The anti-dis­trac­tion device is the mod­ern mouse­trap: build a bet­ter one, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or so, at least, will the part of the world engaged in the pur­suits we’ve broad­ly labeled “knowl­edge work.” Even among the knowl­edge work­ers who’ve spent most of the past year in pan­dem­ic-prompt­ed iso­la­tion, many still feel besieged by unend­ing claims on their atten­tion. Laments at hav­ing been ren­dered unpro­duc­tive by con­stant dis­trac­tion go back at least to medieval times, but the pro­posed solu­tions to this long-stand­ing prob­lem change with — and reflect — the times. Take the “Iso­la­tor,” the for­mi­da­ble-look­ing wear­able machine above that debuted on the cov­er of July 1925’s Sci­ence and Inven­tion mag­a­zine.

“Per­haps the most dif­fi­cult thing that a human being is called upon to face is long, con­cen­trat­ed think­ing,” writes inven­tor Hugo Gerns­back in the accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle. “Most peo­ple who desire thus to con­cen­trate find it nec­es­sary to shut them­selves up in an almost sound­proof room in order to go ahead with their work, but even here there are many things that dis­tract their atten­tion.”

Even absent such nui­sances as “street nois­es” and the “tele­phone bell,” the mind seeks out its own dis­trac­tions as if nat­u­ral­ly com­pelled: “You will lean back in your chair and begin to study the pat­tern of the wall­pa­per, or you will see a fly crawl along the wall, or a win­dow cur­tain will be mov­ing back and forth, all of which is often suf­fi­cient to turn your mind away from the imme­di­ate task to be per­formed.”

Gerns­back­’s solu­tion involves a large hel­met, lined with cork and cov­ered in felt, with a baf­fle for breath­ing and glass eye­holes to see through. Paint­ed black but for two thin bands, the eye­holes make it “almost impos­si­ble to see any­thing except a sheet of paper in front of the wear­er. There is, there­fore, no opti­cal dis­trac­tion here.” To pre­vent drowsi­ness, “the writer intro­duced a small oxy­gen tank, attached to the hel­met. This increas­es the res­pi­ra­tion and livens the sub­ject con­sid­er­ably.” And so we arrive at the set­up pic­tured below, orig­i­nal­ly cap­tioned, “The author at work in his pri­vate study aid­ed by the Iso­la­tor. Out­side nois­es being elim­i­nat­ed, the work­er can con­cen­trate with ease upon the sub­ject at hand.” The Iso­la­tor’s patent appears just above, one of 80 for var­i­ous inven­tions that Gerns­back held in his life­time.

What­ev­er the device con­tributed to Gerns­back­’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, there can be no ques­tion that the man got a lot done. Not just a con­trib­u­tor to Sci­ence and Inven­tion but also its pub­lish­er, he over­saw a small media empire whose oth­er peri­od­i­cals includ­ed Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics, Sci­en­tif­ic Detec­tive Month­ly, the sin­is­ter-sound­ing Tech­noc­ra­cy Review, and Amaz­ing Sto­ries, which launched in 1926 as the first mag­a­zine devot­ed entire­ly to sci­ence fic­tion (or “sci­en­tific­tion,” as Gerns­back called it). For his advance­ment of the genre he was hon­ored by the World Sci­ence Fic­tion Society’s Annu­al Achieve­ment Awards, bet­ter known as the “Hugos.” Pulp-fic­tion­al though the Iso­la­tor may have looked in 1925 (as indeed it looks now), it rep­re­sents a gen­uine effort to alle­vi­ate with tech­nol­o­gy a both­er­some aspect of the human con­di­tion — and a prece­dent for the new-and-improved iso­la­tion hel­mets engi­neered for the even more dis­tract­ing world in which we live a cen­tu­ry on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

The Ben­e­fits of Bore­dom: How to Stop Dis­tract­ing Your­self and Get Cre­ative Ideas Again

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

Pico Iyer on “the Art of Still­ness”: How to Enrich Your Busy, Dis­tract­ed Life by Unplug­ging and Stay­ing Put

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

What Hap­pens When You Spend Weeks, Months, or Years in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment

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.

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.

We revere Leonar­do da Vin­ci for his indus­try, but even more so for his imag­i­na­tion. Most of us would envi­sion our­selves, had we lived in the late 15th or ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, being per­fect­ly con­tent with hav­ing paint­ed the Mona Lisa. But Leonar­do had designs on a host of oth­er domains as well, most of them not strict­ly artis­tic. His ven­tures into sci­ence and engi­neer­ing made him the arche­typ­al poly­math “Renais­sance man,” but he was also a man before his time: most of the inven­tions he came up with and doc­u­ment­ed in his writ­ings could­n’t have been built when he lived.

Over the past six cen­turies, how­ev­er tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments have turned more and more of Leonar­do’s machines pos­si­ble — or at least con­ceiv­able to the non-vision­ary. Take, for instance, the bridge only put suc­cess­ful­ly to the test when MIT researchers 3D-print­ed it in 2019.

Alas, how­ev­er advanced our mate­ri­als in the 21st cen­tu­ry, they have yet to prove equal to the ornithopter, a rig meant to bestow upon man the pow­er of flight by giv­ing him a pair of bird­like wings. But you can see it in action in the short video at the top of this post, the first in a series called “Da Vin­ci Reborn.”

Pro­duced by the 3D soft­ware-mak­er Das­sault Sys­tèmes, these videos reveal the inner work­ings of Leonar­do’s inven­tions, built and unbuilt. Apart from his fan­ci­ful ornithopter, they real­is­ti­cal­ly ren­der his odome­ter, self-cen­ter­ing drill, aer­i­al screw, and self-sup­port­ing bridge (which, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can actu­al­ly build your­self). It’s one thing to see these machines dia­grammed and hear them explained, but quite anoth­er to wit­ness them put into com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed action.

Even as these videos help us under­stand how Leonar­do’s inge­nious cre­ations worked, they remind us that Leonar­do him­self had to invent them with­out the ben­e­fit of com­put­er-aid­ed design — with lit­tle more, in fact, than pen, paper, and the Renais­sance-era tools at hand. For him, when the self-cen­ter­ing drill bored straight through a log or the aer­i­al screw took to the air, they did so only in his imag­i­na­tion. It was only there that he could test, refine, and reassem­ble the mech­a­nisms that togeth­er con­sti­tut­ed many of the inven­tions that still impress us today.

It must be some­thing like step­ping into Leonar­do’s mind, then, to expe­ri­ence the Das­sault-designed Da Vin­ci Cas­tle play­ground, which vir­tu­al­ly places these inven­tions and oth­ers on the lawn in front of the Château du Clos Lucé. It was there that the great Renais­sance man came to the end of his life in 1619, hav­ing entered the ser­vice of King Fran­cis I’s ser­vice after the French monarch recap­tured Milan four years ear­li­er. Leonar­do him­self would sure­ly appre­ci­ate this geo­graph­i­cal touch — and even more so, the fact that human­i­ty is still bring­ing such high tech­nol­o­gy to bear on the project of under­stand­ing his work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

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.