Behold the 1940s Typewriter That Could Type in English, Chinese & Japanese: Watch More Than a Thousand Different Characters in Action

There was a time, not long after the wide­spread adop­tion of teleg­ra­phy in the 19th cen­tu­ry, when the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage looked doomed. Or at least it did to cer­tain thinkers con­sid­er­ing the impli­ca­tions of that instant glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabling tech­nol­o­gy hav­ing been devel­oped for the rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple Latin alpha­bet. And as unsuit­ed as the Chi­nese writ­ing sys­tem must have seemed to the world of the tele­graph, it would have pre­sent­ed a seem­ing­ly even heav­ier bur­den in the world of the type­writer.

Only in 1916, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-educated Shang­hai engi­neer named Hou-Kun Chow, did the Chi­nese type­writer debut, built around a large, revolv­ing cylin­der that could print 4,000 ideo­graph­ic (that is to say, each one rep­re­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent word or sound) char­ac­ters. From that point the evo­lu­tion of the Chi­nese type­writer was rather quick, by the stan­dards of the day. And it did­n’t only hap­pen in Chi­na: Japan, whose own writ­ten lan­guage incor­po­rates many ideo­graph­ic Chi­nese char­ac­ters, had been sub­ject to more intense tech­no­log­i­cal influ­ence from the West since open­ing to for­eign trade in the 1860s.

The very year after its found­ing in 1939, elec­tron­ics-giant-to-be Toshi­ba (the prod­uct of a merg­er involv­ing Japan’s first mak­er of tele­graph equip­ment) pro­duced the first Japan­ese cylin­dri­cal type­writer. “Most­ly used by the Japan­ese mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II,” says the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um, it incor­po­rat­ed 630 char­ac­ters. After the war “Toshi­ba intro­duced a new mod­el, the 1200 A, fea­tur­ing 1172 Japan­ese and Chi­nese char­ac­ters.” In the video above, from Youtu­ber by the name of Type­writer Col­lec­tor, you can see a slight­ly lat­er mod­el in action.

Pro­duced before the intro­duc­tion of “West­ern-style” key­boards, the Toshi­ba BW-2112 has the same inter­face as its pre­de­ces­sors: “The char­ac­ter is select­ed by rotat­ing the cylin­der and shift­ing it hor­i­zon­tal­ly, so that the nec­es­sary char­ac­ter is select­ed with the index point­er,” accord­ing to the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um. “When the print key is depressed, the type strip is pushed upwards from the cylin­der, and the type ham­mer swings to the cen­ter to print the char­ac­ter onto the paper.”

These vin­tage Japan­ese type­writ­ers still today strike their view­ers as mar­vels of engi­neer­ing, though their then-vast store of char­ac­ters (which includ­ed not just Chi­nese-derived kan­ji but pho­net­ic kana and even the Latin alpha­bet) have long since been sur­passed by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Now that every stu­den­t’s smart­phone puts all 50,000 or extant Chi­nese char­ac­ters in their com­mand — to say noth­ing of the world’s oth­er writ­ten lan­guages — it’s safe to say they’re not about to fall into dis­use any time soon.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

When IBM Cre­at­ed a Type­writer to Record Dance Move­ments (1973)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Free Chi­nese Lessons

Learn Japan­ese Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Explained

Over the half-mil­len­ni­um since Hierony­mus Bosch paint­ed it, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights has pro­duced an ever-widen­ing array of inter­pre­ta­tions. Is it “a paint­ing about sex­u­al free­dom”? A “medieval acid trip”? An “erot­ic fan­ta­sy”? A “hereti­cal attack on the church”? The work of “a mem­ber of an obscure free-love cult”? James Payne, the Lon­don cura­tor behind the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, rejects all these views. In the open­ing of the in-depth video analy­sis above, he describes Bosch’s well-known and much-scru­ti­nized late-15th or ear­ly-16th cen­tu­ry trip­tych as, “pure and sim­ply, hard­core Chris­tian­i­ty.”

Dat­ing from “a time when Euro­pean artists, writ­ers, and the­olo­gians were shap­ing a new, ter­ri­fy­ing vision of Hell and the pun­ish­ment await­ing sin­ners,” Payne argues, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights is “an intense­ly moral­is­tic work that should be approached as what it is: reli­gious pro­pa­gan­da.”

