1,000+ Historic Japanese Illustrated Books Digitized & Put Online by the Smithsonian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

in Art, Books, History, Museums | October 2nd, 2017

Sure­ly we’ve all won­dered what we might do as promi­nent nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry indus­tri­al­ists, and more than a few of us (espe­cial­ly here in the Open Cul­ture crowd) would no doubt invest our for­tunes in the art of the world. Rail­car man­u­fac­tur­ing mag­nate Charles Lang Freer did just that, as we can see today in the Freer Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Togeth­er with the Arthur M. Sack­ler Gallery (Sack­ler hav­ing made it as “the father of mod­ern phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal adver­tis­ing”), it con­sti­tutes the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s nation­al muse­um of Asian art, gath­er­ing every­thing from ancient Egypt­ian stone sculp­ture to Chi­nese paint­ings to Kore­an pot­tery to Japan­ese books.

We like to high­light Japan­ese book cul­ture here every so often (see the relat­ed con­tent below) not just because of its strik­ing aes­thet­ics and con­sum­mate crafts­man­ship but because of its deep his­to­ry. You can now expe­ri­ence a con­sid­er­able swath of that his­to­ry free online at the Freer|Sacker Library’s web site, which just this past sum­mer fin­ished dig­i­tiz­ing over one thou­sand books — now more than 1,100, which breaks down to 41,500 sep­a­rate images — pub­lished dur­ing Japan’s Edo and Mei­ji peri­ods, a span of time reach­ing from 1600 to 1912. “Often filled with beau­ti­ful mul­ti-col­or illus­tra­tions,” writes Reiko Yoshimu­ra at the Smith­son­ian Libraries’ blog, “many titles are by promi­nent Japan­ese tra­di­tion­al and ukiyo‑e (‘float­ing world’) painters such as Oga­ta Kōrin (1658–1716), Andō Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai (1760–1849).”

Yoshimu­ra directs read­ers to such vol­umes as Hoku­sai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mt. Fuji, Uta­gawa Toyoku­ni’s Thir­ty-Six Pop­u­lar Actors, and artist, crafts­man, and design­er Kōet­su’s col­lec­tion of one hun­dred libret­tos for noh the­ater per­for­mances. Even those who can’t read clas­si­cal Japan­ese will admire an aes­thete like Kōet­su’s way with what Yoshimu­ra calls his “cali­graph­ic ‘font,’ ” all “skill­ful­ly print­ed on lux­u­ri­ous mica embell­ished papers using wood­en mov­able-type.”

While the online col­lec­tion’s scans come in a more than high enough res­o­lu­tion for gen­er­al appre­ci­a­tion, to get the full effect of book­mak­ing tech­niques like mica embell­ish­ment — which only sparkles when seen in real life — you’d have to vis­it the phys­i­cal col­lec­tion. Some things, it seems, can’t yet be dig­i­tized.

Enter the col­lec­tion of Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

A Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed 1925 Japan­ese Edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables by Leg­endary Children’s Book Illus­tra­tor Takeo Takei

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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How Did the Egyptians Make Mummies? An Animated Introduction to the Ancient Art of Mummification

in History | September 28th, 2017

Not every child looks for­ward to a trip to the muse­um, but how many have failed to thrill at the sight of an ancient Egypt­ian mum­my? How many adults, for that mat­ter, can resist the fas­ci­na­tion of this well over 5000-year-old process of pre­serv­ing dead bod­ies in a state if not per­fect­ly life­like then at least eeri­ly intact? If you’ve ever won­dered exact­ly how mum­mi­fi­ca­tion worked — or if you’ve sim­ply for­got­ten the descrip­tions accom­pa­ny­ing the dis­plays you saw on those muse­um trips — this short video from the Get­ty Muse­um’s Youtube chan­nel pro­vides an insight into how the ancient Egyp­tians did it.

The video uses a real mum­my as a case study, the pre­served body of a twen­ty-year-old man named Her­ak­lei­des (as we know because his mum­mi­fiers, though them­selves uniden­ti­fied, wrote it on his feet), who died in the first cen­tu­ry A.D. He had most of his inter­nal organs removed — even his heart, which com­mon prac­tice usu­al­ly dic­tat­ed leav­ing in, but for some rea­son not his lungs  — and spent forty days buried in salt that drew every last bit of mois­ture out of him.

