Archive for the 'history' Category

Picked up Names on the Land again tonight, apposite.

According to Paul Shaw, Dwiggins' first design was actually the transitional Boylston, but Metro was the first to be commercially released (and largely ignored).

Walter Murch discusses the role of Beethoven, Flaubert (and, less so, Thomas Edison) in the invention of cinema.

"The specific title of the class is "COM 230: History of Print Media." I'm calling the class "a history of print culture." The primary goal of this class is to teach students about the culture of "print media" in an era when that culture is being joined (and in some cases, overtaken) by a culture that we might variously call digital culture, online culture, or the culture of the web."

Brief summary of HTML through the years.

Podcast of historical oddities in short bursts.

"To improve access to scientific literature, we have created Botanicus, a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. We have been digitizing materials from our library since 1995, focusing primarily on beautifully illustrated volumes from our rare book collection." via karinalane.

"The last common ancestor of all life was not a free-living cell at all, but a porous rock riddled with bubbly iron-sulphur membranes that catalysed primordial biochemical reactions. Powered by hydrogen and proton gradients, this natural flow reactor filled up with organic chemicals, giving rise to proto-life that eventually broke out as the first living cells - not once but twice, giving rise to the bacteria and the archaea."

I think the Internet really came into its own in August 1998, with the birth of the Hamster Dance, which is older than Slashdot.

Literary history of extremely large numbers. That changed the world.

DoS document detailing the history of the Great Seal and its uses and associated protocols.

I, for one, was somewhat surprised to learn that subway ridership in NYC peaked in the late 40s.

"The Romans and ancient travelers in general did not use maps. They may have existed as specialty items in some of the libraries, but they were hard to copy and were not in general use. On the Roman road system, however, the traveller needed some idea of where he was going, how to get there, and how long it would take. The itinerarium filled this need. In origin it was simply a list of cities along a road. It was only a short step from lists to a master list. To sort out the lists, the Romans drew diagrams of parallel lines showing the branches of the roads. Parts of these were copied and sold on the streets. The very best featured symbols for cities, way stations, water courses, and so on. They cannot be considered maps, as they did not represent landforms, but they served a similar purpose much in the way schematic diagrams do for users of modern subway systems (e.g. the Tube map for users of the London Underground)."

Dazzle patterns.

Neolithic Snopes.

Essay on the use of technology among Amish communities.

Everything old is new again. "There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day."

I've been meaning to rent/buy/watch this for a while now. and it's on Pitchfork.tv for the next week. Now if they would just post Season 4 of House. I swear I could watch it all in a week, pitchfork!

"The Writing on the Wall project (1991-1993) took place in Berlin’s former Jewish quarter, the Scheunenviertel neighborhood. There Attie projected slides made from pre-Holocaust photographs of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents and shops in the same (or sometimes nearby) locations where the original images were taken."