foggy learning
The fax machine was first invented in the 1970’s, right? No – an analogue version called the telautograph was invented in 1887, and was still going strong until the electronic fax, mostly in hospitals and law offices. The user wrote in longhand onto a sheet, and a slave pen inked a copy elsewhere.
An early advocate of the telautograph in the British Library has this wonderful description of a foggy day in the Reading Room:
“The services of electricity will be most cordially acknowledged by those who best remember the paralysis of literary work, alike official and private, engendered by a fog at the British Museum, and in particular recall the appearance of the Reading Room, a Byzantine “tower of darkness,” with a lantern dimly burning in the centre, the windows presenting the appearance of slate, and dubious figures gliding or stumbling through the gloom – attendants brought in from the library to take care that the handful of discontented readers did not profit by the opportunity to steal the books. All this nuisance has been abolished by the electric light, which not only renders the Reading Room available for the public on dark days, but allows the ordinary work of the Museum to be carried on in all departments; the same may be said of all other libraries. The beautiful, potent, and above all safe electric ray is an advantage to all, and in dark days a passage from death unto life for those libraries where, as in the Museum, gas has been proscribed on account of its danger and its injurious effects upon books.”
Found here by Library Link of the Day.
January 23rd, 2004 at 8:01 am
Interesting.
When I went to sea in the 70s there was a weather FAX machine that had a stylus at the end of a rotating arm, and this pen was connected to a variable voltage. As the appropriate point came under the stylus the voltage would sort of burn the paper according to the black and white density of the oringal dot. The point was that the *timing* was generated by the steadily rotating stylus.
This idea of timing by rotating part was also used in early depth sounders too. I wonder where else.
January 23rd, 2004 at 12:14 pm
Anyone interested in gadgets and stuff to see how they actually work (as opposed to being really cool when you play with them on the tram) might like to connect with Alan’s blog. He does have a strong desire to dismantle the ABC like a mantle clock and put it back together with a few bits left over…
I am sure it would work better. The question is: which bits?