He then received rub­bings of per­fumed oils, fol­lowed by a poured-on lay­er of resin to which strips of linen (the mum­my’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly copi­ous “ban­dages” of pop­u­lar cul­ture) could adhere. Wrapped onto a board, equipped with a “mys­te­ri­ous pouch” as well as a mum­mi­fied ibis, and cov­ered with an unusu­al red shroud embla­zoned with sym­bols and a por­trait of him­self, Her­ak­lei­des was ready for his jour­ney into the after­life.

“Such elab­o­rate bur­ial prac­tices might sug­gest that the Egyp­tians were pre­oc­cu­pied with thoughts of death,” says the Smith­so­ni­an’s page on Egypt­ian mum­mies. “On the con­trary, they began ear­ly to make plans for their death because of their great love of life. They could think of no life bet­ter than the present, and they want­ed to be sure it would con­tin­ue after death.” The ancient Egyp­tians believed “that the mum­mi­fied body was the home for this soul or spir­it. If the body was destroyed, the spir­it might be lost.”

If you find your­self shar­ing these beliefs, do have a look at Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s guide on how to make a mum­my in 70 days or less. And just as you’d need to arrange the right ingre­di­ents to pre­pare a sat­is­fy­ing meal, some­thing else the Egyp­tians enjoyed, don’t attempt any mum­mi­fi­ca­tion at home with­out mak­ing sure you’re ful­ly stocked with resin, oint­ments, lichen, straw­dust, beeswax, palm wine, incense, and myrrh. And it goes with­out say­ing that how­ev­er many feet of wrap­pings you’ve got, it could­n’t hurt to have more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Open­ing of King Tut’s Tomb, Shown in Stun­ning Col­orized Pho­tos (1923–5)

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyra­mids of Egypt, Sudan & Mex­i­co

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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Photo Archive Lets You Download 4,300 High-Res Photographs of the Historic Normandy Invasion

in History, Photography | September 26th, 2017

Taxis to Hell – and Back – Into the Jaws of Death, by Robert F. Sar­gent, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the­o­rists like Roland Barthes and Pierre Bour­dieu explod­ed naive notions of pho­tog­ra­phy as “a per­fect­ly real­is­tic and objec­tive record­ing of the vis­i­ble world… a ‘nat­ur­al lan­guage,’” as Bour­dieu wrote in Pho­tog­ra­phy: A Mid­dle­brow Art. Bour­dieu him­self wield­ed a cam­era dur­ing his ethno­graph­ic work in Alge­ria, tak­ing dozens of con­ven­tion­al and uncon­ven­tion­al pho­tographs of the nation’s strug­gle for inde­pen­dence from France in the 50s. Yet he urged us to see pho­tog­ra­phy as for­mal­ly medi­at­ing social real­i­ty rather than trans­par­ent­ly rep­re­sent­ing the truth.

We have been trained to inter­pret the per­spec­tives most pho­tographs adopt as objec­tive views, when in fact they are “per­fect­ly in keep­ing with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the world which has dom­i­nat­ed Europe since the Quat­tro­cen­to.” Pho­tog­ra­phy, in oth­er words, tends to give us art imi­tat­ing Renais­sance art. It can be dif­fi­cult to bear this in mind when we look at indi­vid­ual photographs—what Barthes calls “the This.”

Whether they doc­u­ment our own fam­i­ly his­to­ries or such momen­tous events as the Nor­mandy Inva­sion that began on D‑Day, June 6th, 1944, pho­tographs elic­it pow­er­ful emo­tion­al reac­tions that defy aes­thet­ic cat­e­gories.

At the Flickr account Pho­to­sNor­mandie, you can browse and search over 4,300 high res­o­lu­tion pho­tographs from the piv­otal Nor­mandy cam­paign, “From icon­ic images like Into the Jaws of Death by Robert F. Sar­gent,” My Mod­ern Met writes, “to troops inter­act­ing with locals as they lib­er­ate areas of Nor­mandy.” The pho­tos are deeply affect­ing, often awe-inspir­ing. When we look with a crit­i­cal eye, we’ll find our­selves ask­ing cer­tain ques­tions about them.

