H.P. Lovecraft’s Monster Drawings: Cthulhu & Other Creatures from the “Boundless and Hideous Unknown”

in Art, Literature | August 18th, 2015

If you’ve ever played Call of Cthul­hu, the table­top role-play­ing game based on the writ­ing of H.P. Love­craft, you’ve felt the frus­tra­tion of hav­ing char­ac­ter after painstak­ing­ly-cre­at­ed char­ac­ter go insane or sim­ply drop dead upon catch­ing a glimpse of one of the many hor­rif­ic beings infest­ing its world. But as the count­less read­ers Love­craft has posthu­mous­ly accu­mu­lat­ed over near­ly eighty years know, that just sig­nals faith­ful­ness to the source mate­r­i­al: Love­craft’s char­ac­ters tend to run into the same prob­lem, liv­ing, as they do, in what French nov­el­ist Michel Houelle­becq (one of his notable fans, a group that also includes Stephen King, Joyce Car­ol Oates, and Jorge Luis Borges) calls “an open slice of howl­ing fear.”

Read enough of Love­craft’s mid­dle-class east-coast pro­fes­sion­al nar­ra­tors’ mor­tal strug­gles for the words to con­vey what he called “the bound­less and hideous unknown” that sud­den­ly con­fronts them, and you start to won­der what these crea­tures actu­al­ly look like. The clear­est word-pic­ture comes in the 1928 sto­ry “The Call of Cthul­hu,” whose nar­ra­tor describes the tit­u­lar ancient malevolence—avoiding instan­ta­neous men­tal break­down by look­ing at an idol rather than the being itself—as “a mon­ster of vague­ly anthro­poid out­line, but with an octo­pus-like head whose face was a mass of feel­ers, a scaly, rub­bery-look­ing body, prodi­gious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, nar­row wings behind.”

And so mod­ern Love­craftians have enjoyed a new vari­a­tion of that giant octo­pus-drag­on-man form on “Cthul­hu for Pres­i­dent” shirts each and every elec­tion year. (You can find one for 2016 here.) While that phe­nom­e­non would sure­ly have sur­prised Love­craft him­self, con­stant­ly and fruit­less­ly as he strug­gled in life, I like to think he’d have approved of the designs, which align in fear­some spir­it with the sketch­es he made. At the top of the post you can see one sketch of the Cthul­hu idol, drawn in 1934 on a piece of cor­re­spon­dence with writer R.H. Bar­low, Love­craft’s friend and the even­tu­al execu­tor of his estate.

If “The Call of Cthul­hu” ranks as Love­craft’s best-known work, his 1936 novel­la At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness sure­ly comes in a close sec­ond. Just above, we have an illus­trat­ed page of the writer’s plot notes for this unfor­get­table cau­tion­ary tale of an Antarc­tic expe­di­tion that hap­pens dis­as­trous­ly upon the mind-bend­ing ruins of a city pre­vi­ous­ly thought only a myth – and the mon­sters that inhab­it it. It exem­pli­fies the defin­ing qual­i­ty of Love­craft’s mythol­o­gy, where, as Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion puts it, “ancient beings of pro­found malev­o­lence lurk just below the sur­face of the every­day world.”

“Moun­tains fea­tured sev­er­al species of for­got­ten, intel­li­gent beings, includ­ing the ‘Elder Things.’ The sketch on the right side of this page of notes (click here to view it in a larg­er for­mat), with its anno­ta­tions (‘body dark grey’; ‘all appendages not in use cus­tom­ar­i­ly fold­ed down to body’; ‘leath­ery or rub­bery’) rep­re­sents Love­craft work­ing out the specifics of an Elder Thing’s anato­my.” That such things lurked in Love­craft’s imag­i­na­tion have made his state of mind a sub­ject of decades and decades of rich dis­cus­sion among his enthu­si­asts. But just the body count racked up by Cthul­hu, the Elder Things, and the oth­er denizens of this unfath­omable realm should make us thank­ful that Love­craft saw them in his mind’s eye so we would­n’t have to.

