Enter the Hannah Arendt Archives & Discover Rare Audio Lectures, Manuscripts, Marginalia, Letters, Postcards & More

in Archives, Philosophy | February 27th, 2014

The work of Han­nah Arendt has been in the press recent­ly for two rea­sons in par­tic­u­lar: first, the 50^th anniver­sary of her book Eich­mann in Jerusalem, pub­lished in 1963 from reports she filed for The New York­er on the 1961 tri­al of the arche­typ­al Nazi bureau­crat. Then there is Mar­garethe von Trotta’s 2012 biopic Han­nah Arendt, star­ring Ger­man actress Bar­bara Sukowa as the Ger­man Jew­ish philoso­pher. Recent cov­er­age of the book and the film have focused on Arendt’s rep­u­ta­tion as a philo­soph­i­cal jour­nal­ist most close­ly iden­ti­fied with the famous descrip­tive phrase “the banal­i­ty of evil,” a com­ment on Adolf Eich­mann as an exem­plar of geno­ci­dal mur­der­ers who, as the well-worn defense goes, were “just fol­low­ing orders.”

Arendt schol­ar Roger Berkowitz argues that this read­ing of Arendt’s book is a pro­found mis­read­ing. Eich­mann in Jerusalem was divi­sive, set­ting crit­ics against each oth­er in efforts to vin­di­cate or cas­ti­gate its author. The con­tro­ver­sy, how­ev­er, at the time of pub­li­ca­tion and again in the recent re-eval­u­a­tion, has the unfor­tu­nate effect of obscur­ing the breadth of Arendt’s philo­soph­i­cal think­ing apart from Eich­mann and Nazism. Those inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing with Arendt’s life, schol­ar­ship, and philo­soph­i­cal insight can find a wealth of archival mate­ri­als online from the col­lec­tions of Bard Col­lege and the Library of Con­gress. Today, we high­light sev­er­al items in those col­lec­tions that may be of inter­est, includ­ing the Library of Congress’s scanned copy of the final type­script of Eich­mann in Jerusalem.

First, direct­ly above, hear Arendt’s speech “Pow­er & Vio­lence.” The lec­ture re-iter­ates ideas Arendt expressed more ful­ly in a lengthy 1969 essay pub­lished by the New York Review of Books as “Reflec­tions on Vio­lence” and as a book titled On Vio­lence. In the lec­ture and the essay, Arendt ref­er­ences the work of thinkers like Friedrich Engels and, espe­cial­ly, Frantz Fanon in a crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of the roles racism and ide­ol­o­gy play in state vio­lence.

That same year Arendt deliv­ered a series of lec­tures for a Spring semes­ter course at The New School for Social Research called “Phi­los­o­phy and Pol­i­tics: What is Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy.” This fas­ci­nat­ing inves­ti­ga­tion grap­ples not only with polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, but phi­los­o­phy in gen­er­al as a mean­ing­ful activ­i­ty. You can view the full type­scripts of her course lec­tures here.

The Library of Con­gress has also dig­i­tized much of Arendt’s cor­re­spon­dence and uploaded images of her let­ters, includ­ing some to and from such well-known fig­ures as W.H. Auden, Lionel Trilling, and Alfred Kazin (most of Arendt’s let­ters are only avail­able for view­ing onsite at the Library of Con­gress, The New School Uni­ver­si­ty, or the Uni­ver­si­ty of Old­en­burg).

In addi­tion to the “Arendt Mar­gin­a­lia” sec­tion, Bard hosts a gallery that includes “inscribed books, jour­nals & man­u­scripts,” “art­work & pho­tographs,” and “post­cards and oth­er cor­re­spon­dence” (such as the above post­card from Wal­ter Ben­jamin, addressed to “Han­nah Stern,” her mar­ried name at the time).

Last­ly, for an excel­lent overview of Arendt’s life and work that puts all of the above mate­ri­als in con­text, see the Library of Congress’s “Bio­graph­i­cal Note” and be sure to read “Three Essays: The Role of Expe­ri­ence in Han­nah Arendt’s Polit­i­cal Thought” by Jerome Kohn, direc­tor of the New School’s Han­nah Arendt Cen­ter. As many know, Arendt, and many oth­er Ger­man Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­als who fled the Nazis, found a home at New York’s New School for Social Research (now New School Uni­ver­si­ty). And we have the New School (and an Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion grant) to thank for the Library of Congress’s vast, dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of Arendt’s papers, which pre­serves her lega­cy for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