Depict­ing the Bib­li­cal cre­ation of the world on its out­er pan­els, the work opens up to reveal elab­o­rate­ly detailed visions of Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden, then human­i­ty indulging in all known earth­ly delights, then the con­se­quent tor­ments of Hell. It is that last pan­el, with its abun­dance of per­verse activ­i­ties and grotesque human, ani­mal, and human-ani­mal fig­ures (recent­ly made into fig­urines and even piñatas) that keeps the strongest hold on our imag­i­na­tion today.

Payne’s expla­na­tion goes into detail on all aspects of the work, high­light­ing and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing details that even avowed appre­ci­a­tors may not have con­sid­ered before. While iden­ti­fy­ing both the pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions and the pos­si­ble sym­bol­ic inten­tions of the fig­ures and sym­bols with which Bosch filled the trip­tych, Payne empha­sizes that, as far as the artist was con­cerned, “his images were a real­is­tic por­tray­al of sin and its con­se­quences, so in that sense, it was­n’t sur­re­al­ism, it was real­ism.” This bears repeat­ing, giv­en how dif­fi­cult we mod­erns find it “to look at this paint­ing and not see it as sur­re­al­ism or a prod­uct of the sub­con­scious, not see it as a sex­u­al utopia, a cri­tique of reli­gion, or even a psy­che­del­ic romp.” Just as The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights tells us a great deal about the world Bosch lived in, so our views of it tell us a great deal about the world we live in.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

3D Print 18,000 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks: Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

To recent news sto­ries about 3D print­ed gunspros­thet­ics, and homes, you can add Scan the World’s push to cre­ate “an ecosys­tem of 3D print­able objects of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.”

Items that took the ancients untold hours to sculpt from mar­ble and stone can be repro­duced in con­sid­er­ably less time, pro­vid­ed you’ve got the tech­nol­o­gy and the know-how to use it.

Since we last wrote about this free, open source ini­tia­tive in 2017, Scan the World has added Google Arts and Cul­ture to the many cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions with whom it part­ners, expand­ing both its audi­ence and the audi­ence of the muse­ums who allow items in their col­lec­tions to be scanned pri­or to 3D print­ing.


Com­mu­ni­ty con­trib­u­tors have uploaded scan data for over 18,000 sculp­tures and arti­facts onto the plat­form.

Chi­na and India are active­ly court­ing par­tic­i­pants to make some of their trea­sures avail­able.

Although Scan the World is search­able by col­lec­tion, artist, and loca­tion, with so many options, the com­mu­ni­ty blog is a great place to start.

Here you will find help­ful tips for begin­ners hop­ing to pro­duce real­is­tic look­ing skulls and sculp­tures — con­trol your tem­per­a­ture, shake your resin, and learn from your mis­takes.

Got an unreach­able object you’re itch­ing to print? Take a look at the drone pho­togram­me­try tuto­r­i­al to prep your­self for tak­ing a good scan — rotate slow­ly, remem­ber the impor­tance of light, and get up to speed on your drone by test-dri­ving it in an open loca­tion.

Keep an eye peeled for com­pe­ti­tions, like this one, which was won by a pho­to edi­tor and retouch­er with no for­mal 3‑D train­ing.

Art lovers with lit­tle incli­na­tion to crack out the 3D print­er will find inter­est­ing essays on such top­ics as the Gates of Hellscan­ning in the pan­dem­ic, and the his­to­ry of hair­styles in sculp­ture

You can also embark on a vir­tu­al tour of some of the glob­al loca­tions whose splen­dors are being scanned, pro­grammed, and ren­dered in resin.

vir­tu­al trip to Paris takes in some of the Louvre’s great­est 3‑dimensional hits: the Venus de Milo, Winged Vic­to­ry, and Psy­che Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

(Any one of those ough­ta class up the ol’ bed­sit…)

The vir­tu­al trip to Aus­tria includes Kierling’s mon­u­ment to Franz Kaf­ka, the Beethoven memo­r­i­al in Vienna’s Heili­gen­städter Park, and Klaus Weber’s trib­ute to Hugo Rheinhold’s Dar­win­ian sculp­ture, Mon­key with Skull. (1,868 down­loads and count­ing!)

Google map awaits those who would tour the orig­i­nal fla­vor inspi­ra­tions in per­son.