Note: The sec­ond image on this page was fea­tured in the 2013 exhi­bi­tion held at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, “The Shad­ow Over Col­lege Street: H. P. Love­craft in Prov­i­dence.” The Brown Uni­ver­si­ty Library is the home to the largest col­lec­tion of H. P. Love­craft mate­ri­als in the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

H.P. Love­craft High­lights the 20 “Types of Mis­takes” Young Writ­ers Make

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

1980s Photo Captures Neil deGrasse Tyson Looking Hip in Grad School (Plus More on His “Failed Experiment” at UT-Austin)

in Astronomy, Life, Physics | August 18th, 2015

Last year, we revis­it­ed the high school days of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Grow­ing up in New York City dur­ing the 1970s, Tyson attend­ed Bronx Sci­ence (class of ’76), ran an impres­sive 4:25 mile, cap­tained the school’s wrestling team, and, he fond­ly recalls, wore bas­ket­ball sneak­ers belong­ing to the Knick’s Walt “Clyde” Fra­zier. Tyson was, of course, also a pre­co­cious stu­dent. Famous­ly, Carl Sagan recruit­ed Tyson to study with him at Cor­nell. But Tyson polite­ly declined and went to Har­vard for his under­grad­u­ate stud­ies. Then, he head­ed off to Texas, to start his PhD at UT-Austin. That’s where the pho­to, tak­en cir­ca 1980, cap­tures him above — hang­ing out with friends, and look­ing hip­per than your aver­age astro­physics stu­dent.

This pho­to (now mak­ing the rounds on Red­dit) orig­i­nal­ly appeared in a 2012 arti­cle pub­lished in the Alcalde, the alum­ni mag­a­zine of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. To the mag­a­zine’s cred­it, the arti­cle takes an unvar­nished look at Tyson’s “failed exper­i­ment” in Texas. The piece starts with the lede “Neil deGrasse Tyson, MA ’83, is the pub­lic face of sci­ence. But he says his suc­cess has noth­ing to do with UT.” And, from there, it recounts how pro­fes­sors and uni­ver­si­ty police imme­di­ate­ly stereo­typed him.

The first com­ment direct­ed to me in the first minute of the first day by a fac­ul­ty mem­ber I had just met was, ‘You must join the depart­ment bas­ket­ball team!

or

I was stopped and ques­tioned sev­en times by Uni­ver­si­ty police on my way into the physics build­ing. Sev­en times. Zero times was I stopped going into the gym—and I went to the gym a lot. That says all you need to know about how wel­come I felt at Texas.

But the real prob­lem was­n’t race. Accord­ing to Tyson, “there was sim­ply no room for me to be the full per­son that I was.” “An obses­sive focus on one thing at a time; a strong con­nec­tion to pop cul­ture, from the moon­walk to the Rubik’s cube; and a refusal to put research first: these traits con­tributed to Tyson’s fail­ure at UT,” con­cludes the Alcalde. They also allowed him to flour­ish lat­er in life.

After his “advi­sors dis­solved his dis­ser­ta­tion committee—essentially flunk­ing him,” Tyson trans­ferred to Colum­bia, earned his PhD in 1988, and became the great­est pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence since Carl Sagan. We like sto­ries with hap­py end­ings.

Read more about Tyson’s expe­ri­ence in Texas at the Alcalde.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Cap­tain, Invent­ed a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

Carl Sagan Writes a Let­ter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Stream 58 Hours of Free Classical Music Selected to Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax

in Music | August 17th, 2015

We are bom­bard­ed by music, all the time, whether we like it or not. In many cases—such as those almost dai­ly, inescapable trips to the gro­cery store, drug store, pet store, what-have-you store—the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment to our jour­ney through life has been cho­sen specif­i­cal­ly for its abil­i­ty to make us buy things: How­ev­er grat­ing we may find the soft rock, lite pop, or easy lis­ten­ing that pumps out of phar­ma­cy speak­er sys­tems, some sin­is­ter cabal of mar­ket­ing researchers deter­mined long ago that schmaltz equals sales. And so we endure yet anoth­er ter­ri­ble pop song while wait­ing in line with our essen­tials. For peo­ple like myself—highly sen­si­tive to sound and unable to tune out bad back­ground music—the expe­ri­ence can be excru­ci­at­ing.