The skewed per­spec­tive and omi­nous sky in Sargent’s “Into the Jaws of Death,” for exam­ple, at the top of the post, might make us think of the Sturm und Drang of many a dra­mat­ic ship­wreck paint­ing from the Roman­tic peri­od. Was Sar­gent aware of the sim­i­lar­i­ty when he looked through the lens? Did he posi­tion him­self to height­en the effect? In pho­tos like that fur­ther up, of a French home dis­play­ing a pro‑U.S. sign on July 11th, 1944, we might won­der whether the res­i­dents made the sign or whether it was giv­en to them, per­haps for this very pho­to op. As always, we’re jus­ti­fied in ask­ing about the role of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er in stag­ing or fram­ing a par­tic­u­lar scene.

For exam­ple, the pho­to of a Ger­man sol­dier sur­ren­der­ing to Amer­i­can G.I.s, above, looks staged. But what exact­ly these sol­diers are doing remains a mys­tery. How much do these exter­nal details mat­ter? Pho­tog­ra­phy is unique among oth­er visu­al arts in that “the Pho­to­graph,” Barthes writes, “repro­duces to infin­i­ty” what has “occurred only once.” It is the meet­ing of infin­i­ty with “only once” that engages us in more exis­ten­tial explo­rations.  All of these sol­diers and civil­ians, shar­ing their joy and anguish, most of them now passed into his­to­ry. Who were these peo­ple? What did these moments mean to them? What do they mean to us 70 years lat­er?

The bombed-out cathe­drals and defeat­ed tanks make us pon­der the fragili­ty of our own built envi­ron­ment, though the destruc­tive forces threat­en­ing to undo the mod­ern world now seem as like­ly to be nat­ur­al as man-made—or rather some new, fright­en­ing com­bi­na­tion of the two. In the faces of the wound­ed and the dis­placed, we see spe­cif­ic man­i­fes­ta­tions of the same trag­ic inva­sions and migra­tions that reach back to Thucy­dides and for­ward to the present moment in world his­to­ry, in which some 60 mil­lion peo­ple dis­placed by war and hard­ship seek sanc­tu­ary.

The images draw us away into gen­er­al obser­va­tions as they draw us back to the unre­peat­able moment. This project began on the 60th anniver­sary of D‑Day “as a way,” My Mod­ern Met explains, “to crowd­source descrip­tions of images on the now defunct Archives Nor­mandie, 1939–1945. Thus, users are encour­aged to com­ment on pho­tos if they are able to improve descrip­tions, loca­tions, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions.” His­to­ry may rhyme with the present—as one famous quote attrib­uted to Mark Twain has it—but it nev­er exact­ly repeats. The pho­to­graph, Barthes wrote, “mechan­i­cal­ly repeats what could nev­er be repeat­ed exis­ten­tial­ly.” Moments for­ev­er lost to time, trans­mut­ed into time­less­ness by the cam­er­a’s eye. Enter the Pho­to­sNor­mandie gallery here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers & Fran­cis Stewart’s Cen­sored Pho­tographs of a WWII Japan­ese Intern­ment Camp

The Fin­land Wartime Pho­to Archive: 160,000 Images From World War II Now Online

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

200,000 Pho­tos from the George East­man Muse­um, the World’s Old­est Pho­tog­ra­phy Col­lec­tion, Now Avail­able Online

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

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The Strange Story of Dr. James Barry, the Pioneering 19th Century British Doctor Who Was a Woman in Disguise

in Gender, History | September 26th, 2017

The work of many recent his­to­ri­ans has brought more bal­ance to the field, but even with­in heav­i­ly mas­culin­ist, Euro­cen­tric his­to­ries, we find non­white peo­ple who slipped past racial gate­keep­ers to leave their mark, and women who made it past the gen­der police—sometimes under the guise of male pen names, and some­times in dis­guise, as in the case of Dr. James Bar­ry, who, upon his death in 1865, turned out to be “a per­fect female,” as the sur­prised woman who washed the body dis­cov­ered.

What makes Dr. Barry—born in Ire­land as Mar­garet Bulk­ley, niece of the painter James Barry—such a note­wor­thy per­son besides pass­ing for male in the com­pa­ny of peo­ple who did not tol­er­ate gen­der flu­id­i­ty? As the Irish Times writes in a review of a new biog­ra­phy, “her life as James Bar­ry was a suc­ces­sion of auda­cious firsts—the first woman to become a doc­tor; the first to per­form a suc­cess­ful cae­sare­an deliv­ery; a pio­neer in hos­pi­tal reform and hygiene; and the first woman to rise to the rank of gen­er­al in the British Army (Barry’s com­mis­sion, signed by Queen Vic­to­ria, still exists).”