Begin your explo­rations of Scan the World here, and do let us know in the com­ments if you have plans for print­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Cre­ate an “Open-Source” Record of Our Plan­et

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and some­times, a French Cana­di­an bear known as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

30,000 People Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Grocery Store Shelves Run Empty (1990)

Every­one has wait­ed in a long line — for burg­ers, Broad­way tick­ets, Black Fri­day sales… But few us have the noto­ri­ous queu­ing resilience of the Sovi­ets. “When the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad,” Boris Egorov writes at Rus­sia Beyond. “Thou­sands of Mus­covites flocked to the new burg­er joint, form­ing lines sev­er­al kilo­me­ters long in the cen­ter of Moscow on Pushkin­skaya Square.” On its first day, the restau­rant oblit­er­at­ed the pre­vi­ous record for most McDonald’s cus­tomers (9,100 in Budapest), serv­ing over 30,000 peo­ple, a tes­ta­ment to the for­ti­tude of the employ­ees. The CBC news seg­ment on the open­ing above quotes a line from Pushkin to set the scene: “a feast in a time of plague.”

Stereo­types of fast food work­ers as lack­ing in skill and ambi­tion did not find pur­chase here. “The first work­ers,” Egorov notes, “were the crème de la crème of Sovi­et youth: stu­dents from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties who could speak for­eign lan­guages with bril­liant cus­tomer ser­vice skills.” Their cheer­ful­ness so unnerved some cus­tomers that they were asked to tone it down for Rus­sians “accus­tomed to rude, boor­ish ser­vice.”

Cus­tomers seemed less awed by the iconog­ra­phy than the “sim­ple sight of polite shop work­ers,” wrote an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist. The restau­rant, once a tourist attrac­tion, notes trav­el site Bridge to Moscow, had “more than 700 seats inside and 200 out­side,” and was once the largest McDonald’s in the world.

The Moscow McDonald’s rep­re­sent­ed more for Rus­sians than an Amer­i­can nov­el­ty. Orig­i­nal cus­tomer Kse­nia Oski­na had nev­er heard of McDonald’s before she vis­it­ed. She lat­er saved her Big Mac box. “I used that Big Mac box for a long time and put my sand­wich in there instead of a lunch­box,” she tells The Wash­ing­ton Post. “I’d clean it, dry it on the heater and then use it again.” It was­n’t about brand recog­ni­tion for many who duti­ful­ly lined up to pay half a day’s wages for a cou­ple “thin slabs of meat and sliced veg­eta­bles between buns of bread.” (Sor­ry… “two all-beef pat­ties, spe­cial sauce, let­tuce, cheese, and a sesame seed bun…..”)

What did Sovi­et Rus­sians, who had not been raised to sing fast food adver­tis­ing jin­gles, see in the new restau­rant? Capitalism’s promis­es of abun­dance. One Sovi­et jour­nal­ist wrote of McDonald’s as “the expres­sion of America’s ratio­nal­ism and prag­ma­tism toward food.” Just months after­ward, the first Piz­za Hut arrived. As the Sovi­et Union dis­solved less than two years lat­er, the coun­try saw the cre­ation of more desire for high-calo­rie, ultra-processed foods with West­ern-style TV ads: most famous­ly a Piz­za Hut spot from 1997 fea­tur­ing the U.S.S.R.’s last pre­mier, Mikhail Gor­bachev. (“Because of him, we have Piz­za Hut!”)

The pol­i­tics may have mat­tered lit­tle to the aver­age Mus­covite McDonald’s cus­tomer in 1990. “Vis­it­ing the restau­rant was less a polit­i­cal state­ment than an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy a small plea­sure in a coun­try still reel­ing from dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic prob­lems and inter­nal polit­i­cal tur­moil,” notes History.com. Large, seem­ing­ly abstract prob­lems had tan­gi­ble effects: the emp­ty gro­cery stores for which the fail­ing empire became famous.

The Moscow McDonald’s was a col­or­ful oasis for its first cus­tomers, who had no sen­ti­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions with burg­ers and fries. Now, those tastes are nos­tal­gic. “I love it,” said Oski­na thir­ty years lat­er. “For some rea­son in Amer­i­ca, it’s not as tasty as it is here.” Insert your own dat­ed Yakov Smirnoff ref­er­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whopper–While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

The Beau­ti­ful, Inno­v­a­tive & Some­times Dark World of Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da (1925–1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs, “America’s National Toy” (1916)

How many archi­tec­tur­al careers have been kin­dled by Lin­coln Logs? Since their inven­tion in the mid-1910s, these decep­tive­ly sim­ple wood­en build­ing blocks have enter­tained gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren, whichev­er pro­fes­sion they entered upon grow­ing up. I myself have fond mem­o­ries of play­ing with Lin­coln Logs, which, with about 70 years of his­to­ry already behind them, were a ven­er­a­ble play­time insti­tu­tion, not that I knew it at the time. I cer­tain­ly had no idea that they’d been invent­ed by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright — nor, indeed, did I have any idea who Frank Lloyd Wright was. I just knew, as many kids did before me and many do still today, that they were fun to stack up into cab­ins, or at least cab­in-like shapes.


