newspaper writing about an article in an online encyclopedia. From the standpoint of the history of media this represents a blurring or blending of the historic distinctions that evolved over centuries between news media, designed to publish or broadcast about the moment, and traditionally more static works of reference such as encyclopedias.

An email from info@barackobama.com, received 10-04-08 8:18PM PST, 18 minutes after the polls closed on the West coast. Presumably this email was sent to the millions of people who contributed to the Obama campaign:

"Jeremy --

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack"

I am very pleased to announce that the interactive database version of my timeline on the history of information is now online. Since publication in 2005 of my book, From Gutenberg to the Internet, this timeline has been a work in progress, and as it has grown so has its scope. Reflecting the greatly increased scope of the timeline, I decided to rename it From Cave Paintings to the Internet.

Recently, with the help of web designer Jessica Gore, I was able to convert the timeline into an expanded interactive database with several new features. There are currently more than 1550 annotated timeline entries, nearly all of which have one or more hyperlinks to online references. There are also 64 themes by which the timeline can be searched. Individual timeline entries are indexed by up to six themes. You will find links to each theme at the end of each timeline entry. If you click on a theme after an entry you will see a timeline based on that theme alone. Of course you can also access the timeline by different eras, and you can switch back and forth between eras and themes.

Here are the themes by which the time is currently indexed:

Archaeology, Art & Book Collecting, Art History, Artificial Intelligence,

Bibliography, Book History, Book Trade, Business Machines,

Cartography, Censorship, Communication, Communication / Information Theory,

Computer & Calculator Industry, Computer Culture, Computer Design, Computer Games / Simulations,

Computer Graphics /Music, Computers & Society, Computers & the Human Brain,

Computing & Data Processing,

Computing & Medicine / Molecular Biology, Computing Theory, Copyright/ Patents / Law,

Cryptography,

Data Storage / Memory, Destruction of Information, eCommerce, Economics,

Education, Electronic Media, Forgeries / Frauds, Freedom, Privacy & Security,

Human-Computer Interaction, Imaging / Photography/ Cinematography,

Indexing & Searching Information, Internet & Networking,

Libraries & Archives, Linguistics /Computational Linguistics, Manuscript Illumination,

Manuscripts & Manuscript Copying,

Mathematics, Museums, News Media, Organization of Information,

Paper, Political/ Social /Military Events, Prehistory,

Preservation & Conservation of Information,

Printing, Publishing, Radio, Robotics, Science & Medicine,

Social Networks / Wikis, Software, Sound / Video Recording,

Statistics, Survival of Information, Technology, Telecommunications,

Telegraph, Television, Virtual Reality, Writing

Users should recognize that in order to trace the origins of concepts or technologies back in time I have sometimes defined themes loosely. In order to make some themes more accessible to historical treatment I have also combined related themes. For example, I combined Internet and Networking in order to trace this concept back to the first road networks in the ancient world, to railroads, to the telegraph lines that followed railroad lines, to telephone networks, up the network of networks that is the Internet.

Though this is, of course, my individual project, I could not accomplish it without hundreds of reference volumes on the history of information in my personal library and the work of countless contributors to websites on the Internet. To the thousands of contributors to the Wikipedia I am especially grateful. Throughout the timeline users will find innumerable hyperlinks to the Wikipedia on the widest variety of topics. Please note that quotations within a timeline annotation, when not referenced to a printed publication, nearly always refer to a website referenced by a hyperlink.

Coming attractions will include images in many entries.

It is my pleasure to create and share this growing interactive record of my ongoing voyage through the history of information. I look forward to your comments.

Of private libraries recently constructed and collected one of the most spectacular must be the library and Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities, formed by Jay Walker, founder of priceline.com and Walker Digital. Walker's library was recently the subject of a splendidly illustrated article, Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker's Library published in Wired Magazine. Click on the link to read more about the library and view other images.