The Tri­al of Adolf Eich­mann at 50

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

The Roving Typist: A Short Film About a New York Writer Who Types Short Stories for Strangers

in Creativity, Film, Writing | February 21st, 2014

C.D. Her­melin, a lit­er­ary agency asso­ciate with a degree in Cre­ative Writ­ing, is the self-pro­claimed Rov­ing Typ­ist. It’s an apt title for one who achieved fame and for­tune — okay, rent mon­ey — by appear­ing in var­i­ous pub­lic spaces around New York City, type­writer in lap. Direc­tor Mark Cer­sosi­mo’s short film, above, intro­duces him as a mild-man­nered, slight­ly awk­ward soul. Engag­ing with strangers lured by the sign taped to his type­writer case is where Her­melin comes into his own.

The sign promis­es “sto­ries while you wait,” a con­cept that recalls the “Poems on Demand” author and writ­ing guru, Natal­ie Gold­berg, who com­posed poems to raise funds for the Min­neso­ta Zen Cen­ter. (Her­melin got his idea — and per­mis­sion to imple­ment it — from a guy he saw doing some­thing sim­i­lar in San Fran­cis­co.)

He’s open to requests, and pay­ment is left to the dis­cre­tion of the recip­i­ent. He seems to take extra care when his cus­tomer is a child.

A harm­less enough pur­suit in an era where sub­way musi­cians and car­i­ca­tur­ists lin­ing the path to the Cen­tral Park Zoo hus­tle hard­er than ‘90s-era shell game artistes.

It’s rea­son­able to assume that inno­cent­ly blun­der­ing onto a cel­lo play­er’s turf is the worst trou­ble a guy like Her­melin’s like­ly to stir up.

Instead, he became the tar­get of a mass cyber­bul­ly­ing cam­paign, after a stranger post­ed a pho­to of him and his type­writer parked on the High Line on a swel­ter­ing day in 2012. Cue an avalanche of hip­ster-hat­ing Red­dit com­ments, in addi­tion to a meme at his expense.

Rather than suc­cumb to the vast neg­a­tive out­pour­ing, the Rov­ing Typ­ist con­front­ed the sit­u­a­tion head on, pub­lish­ing his side of the sto­ry in The Awl:

Orig­i­nal­ly, it felt sil­ly label­ing my ven­ture a “cause” while I defend­ed myself to an anony­mous horde—but now it feels any­thing but. The expe­ri­ence of being labeled and then cast aside made me real­ize that what many peo­ple call “hip­ster­ism” or, what they per­ceive as a slav­ish devo­tion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme, rad­i­cal sin­cer­i­ty. I think of Brook­lyn-based “hip­ster” brand Mast Broth­ers Choco­late, which uses an old-fash­ioned schooner to retrieve their cacao beans, because the ener­gy is clean­er, because they think that’s how it should be done. I think of the legions of Etsy-type hand­made artist shops, of peo­ple who couldn’t make mon­ey in their pro­fes­sion, so found a way to make mon­ey with their art.

Sub­ject a whim­si­cal project to the forge, and it just might become a voca­tion.

Be sure to check out the bonus out­take “I Was  A Hat­ed Hip­ster Meme” and don’t fret if your trav­els won’t take you near New York City any­time soon. Her­melin and his type­writer are spend­ing the win­ter indoors, ful­fill­ing the pub­lic’s on-demand sto­ries via mail order.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra in NYC

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

Why is Ukraine in Crisis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embarrassed to Ask

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2014

Why have Ukraini­ans been protest­ing since Novem­ber? It’s a ques­tion you might feel strange ask­ing in Feb­ru­ary. But not to wor­ry, The Wash­ing­ton Post has put togeth­er a help­ful video that explains the cri­sis in two min­utes (above), along with a relat­ed primer: 9 ques­tions about Ukraine you were too embar­rassed to ask. A deep­er analy­sis can be found in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

For the lat­est news on what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, you can get live video and social media updates at The New York Times.

Who Directed the Psycho Shower Scene?: Hitchcock’s Film & Saul Bass’ Storyboards Side by Side

in Film | February 19th, 2014

The show­er scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psy­cho (1960) is eas­i­ly one the most viewed, ana­lyzed and parsed lengths of film in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Con­struct­ed from over 70 shots, the scene shows Mar­i­on Crane (Janet Leigh) – the sup­posed pro­tag­o­nist of the movie – meet­ing a gory end at the hands of a cross-dress­ing Nor­man Bates 30 min­utes into the movie. Hitchcock’s quick edit­ing and his sub­jec­tive cam­era work bril­liant­ly evokes all the scene’s nudi­ty and trans­gres­sive vio­lence with­out actu­al­ly show­ing much of either. The scene freaked out audi­ences when it came out and 54 years lat­er, it still has the pow­er to shock. Crit­ic David Thom­son called it “legit­i­mate­ly among the most vio­lent scenes ever shot for an Amer­i­can film.”