This endur­ing toy’s full ori­gin sto­ry is told in the Decades TV video above. When Wright designed his own fam­i­ly home in Oak Park, Illi­nois, he includ­ed a cus­tom play­room for his six chil­dren. Its stock of inno­v­a­tive toys includ­ed “geo­met­ric build­ing blocks devel­oped by Friedrich Froebel, the Ger­man edu­ca­tor who came up with the con­cept of kinder­garten.”

The spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion for these blocks exhib­it­ed by Wright’s sec­ond son John Lloyd Wright hint­ed at a con­flict of inter­ests to come: though John “began to feel that spir­it of being an archi­tect” in the play­room, says toy his­to­ri­an Steven Som­mers, “there was always a ten­sion between his father, who was an archi­tect, and his [own] love for build­ing toys that he’d begun to learn in that Froebel sys­tem of ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion.” The two inter­sect­ed when Wright fils assist­ed Wright père on one of the lat­ter’s most famous works, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo.

John Lloyd Wright took note of the inter­lock­ing tim­ber beams used to make the struc­ture “earth­quake-proof” — a design lat­er test­ed by 1923’s Great Kan­to Earth­quake, which left most of the city destroyed but the Impe­r­i­al Hotel stand­ing. By that time, the younger Wright had already act­ed on his inspi­ra­tion to invent the sim­i­lar­ly inter­lock­ing Lin­coln Logs (see patent draw­ing above), which quick­ly proved a hit on the mar­ket. Named after the six­teenth pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and the log cab­in in which he’d grown up, the prod­uct tapped into Amer­i­can fron­tier nos­tal­gia even at its debut. In the cen­tu­ry since, Lin­coln Logs have sur­vived wartime mate­r­i­al rationing, the rise and fall of count­less toy trends, the buy­ing and sell­ing of par­ent com­pa­nies, a brief and unap­peal­ing late-60s attempt to make them out of plas­tic, and even the Impe­r­i­al Hotel itself.  For “Amer­i­ca’s nation­al toy,” struc­tur­al endurance and cul­tur­al endurance have gone togeth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Beautiful, Innovative & Sometimes Dark World of Animated Soviet Propaganda (1925–1984)

Grow­ing up, we assem­bled our world­view from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sources: par­ents, sib­lings, class­mates. But for most of us, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er we passed our for­ma­tive years, noth­ing shaped our ear­ly per­cep­tions of life as vivid­ly, and as thor­ough­ly, as car­toons — and this is just as Lenin knew it would be. “With the estab­lish­ment of the Sovi­et Union in 1922,” writes New York Times film crit­ic Dave Kehr, “Lenin pro­claimed the cin­e­ma the most impor­tant of all the arts, pre­sum­ably for its abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the oppressed and wide­ly illit­er­ate mass­es.”

Lenin cer­tain­ly did­n’t exclude ani­ma­tion, which assumed its role in the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da machine right away: Sovi­et Toys, the first U.S.S.R.-made car­toon, pre­miered just two years lat­er. It was direct­ed by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, the inno­v­a­tive film­mak­er best known for 1929’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, a thrilling artic­u­la­tion of the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary. Ver­tov stands as per­haps the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of Sovi­et cin­e­ma’s ear­ly years, in which tight polit­i­cal con­fines nev­er­the­less per­mit­ted a free­dom of  artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion lim­it­ed only by the film­mak­er’s skill and imag­i­na­tion.

This changed with the times: the 1940s saw the ele­va­tion of skilled but West-imi­ta­tive ani­ma­tors like Ivan Ivanov-Vano, whom Kehr calls the “Sovi­et Dis­ney.” That label is suit­able enough, since an Ivanov-Vano short like Some­one Else’s Voice from 1949 “could eas­i­ly pass for a Dis­ney ‘Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny,’ ” if not for its un-Dis­ney­like “threat­en­ing under­tone.” (Not that Dis­ney could­n’t get dark­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic them­selves.)