As I as discussed in the introduction to my 2005 book, From Gutenberg to the Internet, one of the consequences of the Internet is the paradox that while vastly more information is now accessible to us by the click of a mouse, there is the question of how much digital information will survive over time. There is also the question of much of the information being generated on the Internet deserves to survive, and who might be qualified to make judgments about preservation issues. Since all bloggers like myself are now essentially electronic publishers, and technology has made it so easy and so inexpensive to publish on the web, the amount of information being published electronically is exponentially greater than what was produced in the world of physical or printed information before the Internet. Not that the old world of print produced such a limited amount of information. Somewhere in the From Gutenberg to the Internet Timeline, available in the Traditions section of my website, you will find statistics indicating that the national archives of some countries were shelving miles of new physical documents each year in the years before those governments mandated that new government documents be prepared and stored in electronic form. However, as those governments soon realized, the technology for the long-term storage of digital information over decades or centuries does not yet exist. Currently there are massive research projects in the works in various countries, of which the foundations of some more notable are also specified on my timeline, to develop reliable long-term preservation technologies for digital files. These digital preservation projects are being run by various national libraries, like our Library of Congress.

Another consequence of the exponential growth of digital information on the Internet is that ironically, while the long-term preservation of digital information remains uncertain, websites have become a powerful tool for aiding the preservation and increasing the accessibility of many of the world's most fragile and most valuable original physical documents. Many of the large institutional and national and state libraries that run digital preservation research projects also have major projects either completed or underway for the digitization of physical archives recorded on paper or on vellum. An excellent example of this is the program to make the Dead Sea Scrolls available on the Internet. Using enhanced imaging technologies, all of the Dead Sea Scrolls will eventually be available for viewing by anyone, anywhere, and the digital images will actually show more information than may be visible on the originals since the web will display images taken of some scrolls years ago before exposure to light and pollutants caused fading. By making the priceless Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to all scholars without having to grant scholars permission to examine the physical objects, these priceless treasures, which till now have been accessible only to the few, will be protected from handling while allowing everyone to view them in more detail than is possible in their published form in printed editions. Thus, while the long-term preservation of digital information still remains an unsolved problem, digital technology is the best method ever devised for preserving the most valuable and fragile information recorded in physical form.

I own an octavo volume of the Journal de Medicine for January 1760 that has been hollowed out to hold a music box which plays when you open the cover. You wind it up by turning a key visible when you lift the back cover.This also amuses me because it has the bookplate of the famous physician, Joseph Recamier. One would not expect a medical book to be made into a music box, but then whoever created this may not have paid any attention to the contents of the volume.

Many years ago I attempted to order from a dealer's catalogue a seventeenth century prayer book, if I remember correctly, which concealed an authentic small flint-lock pistol. The price was around $3000, perhaps 25 or 30 years ago, and when I telephoned the dealer, whose name I have forgotten, he told me that my order was perhaps the twenty-fifth that he had received for this apparently truly desirable item. Since then I do not recall any comparable item being offered.

Next week the otherwise distinguished auctioneers, Bloomsbury, will offer at auction in New York a book that they politely describe as a "Travelling Commode." Here is their description:

"383. Travelling Commode in form of Large Book. Wooden folio book titled on spine: Historia Universalis. [France]: 18th Century, Oak and calf leather, Folio (Closed: 500 mm high x 90 long (binding) x 380 mm deep. Full calf covers elaborately blind-stamped in geometric design over oak boards, spine with lettering label in red morocco paneled in gilt, 6 raised bands. The folio opens to reveal two oaken boards that can be folded out to form a closed square and one board lifted upward to become the seat, the hole in the middle ready to hold a chamber pot. The box rests on four small wooden pegs, the binding protected by a small brass plate at the foot. Condition: clasps possibly renewed in 19th century, seat cracked, old restorations, minor losses to calf.
An unusual example of the use of the book form to disguise travelling personal furniture, probably for use on the military field. Other examples include a piece of furniture at the Chateau de Lamothe-Fenelon in the Dordogne, consists of a pile of folios on short legs with a lid to open, but is not portable. Other examples listed in Komrij, Kaka fonie, p, 286, and plate V.

est. $1500 – $2500"

Why the auctioneers think this item might have been used in a military context I have no idea. One would think that a military officer would have no pressing need to conceal his desire to use a private seat over a chamber pot. My guess is that this was built for a man or woman who travelled in more polite contexts. The question is who collects this sort of thing today? Not me.

Note added on 10-09-2008: The lot sold on September 9 for its low estimate of $1500 plus premium.

