Tag: defensible times
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From an extremely different era 21
EnidBuzz posted this picture sent in by a reader. Almost everything in the picture would be VERBOTEN today. Girl casually getting into a picture; milk cans waiting to be hauled by the bus; unleashed dog proudly joining the group; full contact between all the people; and a bit of harmless prankery. If the boy had…
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Interactive
Interactive gimmicks in publications have been around for a long time. The technology for die-cutting and inserting gimmicks is very old, but expensive in time and planning. This Natl Assn of Mfrs film showed various ways that corporations communicated with their employees, ranging from the usual bulletin boards and suggestion boxes to closed circuit radio…
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Year-end shit
Not gonna bother with a complete list. Mostly I’m just tired and used up this year, after three years of defending my soul from the “virus” monsters. Trying to step away from the keyboard into a more analog life. For my own records, this item from February is probably the best new understanding of the…
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King Solomon’s rosary
One of those supershort Ripley pieces tells a strange story. A village in India commonly received rain including pre-drilled beads. The natives gathered them and strung them into ‘King Solomon’s Rosaries’. Several old books note that Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists use rosaries; the Buddhist version is well known. Finally found the source of Ripley’s story.…
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Ease and comfort
Previous item about retirement emphasized ‘ease and comfort’, a time when you don’t have to be anywhere or satisfy anyone except yourself. Strikes an immediate resonance. During the “virus” holocaust I was fighting all the time, churning out courseware and graphics, walking every day and making the hellish storetrip twice a week by bus. Now…
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Persistent myth
One of the many persistent idiotic myths about the past is the condescending attitude toward women. This was true in the MAN’S WORLD of NYC, but never true in America. From REA News in 1940:
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Not the same We.
The cultural preservers continually focus on giant cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build. This Twitter item says “we built that”. No we didn’t. The we who built it lived in an entirely different cultural and economic system. There’s no way we could recover the system that made such monuments possible, and such monuments…
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Salute to cafes
(Redated and reposted after some additions) Last week I noticed a picture of an old workingman’s cafe in Enid. The picture was self-explanatory. Why did little cafes do a good business? Because they were right next to downtown apartments and rooms where most people lacked kitchens. Decided to do a proper salute to cafes and…
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Reprint on computing history
Linked in previous. Also, this 2012 item continues to draw occasional readers or bots, so maybe it’s worthwhile at least to bots. = = = = = START REPRINT: Via uCatholic.com: The computer was originally invented to do just that: compute. Numerical calculations were its sole intended purpose, and words were never in the realm…
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Better choices
Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Look, if you really want to honor ancient women in technology, Ada is getting tired. She didn’t invent anything, she was just a writer who explained Babbage’s invention and saw some of its potential. Babbage wasn’t the main source of modern computing anyway. Calculators with decimal dials were widespread a…
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Writers aren’t auto workers
The Ankler writes about the aftermath of the writers strike: = = = = = START QUOTE: Downstream financial harm to adjacent businesses generates social and political pressures that further enhance that negotiating leverage — as long as striking workers can capture the hearts and minds of those affected third parties, and of the public…
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Captive regulars
Nice self-explanatory picture. A downtown cafe, facing the alley, making no attempt to look attractive to walkbys. The background explains why. Downtowns were full of upstairs apartments and rooms. Most downtown apartments lacked kitchens. Residents used hotplates or simply ate in cafes. This cafe had a captive audience of reliable regulars.
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The magic lantern oscilloscope
I bumped into this item sideways. I was looking at a peculiar early typewriter designed by Wheatstone. Since I’m addicted to Wheatstone I tried to animate it, but it was poorly described and pictured. The article noted that it was built by a Mr Pickler, so I started looking in that direction for more info.…
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The Hughes Typograph
Found in Tangible Typography, or how the blind read, published in England in 1853. The Typograph was invented in 1851 by William Hughes, head of the Blind Institution at Manchester. It was demonstrated at one of the Crystal Palace exhibitions of new inventions, and was produced and used in small quantities. Several of the earliest…
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Bootstrapping a language
Okie blogger K. Latham posted an interesting brief feature on the Cherokee Advocate, a weekly paper in Tahlequah that was first founded in 1844. I had noticed several early tribal newspapers in the Ayer newspaper lists but hadn’t stopped to think about the alphabet and fonts. I asked some questions about the source of the…
Polistra's Mill 