In our own pri­vate spaces—offices, cars, the space between our ears with head­phones on—we become our own sound design­ers. We may pre­fer silence, or we may choose very spe­cif­ic kinds of music to accom­pa­ny our leisure and our work (as we dis­cussed in a few posts on music to write by some years back). These days, we can make our own dig­i­tal playlists, grab­bing music from all over the web, or we can have the algo­rithms of inter­net radio ser­vices like Pan­do­ra or Apple Radio curate our lis­ten­ing for us, a more—or some­times less—satisfying expe­ri­ence. Lovers of clas­si­cal music have a third online option, thanks to an enter­pris­ing dig­i­tal cura­tor who goes by the name of Ulysse­s­tone and who com­piled the Spo­ti­fy playlist below of 58 hours of clas­si­cal music — from Sibelius to Satie, Bach to Debussy. It’s designed for any­one who wants to study, work, or sim­ply relax.

Ulysses has pre­vi­ous­ly brought us a playlist of the endur­ing­ly clas­si­cal music in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s films and all of Mozart in a 127 hour playlist. As one music blog­ger put it, his inter­ven­tions have made Spo­ti­fy’s ser­vice “a whole lot eas­i­er for clas­si­cal lis­ten­ers.” See for your­self at Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists, where you’ll find blog posts on the changes to Spo­ti­fy’s clas­si­cal radio, as well as over 50 playlists ded­i­cat­ed to famous composers—“great start­ing points,” writes Ulysses, “for peo­ple who want to get into clas­si­cal music or explore a bit more.” You can stream the 58-hour playlist of study-enhanc­ing clas­si­cal music (fea­tur­ing 789 free tracks in total) by click­ing this link, or stream­ing the play­er above. To down­load Spo­ti­fy and start a free account, head on over to their site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

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

Watch Vincent, Tim Burton’s Animated Tribute to Vincent Price & Edgar Allan Poe (1982)

in Animation, Film | August 17th, 2015

If you put togeth­er a list of the world’s great­est Vin­cent Price fans, you’d have to rank Tim Bur­ton at the top. That goes for “great­est” in the sense of both the fer­ven­cy of the fan’s enthu­si­asm for all things Price, and for the fan’s accom­plish­ments in his own right. Bur­ton’s film­mak­ing craft and his admi­ra­tion for the mid­cen­tu­ry hor­ror-film icon inter­sect­ed ear­ly in his career, when he made the six-minute ani­mat­ed film Vin­cent for Dis­ney in 1982, three years before his fea­ture debut Pee-Wee’s Big Adven­ture.

The short­’s title refers not to Vin­cent Price him­self, but to its sev­en-year-old pro­tag­o­nist, Vin­cent Mal­loy: “He’s always polite and does what he’s told. For a boy his age, he’s con­sid­er­ate and nice. But he wants to be just like Vin­cent Price.” Those words of nar­ra­tion — as if you could­n’t tell after the first one spo­ken — come in the voice of Price him­self. Vin­cent Mal­loy, pale of com­plex­ion and untamed of hair, sure­ly resem­bles Bur­ton’s child­hood self, and in more aspects than appear­ance: the film­mak­er grants the char­ac­ter his own idol­a­try not just of Price but of Edgar Allan Poe, and it’s into their macabre mas­ter­works that his day­dream­ing sends him — just as they pre­sum­ably sent the sev­en-year-old Bur­ton.

Bur­ton and Price’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on Vin­cent marked the begin­ning of a friend­ship that last­ed the rest of Price’s life. The appre­cia­tive actor called the short “the most grat­i­fy­ing thing that ever hap­pened,” and the direc­tor would go on to cast him in Edward Scis­sorhands eight years lat­er. Price died in 1993, the year before the release of Ed Wood, Bur­ton’s dra­ma­tized life of Edward D. Wood Jr. In that film, the rela­tion­ship between semi-retired hor­ror actor Bela Lugosi and the admir­ing schlock auteur Wood par­al­lels, in a way, that of the more endur­ing­ly suc­cess­ful Price and the much more com­pe­tent Bur­ton.