Psy­cho went a long way toward cement­ing Hitchcock’s stand­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic auteur. So in 1970, sem­i­nal graph­ic design­er Saul Bass, who did the title sequence for the movie, made waves when he claimed that he direct­ed the show­er scene. His proof is his sto­ry­board, which shows a sequence of images that are sim­i­lar — though not exact­ly the same — as what end­ed up in the movie. Vashi Nedo­man­sky help­ful­ly placed Bass’s sto­ry­board along­side the actu­al movie. See above.

As you might notice, that eerie motif of the show­er head is not to be found on the sto­ry­boards. Oth­er images – the knife-wield­ing mur­der­er in sil­hou­ette, the blood spi­ral­ing down the drain, the cur­tain get­ting pulled from the rod – look like they came straight from Bass. And some have argued that the scene sim­ply looks more like Bass’s pre­vi­ous work than Hitchcock’s.

Oth­ers, includ­ing many of the peo­ple who were actu­al­ly on set, insist that Hitch­cock was at the helm. Janet Leigh — who, of course, was there for the dura­tion of the scene’s sev­en day shoot, scream­ing her head off – has been unequiv­o­cal about her thoughts on the mat­ter:

Saul Bass was there for the shoot­ing, but he nev­er direct­ed me. Absolute­ly not. Saul Bass is bril­liant, but he could­n’t have done the draw­ings had Mr. Hitch­cock not dis­cussed with him what he want­ed to get. And you could­n’t have filmed the draw­ings. Why does there always have to be con­tro­ver­sy?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

David Foster Wallace’s Surprising List of His 10 Favorite Books, from C.S. Lewis to Tom Clancy

in Books, Literature | February 18th, 2014

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Like many David Fos­ter Wal­lace fans, I bought a copy of J. Ped­er Zane’s The Top Ten (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here), a com­pi­la­tion of var­i­ous famous writ­ers’ top-ten-books lists, express­ly for DFW’s con­tri­bu­tion. Like most of those David Fos­ter Wal­lace fans, I felt more than a lit­tle sur­prised when I turned to his page and found out which ten books he’d cho­sen. Here, as quot­ed in the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, we have the Infi­nite Jest author and wide­ly rec­og­nized (if reluc­tant) “high-brow” lit­er­ary fig­ure’s top ten list:

1. The Screw­tape Let­ters, by C.S. Lewis

2. The Stand, by Stephen King

3. Red Drag­on, by Thomas Har­ris

4. The Thin Red Line, by James Jones

5. Fear of Fly­ing, by Eri­ca Jong

6. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Har­ris

7. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Hein­lein

8. Fuzz, by Ed McBain

9. Alli­ga­tor, by Shel­ley Katz

10. The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clan­cy

Thrillers, killers, and a dose of Chris­tian­i­ty to top it off; I did­n’t blame Zane when he asked, “Is he seri­ous? Beats me. To be hon­est, I don’t know what Wal­lace was think­ing. But I do think there’s a cer­tain integri­ty to his list.” Wal­lace him­self seemed to read assid­u­ous­ly all over the map — or, more to the point, all up and down the scale of crit­i­cal respectabil­i­ty. Rat­tling off  “the stuff that’s sort of rung my cher­ries” to Salon’s Lau­ra Miller in 1996, for a con­trast, he named, among oth­er wor­thy reads, Socrates’ funer­al ora­tion, John Donne, “Keats’ short­er stuff,” Schopen­hauer, William James’ Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence, Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus, Joyce’s Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hem­ing­way’s In Our Time, Don DeLil­lo, A.S. Byatt, Cyn­thia Ozick, Don­ald Barthelme, Moby-Dick, and The Great Gats­by. (You can find many of these texts in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion.)