When Bar­ry’s sex was dis­cov­ered, it caused a sen­sa­tion, inspir­ing every­one from muck­rak­ing anony­mous jour­nal­ists to Charles Dick­ens to weigh in on the case. The tale “was explored in nov­els,” notes The Guardian, “and even a play,” but the “true sto­ry is both more pro­sa­ic and infi­nite­ly more strange.” The video at the top of the post walks us through Barry’s career serv­ing the Empire in South Africa, where she treat­ed sol­diers, lep­ers, and ail­ing moth­ers. Mar­garet’s sto­ry as Dr. Bar­ry begins in Cork when, long­ing for adven­ture at 18, she first decid­ed to take on the per­sona of “a hot-tem­pered ladies’ man,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “don­ning three-inch heeled shoes, a plumed hat, and sword.” When her wealthy uncle passed away and left the fam­i­ly his for­tune, she also took his name.

Three years lat­er in 1809, with the encour­age­ment of her men­tor and guardian, Venezue­lan gen­er­al Fran­cis­co Miran­da, “she decid­ed to embody a smooth-faced young man in order to attend the men’s‑only Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh and prac­tice medicine—a guise that would last for 56 years.” Margaret’s ear­ly years were marked by hard­ship and tragedy. In her teens she had been raped by a fam­i­ly mem­ber and had born a child. When she became James Bar­ry, a physi­cian attend­ing to preg­nant women, she “had a secret advan­tage,” her biog­ra­phers Michael du Preez and Jere­my Dron­field write. “There was not anoth­er prac­tic­ing physi­cian in the world who knew from per­son­al expe­ri­ence what it was like to bear a child.”

But of course, she did not need to expe­ri­ence lep­rosy or gun­shot wounds to treat the many hun­dreds of patients in her care. Her sex was inci­den­tal to her skill as a physi­cian. Mar­garet Bulk­ley’s trans­for­ma­tion may be “one of the longest decep­tions of gen­der iden­ti­ty ever record­ed,” writes du Preez. Bar­ry “is remem­bered for this sen­sa­tion­al fact rather than for the real con­tri­bu­tions that she made to improve the health and the lot of the British sol­dier as well as civil­ians.” The doctor’s wild per­son­al sto­ry weaves through the lives of com­mon­ers and aris­to­crats, sol­diers and rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, duels and illic­it love affairs, and is sure­ly wor­thy of an HBO minis­eries. Her med­ical accom­plish­ments are wor­thy of pub­lic memo­ri­al­iza­tion, Joan­na Smith argues at CBC News, along with a host of oth­er accom­plished women who changed the world, even as their lega­cies were elbowed aside to make even more room for famous men.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Marie Curie Invent­ed Mobile X‑Ray Units to Help Save Wound­ed Sol­diers in World War I

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

Pho­tos of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Black Women Activists Dig­i­tized and Put Online by The Library of Con­gress

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

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Stream Online The Vietnam War, the New Documentary by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

in Film, History | September 25th, 2017

Right now, PBS is in the midst of air­ing The Viet­nam War, a ten-part, 18-hour doc­u­men­tary film series direct­ed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The “immer­sive 360-degree nar­ra­tive” tells “the epic sto­ry of the Viet­nam War,” using nev­er-before-seen footage and inter­views. If you’re not watch­ing the series on the TV, you can also view it on the web and through PBS apps for smart­phones, tablets, Apple TV, Roku and Ama­zon Fire TV. Episode 1 appears above. Find all of them here.

Note: If these videos don’t stream out­side of the US, we apol­o­gize in advance. Some­times PBS geo-restricts their videos. Also, these videos like­ly won’t stay online for­ev­er. If you’re inter­est­ed in watch­ing the series, I’d get going soon­er than lat­er.

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:

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

An Aging Louis Arm­strong Sings “What a Won­der­ful World” in 1967, Dur­ing the Viet­nam War & The Civ­il Rights Strug­gle

What Is Apoc­a­lypse Now Real­ly About? An Hour-Long Video Analy­sis of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Viet­nam Mas­ter­piece

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Hamilton Mania Inspires the Library of Congress to Put 12,000 Alexander Hamilton Documents Online

in Current Affairs, History, Letters, Life, Theatre | September 25th, 2017

Remem­ber when bloody, bloody Andrew Jack­son seemed like a shoe in for Best Sepul­chral His­tor­i­cal Fig­ure Brought Back to Life by an Amer­i­can Musi­cal?