As a specialist in rare books in the history of science and medicine for more than 40 years, I have handled numerous rare items concerning the history of resurrection men, also called resurrectionists, or body-snatchers. These pamphlets, broadsides, and books usually concern the business of illegally supplying corpses to anatomy schools in England and the United States during the early nineteenth century when criminals sentenced to be hanged and anatomized were the only legal supply of corpses, and this supply was insufficient to support the demand from private anatomy schools. The most notorious of all resurrectionists were Burke and Hare, who were able to supply fresh, undeteriorated corpses to the anatomist Robert Knox by smothering their victims. A hero of my youth, the poet Dylan Thomas, wrote a screenplay on this topic entitled The Doctor and the Devils, which was published in 1953. It was significantly re-written and produced as a film with the same title in 1985, starring Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, and of all actresses--Twiggy. In my opinion, this film is one of the most entertaining and authentic dramatizations relating to medical history. It is available on DVD.



While I have had a lot of business experience with rare material concerning resurrection men, I never imagined that a publisher could be accused of resurrecting a manuscript that rightly should have been left undisturbed in its archival grave. However, that is exactly what happened recently, according to a review published in Scotland on Sunday of Sir Walter Scott's posthumous The Siege of Malta and Bizarro. These unfinished novels were written by Scott in 1831 and 1832 after he had suffered a series of strokes which affected his writing abilities. Because of their obvious major flaws neither Scott nor his descendants believed that they should ever be published. "The late John Buchan read both works while researching a biography of Scott in 1932 and remarked: 'It may be hoped that no literary resurrectionist will ever be guilty of the crime of giving them to the world.' " For decades the manuscripts, with all their limitations, were preserved in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.

However history judges these literary "resurrectionists," and I suspect that it will be with tolerance--it should be pointed out that no professional body-snatcher ever wanted to be accused of actual "grave-robbing." That is because punishment for stealing a dead body was a misdemeanor, punishable with a fine or imprisonment, while actually stealing property from a corpse, such as jewelry that might have been buried with a body, was a felony, potentially punishable by "transportation" or even execution.

In keeping with our enlightened, tolerant view of this questionable publishing project, and not wanting the publisher to suffer more than appropriate critical ridicule, would we want to remove the words "grave-robbing" from the headline and revise it as follows: "Publisher Accused of Literary Body-Snatching for Printing Last Two Novels Marred by Sir Walter Scott's Ill-Health?"

In 2005 a map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley III, was caught stealing maps from Yale's Beinicke Library, leading to an investigation proving that he had stolen maps from numerous institutions, and that he had sold them to various unsuspecting dealers and clients. In everyone's best interests except Smiley's, the case received a great deal of publicity during 2005 to 2007, leading to increased security at some rare book libraries. A well-known expert on early maps, Smiley's M O was to study early atlases and travel books in rare book libraries and reading rooms, and-- when nobody was looking--razor out individual maps and sneak them out concealed in his clothing. When he returned the volume to the librarian he knew that the removal of a thin leaf or two from a bound volume would not be noticeable. Through this scheme, which went undetected for several years, Smiley was able to sell, often at comparatively reasonable prices, some of the world's rarest and most desirable maps. His arrest and conviction brought him jail time, demands for restitution, and notoriety that he did not desire, including a good, objective article in the Wikipedia.


Is the crime of theft that much different than the crime of forgery? Recently the biographer and forger of literary autographs, Lee Israel, published a brief (127pp.) self-aggrandizing autobiographical account of her escapades entitled Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger. Most probably the institutional libraries, dealers, and scholars she conned cannot forgive her. However, the New York Times reviewer, Thomas Mallon, seems understanding about the human aspects of these admittedly interesting literary crimes. Certainly the publishers, Simon & Schuster, must have felt that there was a ready market for this story. Will a film be in the works?

After posting the above a much more objective review of Lee Israel's book in the Los Angeles Times came to my attention. The reviewer, Jonathan Shapiro, a former federal prosecutor, is an adjunct law professor at USC and a co-executive producer on the NBC television drama "Life." To Shapiro " 'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' is an entertaining read that showcases Israel's many gifts as a writer, as well as her tragic defects as a human being. Caveat emptor: It is the work of a self-confessed liar."