That, some Wal­lace read­ers may think, sounds more like it. But those who’ve paid close atten­tion to Wal­lace’s lan­guage — that often breath­less­ly but hope­less­ly imi­tat­ed mix­ture of high-cal­iber vocab­u­lary, casu­al­ly spo­ken rhythm, decep­tive­ly sharp-edged per­cep­tion, shrug­ging pre­sen­ta­tion, and delib­er­ate sole­cism — know how ful­ly he simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embod­ied both “high” and “low” Eng­lish writ­ing. Just look at the Lit­er­ary Analy­sis syl­labus from his days teach­ing at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, which demands stu­dents read not just The Silence of the Lambs but anoth­er Thomas Har­ris nov­el, Black Sun­day, as well as more C.S. Lewis (in this case The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) and Stephen King (Car­rie). Lest you doubt his com­mit­ment to the seri­ous read­ing of pop­u­lar fic­tion, note the pres­ence of Jack­ie Collins’ Rock Star. In the class­room and in life, Wal­lace must tru­ly have believed that there exists no low fic­tion; just low ways of read­ing fic­tion.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Two Animations of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: One Narrated by Orson Welles, Another Made with Clay

in Philosophy | February 7th, 2014

The ever-flick­er­ing lights, the ever-present screen, the stu­pe­fied spec­ta­tors immune to a larg­er real­i­ty and in need of sud­den enlightenment—Plato’s alle­go­ry of the cave from Book VII of The Repub­lic is a mar­ket­ing department’s dream: it sums up an entire brand in a stock-sim­ple para­ble that almost any­one can fol­low, one that lends itself to com­pelling­ly brief visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions like those above and below. In the top video, Orson Welles nar­rates while the cam­era pans over some col­or­ful­ly styl­ized illus­tra­tions of the fable by artist Dick Oden. This pre­serves the didac­tic tone of the text, but it is a lit­tle dry. In con­trast, the award-win­ning three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ings of the pris­on­ers and their non­stop nick­elodeon in the Clay­ma­tion Cave Alle­go­ry below offers dra­mat­ic close-ups of the chained prisoner’s faces and the hyp­not­ic move­ment of fire­light over the cave’s rock walls.

Plato’s “brand” is a doc­trine of ide­al­ism that posits a realm of ide­al forms, of which every­thing we know by our sens­es is but an infe­ri­or copy. The iron­i­cal­ly poet­ic Socrates relates the sto­ry to illus­trate “the effect of edu­ca­tion and the lack of it on our nature.”

And yet it does much more than this—Plato illus­trates an epis­te­mol­o­gy that sup­ports notions of the soul and immor­tal­i­ty, and hence his ideas sur­vived in the­ol­o­gy long after they was sup­pos­ed­ly van­quished by ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy.

Plato’s idea of rea­son as a per­fect, unchang­ing realm of which we’re only dim­ly aware is intu­itive­ly com­pelling. Most of us are at some time con­scious of how lim­it­ed our per­cep­tions tru­ly are. But just because the alle­go­ry of the cave is fair­ly easy to com­mu­ni­cate to phi­los­o­phy 101 stu­dents doesn’t mean it’s easy to adapt to the screen like the two exam­ples above. Mark Lin­sen­may­er of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life points us toward these 20 YouTube takes on Plato’s cave, “many of them,” he writes, “fright­ful­ly ama­teur­ish and some of them pre­sent­ing a warped and/or incom­pre­hen­si­ble ver­sion of the sto­ry.” I am par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the silent film ver­sion below. As always, your com­ments on the sound­ness of these var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions are most wel­come.

Cours­es on Pla­to can be found on our list of 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er Free Online Course col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Famous Philoso­phers Imag­ined as Action Fig­ures: Plun­der­ous Pla­to, Dan­ger­ous Descartes & More

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

An Undertaking: Woodworker Honors His Grandma with a Custom-Made Coffin

in Art, Life | January 19th, 2014

Good thing Austin-based design­er Michael Yates stud­ied abroad. Three months spent in the vicin­i­ty of Kyoto as a Texas A&M elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing stu­dent ulti­mate­ly inspired him to aban­don the pro­fes­sion for which he had trained, in order to pur­sue wood­work­ing. “…the sacred­ness of the process and atten­tion to detail res­onat­ed with me in a way that noth­ing had before,” he recalls in an Apart­ment Ther­a­py pro­file. “I’ve since learned in prac­tice what I saw evi­dence of in the temples—that com­plete­ly focus­ing on where you are will get you the best prod­uct at the end. Every step of the process is pre­cious.”

Had he not changed hors­es in mid­stream, his grand­moth­er would have like­ly stuck to the plan too, depart­ing for the after­life in a stan­dard-issue cof­fin or urn, rather than ask­ing Yates to build her some­thing spe­cial. In his mind, it was a col­lab­o­ra­tion, a process doc­u­ment­ed above, at the behest of Whole Foods’ online mag­a­zine, Dark Rye.  (Indi­cat­ing, per­haps, that arti­sanal, upcy­cled coffins will soon be avail­able for pur­chase beside bam­boo cut­ting boards and local­ly sourced, grass-fed, beef jerky?)