Vin­cent also drops hints of oth­er things to come in the Bur­toni­verse: Night­mare Before Christ­mas fans, for instance, should keep their eyes open for not one but two ear­ly appear­ances of that pic­ture’s bony cen­tral play­er Jack Skelling­ton. This demon­stra­tion of the con­ti­nu­ity of Bur­ton’s imag­i­na­tion under­scores that, as both his biggest fans and biggest crit­ics insist, he’s always lived in a world of his own — prob­a­bly since Vin­cent Mal­loy’s age, when teach­ers and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures might have described him in exact­ly the same way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Transcends Science Fiction

in Film, Sci Fi | August 14th, 2015

If you haven’t yet seen Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris but do plan on watch­ing it (find it online here), rest assured that there’s no wrong way to go about it. You can plunge, with­out prepa­ra­tion, right into its vivid, tor­ment­ed Sovi­et sci-fi world of fail­ing high tech­nol­o­gy, sub­lime nat­ur­al forces, and haunt­ing mem­o­ry. You can do no end of pre­lim­i­nary research on the film, its mak­er, and its mak­er’s strug­gle to adapt the orig­i­nal Stanis­law Lem nov­el to his own dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ty. Or you could just pre­cede your screen­ing with “Auteur in Space,” a brief exam­i­na­tion of Solaris by well-known cinephile video essay­ist kog­o­na­da.  It was made on behalf of The British Film Insti­tute.

“The very con­cept of genre is as cold as the tomb,” the nar­ra­tor quotes Tarkovsky as writ­ing, going on to cite his crit­i­cism of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001 “for being too enam­ored by the spec­ta­cle of the genre, for being too exot­ic, too immac­u­late.” From then on, the video demon­strates not just what Tarkovsky does to push Solaris out of the shad­ow of 2oo1, but also to break it out of the stan­dard forms of sci­ence fic­tion and, ulti­mate­ly, to free it from the stric­tures of genre itself — to occu­py that cat­e­go­ry we can only call Tarkovsky.

And so the Russ­ian auteur decides to make the space sta­tion on which most of the film takes place “look like a bro­ken-down old bus.” He decides “to spend five min­utes show­ing a man in an ordi­nary car trav­el­ing along the high­way, and less than two min­utes show­ing his main char­ac­ter trav­el­ing through space.” He gives in to his “occu­pa­tion with the ele­men­tal things of Earth.” He comes to “ques­tion the lim­its of sci­ence in engag­ing the mys­ter­ies of exis­tence,” ulti­mate­ly using Solaris to pit sci­ence against fic­tion, “each with their own weight and his­to­ry and pur­suit of truth and knowl­edge.”

If, indeed, you haven’t yet seen Solaris and watch this video essay, you’ll sure­ly find your­self no longer able to resist the temp­ta­tion to expe­ri­ence the film as soon as pos­si­ble. Maybe you’ll pop in the DVD or Blu-Ray, or bet­ter yet, maybe you’ll catch a the­atri­cal screen­ing. But if you under­stand­ably can’t wait for even a moment, you can watch it free online right now. And find oth­er Tarkovsky films free online here.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Watch Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Haunt­ing Vision of the Future

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Pres. Obama Releases a Free Playlist of 40 Songs for a Summer Day (Plus 6 Books on His Summer Reading List)

in Books, Music | August 14th, 2015

Like much of the rest of the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is get­ting some down­time in August — in his case spend­ing 16 days in Martha’s Vine­yard. From that nice get­away spot, POTUS has launched on Spo­ti­fy (down­load the free soft­ware here) two playlists of music — 20 songs for a hot sum­mer day, and anoth­er 20 for a nice sum­mer evening. You can play the songs below, and fur­ther down the page, find six books on his sum­mer vaca­tion read­ing list.

Day­time lis­ten­ing fea­tures songs from Bob Dylan, Bob Mar­ley, Cold­play, Howl­in’ Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Flo­rence and the Machine, and The Rolling Stones. For night­time, he’s serv­ing up John Coltrane, Van Mor­ri­son, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and more. The man has taste. And for sum­mer read­ing you can do worse than offer Jhumpa Lahiri, James Salter and Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert.

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Day”

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Night”

Oba­ma’s Sum­mer Read­ing List:

All That Is, by James Salter

All The Light We Can­not See, by Antho­ny Doerr

The Sixth Extinc­tion, by Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert

The Low­land, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wash­ing­ton: A Life, by Ron Cher­now

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!