UPDATE: On August 17, the New York Times published the following letters concerning the literary forgeries of Lee Israel:

To the Editor:

As a biographer, no, I cannot ever forgive Lee Israel, the author of “Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger” (Aug. 3). The letters she forged make a mockery of writers’ attempts to seek out the truth when researching books. But Israel gets a Simon & Schuster contract for her crimes and thinks the whole thing is “a big hoot.” As for me, I’d like to see her head on a pike in front of the New York Public Library, as a warning to others.

Eve Golden
Lyndhurst, N.J.

•

To the Editor:

As the dealer who approached the F.B.I. with his suspicions regarding Lee Israel’s forgeries and theft of rare letters from Columbia University, and who participated in the operation that caught her, I am appalled by the tone of the press coverage her book has received. Among the forgers mentioned in your review could be added the name of Mark Hofmann, the 1980s forger of Mormon historical documents, who not only defrauded dozens of dealers and betrayed his co-religionists but murdered several people to conceal his crimes. Maybe he, too, will write a “pretty damned fabulous book” about his “misadventures.” Betrayal, greed and immorality are not so amusing to the scholars, collectors, dealers and institutions Israel hurt.

David Lowenherz
New York

Reading the
New York Times review immediately caused me to order and read Larry McMurtry's recently published Books: A Memoir. McMurtry is the author of twenty-eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove, and over thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship with Diana Ossana, of the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Besides the honor, he received negative fashion notoreity for wearing jeans and cowboy boots to the Academy Awards, as shown, when he received the Oscar with Ossana.


What is less widely known about McMurtry is his parallel career as a book scout and antiquarian bookseller. Years ago I had the opportunity to meet him when I visited the version of his bookstore, Booked-Up, that he used to run in the Washington DC area. Currently he operates one of the largest antiquarian bookstores in the world in his small home town of Archer City, Texas.

As one would imagine, McMurtry's account of his adventures in the book trade is fascinating, even it is retrograde. McMurtry, who still writes all his manuscripts--10 pages per morning--on an old Hermes 3000 typewriter rather than a computer, emphasizes the value being lost to book collectors in the life experience of visiting book shops. On that I fully agree, but the Internet has caused the closure of numerous shops, and it is difficult to turn back the clock. I also understand how he feels about his Hermes typewriter since I used to type all my letters on one until I bought my first PC, a Compaq Plus 28 pound so-called portable, about 1988.

In his memoir McMurtry reminds the reader that he is better-known for his many films and screenplays than for his books, even though some have been best-sellers. His films include Hud, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and other classics. In line with other commentators, he observes that reading habits have changed as a result of electronic media. I quote from the beginning of his chapter 57:

"I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support--reading--is itself an eccentricity now, if a mild one. Interrupted narrative has become a natural thing. One could agrue that Dickens and the other popular, serially published nineteenth century novelists started this, and the television commercial made interruption come to seem normal. But the silicon chip has accelerated the process of interruption beyond all reckoning: iPods, BlackBerrys, laptops all break narrative into shorter and shorter sequences.
"Still, it's at least possible that these toys will someday lose their freshness and an old-fashioned thing, the book, will come to hold some interest for the masses again."

Ironically McMurtry's wonderful memoir is an example of just this sort of interrupted narrative, containing on its 259 pages no less than 109 separate chapters, some only one page long. Maybe that is why it is so easy to read!

Labels: book trade, bookselling, films, memoirs, novels, reading

Though the Antikthera Mechanism was discovered over 100 years ago, the functions of this device, which is thought to date from 150 to 100 BCE, are only now beginning to be fully understood.

Possibly as significant as understanding its operations are the latest methods of high resolution imaging and three-dimension x-ray tomography used to make the discoveries. The Antikythera Mechanism discovered off Antikythera, Greece in 1901, includes the only specimen preserved from antiquity of a scientifically graduated instrument. It may also be thought of as the earliest extant mechanical calculator, or analog computer.

Applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, experts deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. This research revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar. Scientists found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.

The discoveries and the methods used are the subject of an absolutely fascinating video available from the Nature website. It includes animations of the way that the Antikthera Mechanism is thought to have operated.

Labels: ancient Greece, archaeology, astronomy, calendars, computing

Labels: digital information, Internet, literacy, print, reading