How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

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In the cred­its of Phil Collins’ No Jack­et Required appears the dis­claimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryp­tic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buy­ers, tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed musi­cians would’ve got it. In the half-decades since its intro­duc­tion, the Fairlight Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment, or CMI, had reshaped the sound…

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before the Word Processor & White-Out

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Before the word proces­sor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare man­u­scripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the man­u­script of Austen’s aban­doned nov­el, The Wat­sons. In announc­ing the acqui­si­tion, the Bodleian wrote:

The…

What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern

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At least since The Can­ter­bury Tales, the set­ting of the medieval tav­ern has held out the promise of adven­ture. For their cus­tomer base dur­ing the actu­al Mid­dle Ages, how­ev­er, they had more util­i­tar­i­an virtues. “If you ever find your­self in the late medieval peri­od, and you are in need of food and drink, you’d bet­ter…

Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

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In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade…

Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Discover the Art of Henrique Alvim Corrêa

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H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has ter­ri­fied and fas­ci­nat­ed read­ers and writ­ers for decades since its 1898 pub­li­ca­tion and has inspired numer­ous adap­ta­tions. The most noto­ri­ous use of Wells’ book was by Orson Welles, whom the author called “my lit­tle name­sake,” and whose 1938 War of the Worlds Hal­loween…