Alas for the 7th Pres­i­dent, a lit­tle jug­ger­naut called Hamil­ton came along, and just like that, it was the first Trea­sury Sec­re­tary and author of the Fed­er­al­ist Papers who had a fan base on the order of Beat­le­ma­nia.

Teach­ers, his­to­ri­ans, and librar­i­ans thrilled to reports of kids singing along with the Hamil­ton sound­track. Play­wright and orig­i­nal star Lin-Manuel Miran­da’s clever rap lyrics ensured that young Hamil­fans (and their par­ents, who report­ed­ly were nev­er allowed to lis­ten to any­thing else in the car) would become well versed in their favorite found­ing father’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ry.

Out of town vis­i­tors who spend upwards of a month’s gro­cery bud­get for Broad­way tick­ets vol­un­tar­i­ly side trip way uptown to tour Hamil­ton Grange. The insa­tiable self­ie imper­a­tive dri­ves them to Cen­tral Park and Muse­um of the City of New York in search of larg­er than life sculp­tures. They take the PATH train to Wee­hawken to pay their respects in the spot where Hamil­ton was felled by Aaron Burr…

Hamil­ton mer­chan­dise, need­less to say, is sell­ing briskly. Books, t‑shirts, jew­el­ry, bob­ble heads com­mem­o­ra­tive mugs…

The Library of Con­gress is not out to cash in on this cul­tur­al moment in the mon­e­tary sense. But “giv­en the increased inter­est in Hamil­ton,” says Julie Miller, a cura­tor of ear­ly Amer­i­can man­u­scripts, it’s no acci­dent that the Library has tak­en pains to dig­i­tize 12,000 Hamil­ton doc­u­ments and make them avail­able on the web. The col­lec­tion includes speech­es, a draft of the Reynolds Pam­phlet, finan­cial accounts, school exer­cis­es and cor­re­spon­dence, both per­son­al and pub­lic, encom­pass­ing such mar­quee names as John Adams, Thomas Jef­fer­son, the Mar­quis de Lafayette, and George Wash­ing­ton.

One need not be a musi­cal the­ater fan to appre­ci­ate the emo­tion of the let­ter he wrote to his wife, Eliz­a­beth Schuyler, on the eve of his fate­ful duel with Aaron Burr:

I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quit­ting you and expos­ing you to the anguish which I know you would feel.… Adieu best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my dar­ling Chil­dren for me.

Explore the Library of Con­gress’ Hamil­ton col­lec­tion here.

And enter the online lot­tery for $10 Hamil­ton tick­ets because, hey, somebody’s got to win.

via The­ater Mania

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Watch a Wit­ty, Grit­ty, Hard­boiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexan­der Hamil­ton Duel

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renaissance Invention Created to Make Books Portable & Help Scholars Study Several Books at Once (1588)

in Books, History, Technology | September 25th, 2017

Devo­tees of print may object, but we read­ers of the 21st cen­tu­ry enjoy a great priv­i­lege in our abil­i­ty to store a prac­ti­cal­ly infi­nite num­ber of dig­i­tized books on our com­put­ers. What’s more, those com­put­ers have them­selves shrunk down to such com­pact­ness that we can car­ry them around day and night with­out dis­com­fort. This would hard­ly have worked just forty years ago, when books came only in print and a seri­ous com­put­er could still fill a room. The paper book may remain rea­son­ably com­pet­i­tive even today with the con­ve­nience refined over hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years, but its first hand­made gen­er­a­tions tend­ed toward lav­ish, weighty dec­o­ra­tion and for­mats that now look com­i­cal­ly over­sized.

These posed real prob­lems of unwield­i­ness, one solu­tion to which took the unlike­ly form of the book­wheel. In 1588’s The Var­i­ous and Inge­nious Machines of Cap­tain Agosti­no Ramel­li, the Ital­ian engi­neer of that name “out­lined his vision for a wheel-o-books that would employ the log­ic of oth­er types of wheel (water, Fer­ris, ‘Price is Right’, etc.) to rotate books clock­work-style before a sta­tion­ary user,” writes the Atlantic’s Megan Gar­ber.

The design used “epicyclic gear­ing — a sys­tem that had at that point been used only in astro­nom­i­cal clocks — to ensure that the shelves bear­ing the wheel’s books (more than a dozen of them) would remain at the same angle no mat­ter the wheel’s posi­tion. The seat­ed read­er could then employ either hand or foot con­trols to move the desired book pret­ty much into her (or, much more like­ly, his) lap.” This rotat­ing book­case gave 16th cen­tu­ry read­ers the abil­i­ty to read heavy books in place, with far greater ease.