Yate’s grand­ma placed her request pre-need, in the indus­try lin­go, a move that afford­ed him plen­ty of time to study—and reject—the over­ly ornate ves­sels that have become a cul­tur­al norm. Lux­u­ri­ous details have no place, he feels, when the user can derive no enjoy­ment from them. (Guess he and Grand­ma weren’t con­sid­er­ing going with the off-the-wall Ghana approach.)

The cof­fin is the most mean­ing­ful piece he’s ever cre­at­ed, even before it could be beta test­ed. It caused him to think deeply about our rela­tion­ship with death and each oth­er. The sound­track hints that some­thing very sad is about to hap­pen, as do the pho­tos of his grand­moth­er as a vibrant, younger woman. (Such shots have become de rigeur for any­one mourn­ing an old­er rel­a­tive on Face­book.) Yates men­tions that his grand­moth­er, healthy when she hatched this scheme, has been diag­nosed with can­cer. I think we can assume where this is going, right?

At the risk of  a spoil­er, I’d like to com­mend the film­mak­ers for allow­ing some key scenes to occur off-cam­era. Yates remarks that after all that went into mak­ing the cof­fin, it would be “a ter­ri­ble miss” if his grand­moth­er did not get a chance to see it. He’s filmed load­ing it into his truck, but view­ers are not privy to its deliv­ery. Some things, it would seem, are still per­son­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

Find Yale’s Course Death  in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day oper­ates in the shad­ow of the South Brook­lyn Cas­ket Com­pa­ny. @AyunHalliday

How Coffee Affects Your Brain: A Very Quick Primer

in Animation, Food & Drink | January 14th, 2014

The morn­ing cup of cof­fee sweeps the cob­webs off of your brain. Almost mag­i­cal­ly. Just like that. If you care to get ana­lyt­i­cal about what’s going on in your caf­feinat­ed brain, we give you a short video from PHD comics — short, of course, for Piled High­er and Deep­er. For more of their videos see:

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

Dark Mat­ter Ani­mat­ed: The Next Fron­tier of Dis­cov­ery for Physi­cists and Cos­mol­o­gists

Discover Cy Endfield’s “Microwriter,” The World’s First Portable Word Processor (Circa 1980)

in History, Technology | January 14th, 2014

The hall­mark of an endur­ing inven­tion is the dif­fi­cul­ty oth­ers encounter when attempt­ing to improve on its orig­i­nal design. The QWERTY key­board is a prime exam­ple: since the emer­gence of the Rem­ing­ton No. 1 type­writer in 1874, the key­board has con­fi­dent­ly with­stood any sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. That’s not to say that curi­ous alter­na­tives haven’t occa­sion­al­ly come along. Indeed, sev­er­al weeks ago we wrote about the Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball, the late 19^th cen­tu­ry type­writer Friedrich Niet­zsche used while trav­el­ling. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the writ­ing ball proved too frag­ile and expen­sive to man­u­fac­ture, and today sur­vives sole­ly as a rel­ic.

The most unusu­al recent attempt to rein­vent the key­board was devised by Cy End­field in the ear­ly 1980s. End­field was a Hol­ly­wood direc­tor of some suc­cess pri­or to being declared a Com­mu­nist by Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mis­sion and black­list­ed in 1951. An alto­geth­er enter­pris­ing fel­low, End­field kept his chin up and his upper lip stiff, opt­ing to head to Eng­land where he worked on films (e.g., Zulu, 1964), wrote a book, and per­formed card tricks with remark­able skill. He also cre­at­ed a six-but­ton word proces­sor he called the Microwriter.

In a 1984 inter­view with NPR, End­field recount­ed want­i­ng to reduce the num­ber of keys used when typ­ing. Instead of push­ing a key and obtain­ing the cor­re­spond­ing let­ter (a 1‑to‑1 ratio), he want­ed to use a hand­ful of keys to yield the whole of the alpha­bet. He decid­ed that chords were the answer:

“It occurred to me that… it would be pos­si­ble to com­bine a set of sig­nals from sep­a­rate keys, and there­fore you could reduce the total num­ber of keys. But, of course, this involved the learn­ing of chords… dif­fi­cult to mem­o­rize… But how do you make these chords mem­o­rable? And, one day, star­ing at a sheet of paper on which I was draw­ing a set of five keys in sort of the arch formed by the fin­ger ends, it occurred to me, ah! if I press the thumb key, and the index fin­ger key, any­body can do this just lis­ten­ing now, press your thumb key and your index fin­ger down and you’ll see that a ver­ti­cal line joins those two fin­ger ends, a short ver­ti­cal line. There is an equiv­a­lence between that short ver­ti­cal line and one let­ter of the alpha­bet. It’s the let­ter “I.”