One of World’s Oldest Books Printed in Multi-Color Now Opened & Digitized for the First Time

in Art, History | August 14th, 2015

Now free for the world to see on the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Dig­i­tal Library are some trea­sures from the library’s Chi­nese col­lec­tions. Fire up that time machine called the Inter­net, and you can start perus­ing:

• The ora­cle bones (pieces of ox shoul­der blades and tur­tle shells used for div­ina­tion in ancient Chi­na) which impor­tant­ly bear the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing exam­ples of Chi­nese writ­ing. They’re over three thou­sand years old.
• A dig­i­ti­za­tion of one of the world’s ear­li­est print­ed books (Mahapra­j馻-parami­ta-sutra or Per­fec­tion of Wis­dom), a Bud­dhist text dat­ing between 1127 and 1175.
• A 14th-cen­tu­ry ban­knote. Accord­ing to Cam­bridge, “Paper cur­ren­cy first appeared in Chi­na dur­ing the 7th cen­tu­ry, and was in wide cir­cu­la­tion by the 11th cen­tu­ry, 500 years before its first use in Europe.”

But what’s been burn­ing up the Inter­net dur­ing the past few days (large­ly thanks to Hyper­al­ler­gic) is the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the Man­u­al of Cal­lig­ra­phy and Paint­ing.

Made in 1633 in Nan­jing, the Man­u­al of Cal­lig­ra­phy and Paint­ing is note­wor­thy part­ly because “It is the ear­li­est and finest exam­ple of mul­ti-colour print­ing any­where in the world, com­pris­ing 138 paint­ings and sketch­es with asso­ci­at­ed texts by fifty dif­fer­ent artists and cal­lig­ra­phers.” And part­ly because “The bind­ing is so frag­ile, and the man­u­al so del­i­cate, that until it was dig­i­tized, we have nev­er been able to let any­one look through it or study it – despite its undoubt­ed impor­tance to schol­ars,” says Charles Aylmer, Head of the Chi­nese Depart­ment at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library.

Begin your dig­i­tal tour of the 388-page Man­u­al here (or see a few sam­ples above) and be among the first to lay eyes on it.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic/Book Patrol/Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library

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!

Get a Free Subscription to the Beta Version of The Great Courses Plus (Space Limited)

in Online Courses | August 13th, 2015

We’ve told you about the Great Cours­es Plus (now called Won­dri­um) before–a new video sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that lets you watch free cours­es (about 8,000 lec­tures in total) across a wide range of sub­jects, all taught by some of the best lec­tur­ers in the coun­try. The top­ics cov­er every­thing from His­to­ry, Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, and Eco­nom­ics, to Math, Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, Cook­ing, and Pho­tog­ra­phy. And you can binge-watch entire col­lege cours­es in a mat­ter of days by watch­ing videos on your TV, tablet, lap­top and smart phone, with the help of apps designed for Apple, Google Play, Kin­dle Fire, and Roku.

Inter­est­ed in try­ing out this ser­vice? Right now, the Great Cours­es Plus/Won­dri­um is offer­ing a spe­cial deal for Open Cul­ture read­ers. If you click here, and sign up for a free tri­al, you can use this ser­vice for 30 days … for free. And then, if you would like, you can con­tin­ue to sub­scribe and pay their nor­mal prices. If you have time on your hands, this is a great way to keep your mind engaged and stream what PC Mag­a­zine has called “an excel­lent library of col­lege-lev­el lec­tures.”

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you sign up for a free tri­al, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es Plus. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

The End of an Era: A Short Film About The Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at The New York Times (1978)

in Film, History, Technology | August 13th, 2015

This is usu­al­ly what hap­pens when I write a piece for Open Cul­ture: As I drink an over­priced cof­fee at my local cof­fee shop, I research a top­ic on the inter­net, write and edit an arti­cle on Microsoft Word and then copy and paste the whole thing into Word­Press. My edi­tor in Open Cul­ture’s gleam­ing inter­na­tion­al head­quar­ters up in Palo Alto gives it a look-over and then, with the push of a but­ton, pub­lish­es the arti­cle on the site.

It’s sober­ing to think what I casu­al­ly do over the course of a morn­ing would require the effort of dozens of peo­ple 40 years ago.

Until the 1970s, with the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­put­er type­set­ting, news­pa­pers were print­ed the same way for near­ly a cen­tu­ry. Lino­type machines would cast one line at a time from molten lead. Though an improve­ment from hand­set type, where print­ers would assem­ble lines of type one char­ac­ter at a time, lino­type still required numer­ous skilled print­ers to assem­ble each and every news­pa­per edi­tion.