In his 1588  book, Ramel­li added:

This is a beau­ti­ful and inge­nious machine, very use­ful and con­ve­nient for any­one who takes plea­sure in study, espe­cial­ly those who are indis­posed and tor­ment­ed by gout. For with this machine a man can see and turn through a large num­ber of books with­out mov­ing from one spot. Moveover, it has anoth­er fine con­ve­nience in that it occu­pies very lit­tle space in the place where it is set, as any­one of intel­li­gence can clear­ly see from the draw­ing.

Inven­tors all over Europe cre­at­ed their own ver­sions of the book­wheel dur­ing the 17th and 18th cen­turies, four­teen exam­ples of which still exist. (The one pic­tured in the mid­dle of the post, built around 1650, now resides in Lei­den.) Even archi­tect Daniel Libe­skind has built one, based on Ramel­li’s design and exhib­it­ed in his home­land at the 1986 Venice Bien­nale. Alas, after it went to Gene­va for an exhi­bi­tion at the Palais Wil­son, it fell vic­tim to a ter­ror­ist fire bomb­ing. Inno­va­tion, it seems, will always have its ene­mies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Jacobean Trav­el­ing Library: The 17th Cen­tu­ry Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

The Art of Mak­ing Old-Fash­ioned, Hand-Print­ed Books

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Study Reveals How the Neanderthals Made Super Glue 200,000 Years Ago: The World’s Oldest Synthetic Material

in History, Technology | September 19th, 2017

It’s become increas­ing­ly clear how much we’ve under­es­ti­mat­ed the Nean­derthals, the archa­ic humans who evolved in Europe and went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Though we’ve long used them as a byword for a lum­ber­ing, beast-like lack of devel­op­ment and intel­li­gence — com­pared, of course, to we glo­ri­ous exam­ples of Homo sapi­ens — evi­dence has come to reveal a greater sim­i­lar­i­ty between us and Homo nean­derthalen­sis than we’d imag­ined. Not only did they devel­op stone tools, they even invent­ed a kind of “super glue,” one that, as you can see in the NOVA seg­ment above, we have dif­fi­cul­ty repli­cat­ing even today.

“Archae­ol­o­gists first found tar-cov­ered stones and black lumps at Nean­derthal sites across Europe about two decades ago,” writes the New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur. “The tar was dis­tilled from the bark of birch trees some 200,000 years ago, and seemed to have been used for haft­ing, or attach­ing han­dles to stone tools and weapons. But sci­en­tists did not know how Nean­derthals pro­duced the dark, sticky sub­stance, more than 100,000 years before Homo sapi­ens in Africa used tree resin and ocher adhe­sives.” But in a new study in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, “a team of archae­ol­o­gists has used mate­ri­als avail­able dur­ing pre­his­toric times to demon­strate three pos­si­ble ways Nean­derthals could have delib­er­ate­ly made tar.”

The process might have looked some­thing like that in the video above, an attempt by archae­ol­o­gists Wil Roe­broeks and Friedrich Palmer to make this of old­est known syn­thet­ic mate­r­i­al just as the Nean­derthals might have exe­cut­ed it. Their only mate­ri­als: “an upturned ani­mal skull to catch the pitch; a small stone on which the pitch would con­dense; some rolls of birch bark, the source of the pitch; and a lay­er of ash, to exclude oxy­gen and pre­vent the bark from burn­ing.”

Image by Paul Kozowyk

They tech­ni­cal­ly get it to work, man­ag­ing to heat the bark to just the right tem­per­a­ture, but the exper­i­ment does­n’t pro­duce very much of this ancient super glue — cer­tain­ly not as much as Nean­derthals would have used to make spears, which might turn out to have been the very first indus­tri­al process in his­to­ry. Inno­va­tion, in the 21st cen­tu­ry as well as 250,000 years ago, does tend to come from unex­pect­ed places.

You can read more about arche­ol­o­gists lat­est the­o­ries on the mak­ing of Nean­derthal super glue over at Sci­en­tif­ic Reports.

via Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did the Voice of Nean­derthals, Our Dis­tant Cousins, Sound Like?: Sci­en­tists Demon­strate Their “High Pitch” The­o­ry

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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