The above video pro­vides a much sim­pler and more con­cise expla­na­tion.

Equipped with 16 kb of RAM and a sin­gle line LED dis­play, the Microwriter allowed users to quick­ly type notes on the go and trans­fer the results to their com­put­ers through the ser­i­al port. Five of the but­tons cor­re­spond­ed to the var­i­ous chord-keys, and the low­er thumb but­ton allowed users to cycle through var­i­ous input modes.

While it was pos­si­ble to achieve a quick pace with the device when typ­ing tex­tu­al rather than numer­ic input, users of the device remem­ber need­ing sev­er­al days of train­ing to remem­ber the var­i­ous key com­bi­na­tions and to begin using the device with some pro­fi­cien­cy. Need­less to say, in spite of End­field­’s claims of being the world’s first portable word proces­sor, the Microwriter sim­ply was­n’t user friend­ly enough to sur­vive. It entered pro­duc­tion in the ear­ly 1980s, and ceased in 1985.

To read or lis­ten to Cy Endfield’s full inter­view, head over to the NPR Archives tum­blr.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

The His­to­ry of the Seem­ing­ly Impos­si­ble Chi­nese Type­writer

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

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

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Online Cours­es

Designers Charles & Ray Eames Create a Promotional Film for the Groundbreaking Polaroid SX-70 Instant Camera (1972)

in Photography | January 6th, 2014

For sev­er­al decades of its his­to­ry, the Polaroid was called a “Land Cam­era” after the company’s founder Edwin Land, and the prod­uct line includ­ed not only con­sumer devices but also high-end machines like the SX-70, a fold­ing SLR cam­era intro­duced in 1972. The SX-70 boast­ed a host of impres­sive fea­tures that allowed pho­tog­ra­phers to achieve the effects of non-instant SLRs such as “changes in depth of field, dou­ble expo­sure, fixed-point focus­ing, and close­up pho­tog­ra­phy.” The SX-70 made a con­sid­er­able impres­sion on famed hus­band and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames, so much so that they pro­duced the 11-minute adver­tise­ment above describ­ing in detail the SX-70’s high­ly com­plex oper­a­tions. In his intro­duc­tion, Charles Eames tells us that no less an author­i­ty than Alfred Stieglitz “favored any means that might free the photographer’s whole ener­gies so that they could be chan­neled in the direc­tion of the deci­sion, the pic­ture itself.” Thus, Edwin Land’s inven­tions are giv­en the impri­matur of the father of fine art pho­tog­ra­phy him­self, and in 1972, the SX-70 was Land’s high­est achieve­ment to date.

The Polaroid instant cam­era seems to have come full cir­cle from con­sumer toy to util­i­tar­i­an snap­shot-mak­er to artists’ exper­i­men­tal tool to instru­ment of retro-hip­ster­ism to con­sumer toy again. But the phys­i­cal, real-world Polaroid aes­thet­ic almost met its end in 2008 when the com­pa­ny dis­con­tin­ued pro­duc­tion of its instant film, prompt­ing the cre­ators of the Impos­si­ble Project to “[save] ana­log instant pho­tog­ra­phy from extinc­tion by releas­ing var­i­ous, brand new and unique instant films.” VP Dave Bias demon­strates the project’s device, which allows smart­phone pho­togs to print images on Polaroid-style film. Respond­ing to the mas­sive demands of 21st cen­tu­ry détourned nos­tal­gia, Polaroid has intro­duced new lines of instant cam­eras, and Fuji is also bridg­ing the Instagram/Polaroid divide with a portable print­er this spring. But what the Impos­si­ble Project highlights—as the Eames did in ‘72—is just how much the Polaroid became a means of mak­ing fine art as well as kitsch, a too often unre­marked upon appli­ca­tion of the famous instant cam­era and the visu­al aes­thet­ics it bequeathed the dig­i­tal age.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Ital­ian Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mau­r­izio Gal­im­ber­ti Cre­ates Cubist Polaroid Col­lages of Artists & Celebri­ties

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