With its mag­pie who “returns from a flight abroad and dares to war­ble some of the jazz music she has heard on her trav­els” only to have “the hearty peas­ant birds of the for­est swoop down and rip her feath­ers out,” Some­one Else’s Voice tells a more alle­gor­i­cal sto­ry than those in most of the shorts gath­ered in this Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da ani­ma­tion playlist.

The playlist’s selec­tions come from the col­lec­tion Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da: From the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion to Per­e­stroi­ka; “work­ers are strong-chinned, noble, and gener­ic,” writes the A.V. Club’s Tasha Robin­son. “Cap­i­tal­ists are fat, pig­gish cig­ar-chom­pers, and for­eign­ers are ugly car­i­ca­tures sim­i­lar to those seen in Amer­i­can World War II pro­pa­gan­da.” With their strong “anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Ger­man, anti-British, anti-Japan­ese, anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, anti-Impe­ri­al­ist, and pro-Com­mu­nist slant,” as Kehr puts it, they would require an impres­sion­able audi­ence indeed to do any con­vinc­ing out­side Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry. But they send an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to view­ers back in the U.S.S.R.: you don’t know how lucky you are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Digital Lomax Archive Provides Free Access to the Pioneering Recordings of John & Alan Lomax, Compiled Across 7 Decades

The work of eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist father and son team John and Alan Lomax was intend­ed to pre­serve the local musi­cal cul­tures of the Unit­ed States and regions around the world against an encroach­ing mass media threat­en­ing to erase them. But the thou­sands of Lomax record­ings, films, books, arti­cles, and oth­er doc­u­ments not only con­served region­al music; they also helped trans­form mass cul­ture by intro­duc­ing local forms that have since become part of a glob­al musi­cal gram­mar. Lomax and his son Alan — “the man who record­ed the world,” as biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed called him — pop­u­lar­ized folk music thir­ty years before Dylan record­ed his first album and were among the first white lis­ten­ers to rec­og­nize the genius of Robert John­son.

Alan Lomax began trav­el­ing the coun­try with his father in 1933. In 1939, “while doing grad­u­ate work in anthro­pol­o­gy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty,” notes a biog­ra­phy at Lomax’s Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tur­al Equi­ty, “he pro­duced the first of sev­er­al radio series for CBS. Amer­i­can Folk Songs, Well­springs of Music, and the prime-time series, Back Where I Come From, exposed nation­al audi­ences to region­al Amer­i­can music and such home­grown tal­ents as Woody Guthrie, Lead Bel­ly, Aunt Mol­ly Jack­son, Josh White, the Gold­en Gate Quar­tet, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger,” who described Lomax as “more respon­si­ble than any oth­er per­son for the twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry folk song revival.”

Alan Lomax brought blues, fla­men­co, calyp­so, and South­ern bal­lad singing, “all still rel­a­tive­ly unknown gen­res,” to New York in the 1940s with con­cert series like The Mid­night Spe­cial at Town Hall. “The main point of my activ­i­ty,” he once said, “was… to put sound tech­nol­o­gy at the dis­pos­al of The Folk, to bring chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to all sorts of artists and areas.” A per­former him­self, he coined the term “cul­tur­al equi­ty” to describe this work, a means of advo­cat­ing for musi­cal cul­tures left behind by com­mer­cial­iza­tion, the “cul­tur­al gray-out,” as he called it. From his first field record­ings in 1933 to his 1993 Land Where the Blues Began, which earned a Nation­al Book Crit­ics Award, he stayed true to that mis­sion.

Lomax and his father’s work has been “com­piled across sev­en decades” by the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive, which pro­vides free and open access to “the entire­ty of Alan’s pho­tographs and open-reel tape record­ings — made between 1946 and 1991… as well as tran­scrip­tions of his 1940s radio pro­grams, and a selec­tion of clips from his film and video-work of the 1970s and 1980s.” This huge, search­able library sup­ple­ments already mas­sive Lomax col­lec­tions online, such as that housed at the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tur­al Equi­ty, and includes “the entire 70 hours of their Ken­tucky record­ings and the 39 hours of Mis­sis­sip­pi record­ings,” notes a press release. “This lat­ter mate­r­i­al includes the first record­ings of Mud­dy Waters, Hon­ey­boy Edwards, and Sid Hemphill.”