The New York Times tran­si­tioned from that ven­er­at­ed pro­duc­tion method to com­put­er type­set­ting on Sun­day, July 2, 1978. David Loeb Weiss, a proof­read­er at the Times, doc­u­ment­ed this final day in the doc­u­men­tary Farewell — Etaoin Shrd­lu.

The title of the movie, by the way, comes from the first two lines of a printer’s key­board, which are arranged accord­ing to a letter’s fre­quen­cy of use. When a print­er typed “etaoin shrd­lu,” it meant that the line had a mis­take in it and should be dis­card­ed.

Watch­ing the movie, you get a sense of just how much work went into each page and how print­ers were skilled crafts­men. (You try spot­ting a typo on a page of upside down and back­wards type.) The film also cap­tures the furi­ous ener­gy and the cacoph­o­ny of clinks and clanks of the com­pos­ing room. You can see just how much phys­i­cal work was involved. After all, each page was print­ed off of a 40-pound plate made of lead.

The tone of the movie is under­stand­ably melan­choly. The work­ers are bid­ding farewell to a job that had exist­ed for decades. “All the knowl­edge I’ve acquired over my 26 years is all locked up in a lit­tle box now called a com­put­er,” notes one print­er. “And I think most jobs are going to end up the same way.” Some­one else wrote the fol­low­ing on the com­pos­ing room’s chalk­board. “The end of an era. Good while it last­ed. Cry­ing won’t help.”

You can watch the full doc­u­men­tary above. It will also be added to our list of 200 Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

H/T @Kirstin­But­ler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Hear What Hamlet, Richard III & King Lear Sounded Like in Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation

in English Language, Literature, Theatre | August 13th, 2015

As we high­light­ed a few days ago, recent find­ings by South African sci­en­tists sug­gest that William Shake­speare may have smoked pot, pos­si­bly com­pos­ing some of his cel­e­brat­ed plays while under the influ­ence. Their research is sure to spark con­tro­ver­sy among Shake­speare schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans alike, but it’s cer­tain­ly a more inter­est­ing con­tro­ver­sy than the tired debate about whether Shake­speare wrote his plays at all. Per­haps even more inter­est­ing than Shake­speare’s drug of choice for lovers of his lan­guage are debates about what Shake­speare’s plays might have sound­ed like to his orig­i­nal audi­ences. In oth­er words, high or not, what might Shake­speare, his actors, and his audi­ence have sound­ed like when they spoke the lan­guage we call Eng­lish.

Of course they called the lan­guage Eng­lish as well, but we might not rec­og­nize some words as such when hear­ing Shake­speare’s accent aloud. On the oth­er hand, it might be sur­pris­ing just how much the Bard’s orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion sounds like so many oth­er kinds of Eng­lish we know today.

In a post two years ago, we quot­ed Shake­speare­an actor, direc­tor, and writer Ben Crys­tal on Shake­speare’s orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion, which, he says, “has flecks of near­ly every region­al U.K. Eng­lish accent, and indeed Amer­i­can and in fact Aus­tralian, too.” Hear­ing Shake­speare’s Eng­lish spo­ken aloud, Crys­tal remarks, is hear­ing a sound that “reminds peo­ple of the accent of their home.” You can test this the­o­ry, and hear for your­self the sound of Shake­speare’s Eng­lish with the video and audio high­light­ed here, show­cas­ing Crys­tal’s per­for­mance of the plays in orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion (OP).

At the top, see Crys­tal recite an excerpt of Ham­let’s “to be or not to be” speech in a video pro­mo­tion for a 2011 Kick­starter cam­paign to fund a film ver­sion of Ham­let in OP. And above, we have two audio clips of Richard III and King Lear, respec­tive­ly, both from an OP Shake­speare CD Crys­tal record­ed with sev­er­al oth­er actors. Crys­tal came by his ver­sion of orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion hon­est­ly, and from a very rep­utable source, who also hap­pens to be his father, David. The elder Crys­tal is per­haps the most high­ly-regard­ed lin­guist and schol­ar of the Eng­lish lan­guage alive today, and in addi­tion to pub­lish­ing sev­er­al books both schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar, he has worked with the Globe The­atre on pro­duc­ing plays in OP since 1994. Learn more about Crys­tal’s process at our pre­vi­ous post on his work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

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