Fur­ther­more, the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive fea­tures online exhibits that “allow for thought­ful, con­text-rich explo­rations into spe­cif­ic aspects of the col­lec­tion.” The first pre­sen­ta­tion, “Trou­ble Won’t Last Always,” com­piles songs from a series launched dur­ing the pan­dem­ic that “speak to themes of lone­li­ness, iso­la­tion, opti­mism, endurance, tran­scen­dence..,” all uni­ver­sal human expe­ri­ences. Lomax believed, his daugh­ter Anna Lomax Wood said, “that all cul­tures should be looked at on an even play­ing field. Not that they’re all alike. But that they should be giv­en the same dig­ni­ty.” His own dig­ni­fied approach helped ensure that we could hear and learn from local his­tor­i­cal voic­es from around the world even as eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal inequities sought to silence them for good. Enter the Lomax Dig­i­tal Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

New, Inter­ac­tive Web Site Puts Online Thou­sands of Inter­na­tion­al Folk Songs Record­ed by the Great Folk­lorist Alan Lomax

Stream 35 Hours of Clas­sic Blues, Folk, & Blue­grass Record­ings from Smith­son­ian Folk­ways: 837 Tracks Fea­tur­ing Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Exquisite Watercolors of Demons, Magic & Signs: Behold the Compendium Of Demonology and Magic from 1775

Noli me tan­gere, says the title page of the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic: “Do not touch me.” For the book’s tar­get audi­ence, one sus­pects, this was more entice­ment than warn­ing. Writ­ten in Latin (its full title is Com­pendi­um raris­si­mum totius Artis Mag­i­cae sis­tem­a­ti­sa­tae per cele­ber­ri­mos Artis hujus Mag­istros) and Ger­man, the book pur­ports to come from the year 1057. In fact it’s been dat­ed as more than 700 years younger, though to most 21st-cen­tu­ry behold­ers a book from around 1775 car­ries enough his­tor­i­cal weight to be intrigu­ing — espe­cial­ly if, as the Pub­lic Domain Review puts it, it depicts “a var­ied bes­tiary of grotesque demon­ic crea­tures.”

The spec­i­mens cat­a­logued in the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic are “up to all sorts of appro­pri­ate­ly demon­ic activ­i­ties, such as chew­ing down on sev­ered legs, spit­ting fire and snakes from gen­i­talia, and parad­ing around decap­i­tat­ed heads on sticks.”

Grotesque­ly com­bin­ing fea­tures of man and beast, these hideous chimeras are ren­dered in “more than thir­ty exquis­ite water­col­ors” that still look vivid today. In fact, with their punk­ish cos­tumes, insou­ciant expres­sions, and often inde­cent­ly exposed nether regions, these demons look ready and will­ing to cause a scan­dal even in our jad­ed time.

Near­ly two and a half cen­turies ago, we might fair­ly assume, a greater pro­por­tion of the pub­lic believed in the exis­tence of demons — if not these spe­cif­ic mon­strosi­ties, then at least the con­cept of the demon­ic in gen­er­al. But we’re sure­ly lying to our­selves if we believed that nobody in the 16th cen­tu­ry had a sense of humor about it. Even the work of this book’s unknown illus­tra­tor evi­dences, beyond for­mi­da­ble artis­tic skill and wild imag­i­na­tion, a cer­tain comedic instinct, seri­ous busi­ness though demon­ic inten­tions toward human­i­ty may be.

With its less humor­ous con­tent includ­ing exe­cu­tion scenes and instruc­tions for the pro­ce­dures of witch­craft from div­ina­tion to necro­man­cy, the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic belongs to a deep­er tra­di­tion of books that elab­o­rate­ly cat­a­log and depict the vari­eties of super­nat­ur­al evil. (A much old­er exam­ple is the Codex Gigas, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a “Dev­il’s Bible” that also hap­pens to be the largest medieval man­u­script in the word.)

You can behold more of these delight­ful­ly hell­ish illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review and even down­load the whole book free from the Well­come Col­lec­tion. (See a PDF of the entire book here.) And no mat­ter how close­ly you scru­ti­nize your dig­i­tal copy, you won’t run the risk of touch­ing it.

The Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic is one of the many texts fea­tured in The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Man­u­scripts and Oth­er Lit­er­ary Curiosi­ties from His­to­ry, a new book fea­tured on our site ear­li­er this week.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Help a Library Tran­scribe Mag­i­cal Man­u­scripts & Recov­er the Charms, Potions & Witch­craft That Flour­ished in Ear­ly Mod­ern Europe and Amer­i­ca

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast