e Age Chin. Berkeley : s. In W. Senn er (Ed.). owledge an d Society: esentation in scientific History of Writing Technologies The origins of writing Brian Gabrial into. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada brary. Wooley's "Excavations

.iblishers Association. Press. Despite Socrates' caution that writing gave the "appearance of wisdom instead of 055. ;e Un iversity Press. wisdom itself" (Plato, 1988, para. 275), humans have always desired means and media to preserve and reproduce expressions of their culture and history (H. Martin, 1988). 98(5600), 1984- 1988. History sh ow s that different cultures developed technologies to create these means ria Pres s. (hardware ) and media (software) to accommodate their socioeconomic needs and to Feri oli. E. Fiandra, extend knowledge (Fang, 1997), or, as David Sholle (2002) puts it about technologies, Ministero per i beni th ey "do not Simply fulfill a function in meeting natura l needs, but rather their develop­ ment is caugh t up in the social construction of needs" (p. 7). The history of w riting tech­ nologies reveals a past, containing stories of competition and secrecy, of stability and portability, of resistance and acceptance, and of refinement and use . Although scientific observation often initiated changes in writing technologies, others appeared, as it so ipublish sd doctoral often happens, by sheer luck. Furthermore, some changes evolved slowly whereas others appeared rapidly. The writing stylus, for example, has kept a basic form for cen­ 98(5600). Retri eved turies, and the printing press changed little in appearance from Guttenberg's ori ginal 15th-century de sign until the early 19th centu ry. As electricity's use and the development of electronics arrived, changes in technologies-in both form and function-accelerated. (Ed.), Kinatiutu sha This chapter briefly explores significant developments in writing technologies that TelAviv University, enabled humans to record the important, as well as th e mundane, facts about their lives, and it places th ose developments into three somewhat permeable cate go ries: manual, he ancient Near East mechanical, and electrical/electronic technologies. Oxford University

MANUAL TECHNOLOGIES

Long before Socrates' warning about writing, ancient civilizations were creating permanent record s on stone and clay. Likely, the first writing hardware was a human finger dipped in plant juice or animal blood (Lambrou, 1989) and the first writing software a bone, a shell, or tree bark (Coulmas, 1996). Certainly, early hunter societies used animal hides for clothing, shel­ ter, and writing. Still, no one knows with complete certainty who ingeniously realized some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, China, or Egypt (H. Martin, 1988) that permanent records could be etched, stamped, or painted onto available materials. Many of these first tran­ scriptions were likely a simple record-keeping shorthand useful for busin ss transactions (D. Baron, 1999). In ancient Mesopotamia's fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the abundance of clay and the development of a refined stylus with a wedge-shaped tip that made mak e fairly uniform triangular impressions led to cuneiform 's dev elopment (Lambrou, 1989; Fang, 1997). These crude technologies were significant advances because they provided the first means and medium of creating and maintaining a standardized communication

23 24 GABRIAL

sys tem tha t preserved and spread meaningful examples of Meso potamian culture (H. Martin, Just as writing med 1988), such as the ep ic story of the Babylonian King Gilgamesh, a story that ancient scribes writers had already IT preserved on clay about 4,000 years ago (Gilgamesh, 1996/ 1999). impressions to one tha In anc ient Egyp t, artisans working along the N ile River serendipitously found a new made suitable writing medium both ligh ter and cer tainly more portable than clay. Although lacking clay's dura­ lines with simple ink bility, papyrus, fashioned from certain riv er reeds, split, and hammered together, proved Because of this, scribe rela tively easy to m anufacture. Its popularity turned Egypt into a papyru s mill for other even among Pompeii': civiliza tions, such as the Greek s and the Romans, who could easily scroll and tra nsport ered that a bird feathe importan t documents (Coulmas, 1996). Unfortunately, pap yrus's lack of durability means and its eventual don today that few scrolls survived into the modern era (Fang, 1997). This significan t disadvan­ Like reeds, quills hav tage, combined with Egyp t's production monopoly, likely enc our aged th e literate cultures Lambrou, 1997). By th: I of Gree ce and Rom e to make greater use of an alre ady available and lasting medium made available. Although q from sheepskins. Like papyrus, parchment could be produced relatively cheaply, scrolled prevent messy ink sp easily, and transported from points of origin; but unlike papyrus, parchmen t did not cru m­ when, after sev era l tri ble with age and could be reused . Pa rchment's obvious technological ad vantages led to the 1883 (Lambrou. 1997) medium's increased use , which eclipsed that of papyrus, and led to parchment becoming 1888, but it coul d only the preferred writing medium of both the ancient and the me dieval worlds (Coulmas, Fifty-five years later, t 1996). Because both sides of a parchment page cou ld be used, the dev elopment of the mod­ ier printer'S ink, sma ll ern book became possible. For example, the early Christian Gospels w ere fashioned as a point pen, and Biro's I Roma n codex, a book prototype that used cu t parchment sheets bound be tween wooden 2000). Marcel Bich, a I covers (Fang, 1997; Petroski, 1990). By the second century BCE, the Gree ks and Romans pany tha t bears his ns we re using parchment or vellum, a similar material m ade from calfskin. see-thro ugh, crystal vr I Although parchmen t and papyru s cer tainly su ited th e needs of their cul tures, their sig­ Another stylus iIU'\( I I nificance as w riting media would never surpass tha t of paper, whose origins began in popular in Europe an ancient China. There writers had already experimented with diverse media such as bones Petroski (1990) puts it, and bamboo, silk and ivory, and de veloped permanent inks made from soot, lam p oil, atively clean and smu musk, and the gelatin of donkey skin or from berries or other plants (Bellis, 1997/2006; Latin's pencil/urn, a th Carter, 1955/1995). However, in 105 CE, Tsai Lun . a high-ranking eunuch in the Han pencils were cru de an imperial court, w isely recorded for the firs t tim e that plant and animal fibers, such as exposed wri ters to lea mulberry or bamboo, could be separated to produce the new writing medium-paper cil makers developed (Carter, 1955/1995; "The Am azing History of Paper," 2001). Because paper was thin, with clay, which was ( portable, and durable, it became popular among Chinese elit s who wa nted its manufac­ In the 19th century, th. turing process kept secret (Coulmas, 1996; Fang, 1997; Weaver, 1937), For centuries, then, in Americ a, Henr y D this ne w technology rem ained in China until fina lly sp reading to Kore a and Jap an by the became a master penc seventh century and a cen tury later to Arab traders, who introduced the me dium to makers and the moder Eur opeans (Carter, 1955/ 1995). Evidence in the form of old manuscripts on paperlike, cot­ kept their plumbago ton-based material indicates that Europeans were using the medium as early as 1050 mous approval. For e> (Carter, 1955/ 1995; Martin, 2003). As for paper 's inventor, Ts'ai Lun, he later killed himself attached to pencils V\ after becoming involved w ith imperial court intrigues. properly. Paper, papyrus, and parchment were not the only writing me dia used to keep recor ds. Certainly, writing Elsewhere anothe r portable and cheap, but differe nt medium barely survived the European storage and distributic conquest of South America. The Incan civilizat ion developed khipu (or quipu), which used cenhlrY BCE (Martin, strings tied into sequences of knots to maintain records. For many years, archaeologists have Romans had a pos tal : assumed these strings and kno ts could be a method of business record keeping, and recent decree" in official diUI scholarship now suggests khipu could be a binary system of communi cation strings, similar These scribes, who p to a computer language, that, if decoded completely, might unlock the secrets of Inca civiliza­ essential hardware of tion before the Spanish arrived (Urton, 2003; Wilford, 2003). Because no "Rosetta stone" with the Greeks in the exists to decode the surviving pieces of this complex of kn ots and strings, they remain mys­ (Mumby, 1930). Dur in terious mementos of Spanish conquest of the New World . Elsew here in the Americas, other duced lasting, beautifu pre-Columbian records stored on the inner bark of certain trees did not survive the Spanish ~roducers of written tl conquest. One 16th-century missionary wrote of finding some early "literature" of the r.l un:s became vestige: Yucatan peoples: "We found a great number of books written with their characters, and lizations built libraries because they contained nothin g bu t superstitions and falsehoods about the devil, we bur ned The Greek Ptolomies 1 them all" (Fang, 1997, p. 7). Contained pos sibly 40, -- - 2 . HI STO RY O F WRIT ING TECHNOLOGlES 25 in culture (H. Martin, Just as writing media (software) evo lved, so, too, ? id their hardware',Greek and R~man y that ancient scribes riters had alrea dy modified the stylus from a device used to make triangular cuneiform ~pressions to one ~ at could hold ink for w riting on papyrus or parchment. Initially, re ~d s itou sly found a new ade suitable wntmg Implemen ts because the y could be tnmmed to make broad or fme lacking clay's dura­ ~es with simple in ks from na tive plants or soot, but reed brushes wo re ou t quickly. red toge ther, proved Because of this, scribes tu rn ed to other materials such as animal horns and bones, and, pyrus mill for other even among Pompeii's ru ins metal pe ns have been found. At some point, so meone discov­ scroll an d transport ered that a bird feather held in k, and, this led to the quill 's fashionable use around 500 CE of durability me an s and its eventual do minance as th e stylus of cho ice for more than a thousand ye ars. igni fican t d isadvan­ Like reeds , qu ills have natural lim itati on s and need cons tan t replacement (Fang, 1989; the literate cultu res Lambrou, 1997). By the 18th century, ar tisans, us ing th e quill's design, mad e m etal in k pens sting me dium made available. Althoug h quills, pens, an d ink we re portable, w riters needed to be vigi lan t to ely cheaply, scrolled prevent messy ink sp ills. In 1883, inventor Lewis ~d s on W~te rrnan solved this.problem unent did not crum­ when, after sev era l tries with various in ks, he devised the first practical fountain pen m dvantages led to the 1883 (Larnbrou, 1997). An American, J. J. Loud, inv ented a version of a ba llpoint pe n in archmen t becoming 1888, but it could only make marks on roug h surfaces (see Albus, Kras, & Woodham, 2000). I wo rlds (Co ulmas, Fifty-five years later, the H ungarian journalist Laslo Josef Biro, exp erimenting wi th he av­ op m ent of the m od­ ier printer's ink, sm all ball bearings, and the fou nt ain pen con cept, p~te n t e d the first ball­ vere fashioned as a point pen, and Biro's na me ",,:o uld becom e sy no nymous fO,r the ballpomt pen (Albus et aI., .d between wooden 2000). Marcel Bich, a French Ink m aker, Improved on BIro s des ign and founded the com­ ;reeks an d Roman s pany that bears his na me, sans h. Bich introduced the Bic pen in 1950 and its ubiquitous n. see-thro ug h, crystal version in 1958 (se e http:/ / ww w.Bicw orld.com). r cultures, th eir sig ­ Another stylus innovation appeared about th e same tim e as me tal-tipped pens became 3e origins began in popular in Europe and Am erica. The m od ern wooden pencil, as pencil his torian Henr y redia such as bones Petroski (1990) puts it, is a "d ream inv entio n" because it "needed no liquid ink ," was "rel ­ 'om soo t, lamp oil, atively clean and smudge-proof," and was "erasable" (pp. 30-36). The wo rd comes from (Bellis, 1997/2006; Latin's pencil/urn, a thin pa intbrush the Roman s thought early pencils rese mbled. Ear ly nmuch in the H an pencils we re cru de and potentially lethal devices that used lead not encased in wood and mal fibers, such as exposed w riters to lead p oisoning or plumbism, as it wa s called . By the 18th century, p en­ 19 me dium- paper cil makers developed a more prudent penc il-making recipe that combined safer graphite ;e paper was thin, with clay, w hich was cooked and extrude d into pieces cut an d glued into wooden frames. anted its manufac­ In the 19th cen tu ry, th e best graphi te or plumbago originated in Borrowdale, Fngland, and, :;or cen turies, then, in America, Henry David Thoreau, a man bette r known for his stay at Walden Pond, a and Japan by the became a master penci l maker himself (Baron, 1999). Like the firs t, ancient Ch inese paper ed the m edium to ma kers an d the mo d ern computer software develop ers, 19th-century pencil manufactur ers 5 on pa perlike, cot­ kept their plumbago recipes secret. Not all pencil advancements, how ever, won unani­ 1 as ea rly as 1050 mous approval. For example, some early 20th-centur y schoolteachers warned th at erasers later killed himself atta ched to pencils would encourage students to forg et how to prepare their less on s properly. ed to keep records. Certainly, w rit ing technology's im provements led to greater needs for information -ived the European stor age and distribution. As to distribution, the Chinese created a postal sys tem by the 10th [uipu), which used cen tur y BCE (Martin, 2003) and sent official news throughout the d ynastic em pire. The irchaeologists ha ve Romans ha d a postal ser vice by the fourth cen tury CE (Fang, 1997) and p osted "news by :eeping, and recent decree" in official diurnals, which busy slave scrib es copi ed for subscribers (Mar tin, 1988). ion strings , sim ilar These scribes, who produced ma nuscript s quickly and relatively cheaply, became the .ets of Inca civiliza ­ essential hardware of a flourishing slave scribe-to-buyer publishing in dustry that began 10 "Rosetta stone" with the Greeks in th e fifth century BCE an d en ded a thousand years lat er when Rome fell , they remain mys­ (Mumby, 1930). During the Middle Ages, religio us monks sitting in their scriptoriums pro­ he Ame ricas, other duced lasting, beautiful w orks of calligraphic art and replaced the slave scribe as the m ajor urvive the Spanish producers of w ritten text (Kub ler, 1927). As Europe entered th e Renai ssance, these scripto­ "litera ture" of the riums beca me ves tiges of the past (Hobson, 1970). As for storage, nearl y all ancie nt civi ­ .ir characters, and lizations built libraries to house w ritt en w orks (Fan g, 1997; Khurshodov, 2001; Jacob, 2002), e devil, we burned The Gre ek Ptolomies built the Great Library at Alexa ndria in the third cen tury BCE that contained possibly 40,000 volumes (Fang, 1997; H obson, 1970). Some disp ute exists ab out 2 6 GABRIAL w ho even tua lly destroyed the library in the fifth century CE, bu t it may have been the printing teclmole Bish op of Alexandria 's or der to de stroy pagan temples th at led to the library's eventual greatly expandec des truction. Centuries later, a forgetful medieval book borrow er might face exco mmunica­ replaced the mar tion for failing to re turn an overd ue monastery manuscript (Mumby, 1930). the modem title j Th e Chinese, who ha d already bested Europea ns in the development of ink, paper, and Howe ver, cerr postal systems, also advan ced a printing technology called xy log raphy, which eventually ogy occurred. StE made mass com munication possib le. Xylography's impo rtance cannot be understate d consta nt shortag. because it was the "in vention of prin ting" (Carter, 1955/1995), but pinpointing an exact 1997). In 1803, the date for its origin may be impossible because, as historian Thomas Francis Carter notes, its 1927). Other char evolution "was so gradua l as to be almost imperceptible" (p. 41). Ano the r histori an, Joseph a shee t of pap er N eed ham (1965a), asserts xylography or block printing star ted aro und 880 CE, adding that mass-produced, ] China's massive im perial "civil examination sys tem" spurred the technique's use. Officials offset lithograph­ likely understood that the process, which transferred w hol e pictures and id eogr aphic text ua lly replaced the fro m a carve d block onto a permanent surface (Coul mas, 1996), mi ght strengthen the a I'S (Fang, 1997). central govemment's control by easily re-creating govemment-approved texts for distribution By a rare coin: (N eedham, 1965b). The oldest surviving printed book, however, is a ninth-century CE reli­ greater av ailabilii gious text called the The Diamond Sutra that presents Bud dha's discour ses on the "subject ated by the Bla. of non-existen ce of all things" (Ca rter, 1955 /1995, P: 56; see also Fang, 1997; Kubler, 1927). increased a de ma Eventually spreading to Europe by the 12th centur y CE, xylog raphy's use is evide nt on tury, the French n 15th-century Vene tian playing cards (Martin, 2003). abo ut certain wa : resembling papel parchment woulc w ith Reaumur's i MECHANICAL TECHNOLOG IES (Hunter, 1930). In duced paper in co Although manual writing technolo gies, notably the pencil, p en, and paper, remain in com­ England's Fourdr mon use, they do not mass-produce information efficien tly. Mec hanical p rinting technolo­ their name and ru gies made that po ssible. Of tho se mechanic al technologies, the printing press and Alth ough the t a sys tem of moveable type, an idea the Chinese first developed but made little use of 19th centu ry, the J (Carter, 1955/1995; Gern et, 1996), tra nsformed the literate w orl d in the West . Johannes ~e c eive d a queen': Gutenberg'S letter press was a simple machine tha t resembled in form the basic wine ­ mg of letters sins making press. Th ou gh history is murky abo ut w he ther the German go ldsmith kn ew much Bliven, 1954). In E about China's bl ock printing, Gutenberg deserves credit for revolutioni zing printing tech­ ma chines various no logy by fashioni ng individual, reusabl e letters and se tting them into a wooden frame, typographer (Lu nd thus enabling any printer to duplicate a printed page as m any times as desire d (Fang , mechanic al w ays 1997). His system of moveable typ e also made infinitely more sense in Europe, w hos e typew riters paSSE printed languages, based on the Roman alphabet, required relatively few cha rac ters, ve r­ Christopher Lath, sus in China, which, in Gernet's (1996) wo rds, w as "a world [in] one w hose riches was pre­ developed an up cisely the wea lth and di versit y of the signs used for writing " (p. 335). Gutenberg also Sholes gave the m developed a suitable printer'S in k, a combination of linseed oil and soot, w hich adhered keyboa rd layou t, 1 cleanly to a surface and made printing p oss ible on both sides of a page (Kubler, 1927). ists to press wi th From about 1450 to 1455, Gutenberg and six workers completed 100 Bibles w ith 42 lines ot~e r design flaw per page, each requiring an estim ated 300 she epskins to produce (Fang, 1997). Of the first WrIter lost the r Gutenbe rg Bibles, 30 were on parchment; the others were printed on paper. Like past inno­ machine. This rna. vators, Gutenberg de sired secrecy but could not keep the kn ow ledge of his letterpress and became a selling J= moveabl e-type system from reachi ng most of Europe by cen tury's end, including England, ~se mcreased, ma where the printer William Caxton set up a printing press in 1476 (Mumby, 1930). holes is to have c Books, especially the Bible and other sacre d writings-now mass-prod uce d in the com­ to Work so hard ~ mon language or vernacular-prompted great social change in Western Europe and help ed ~urs chwe ll , 20ci1 bre ak the Roman Catho lic Church's mon op oly on the interpreta tion of importan t Christian LIsa Gitelman arg l texts (Curran, 2002; Eisens tein, 1983). Despite the Roman Catho lic Church's reactionary Tthhu rschwelJ . sirrui '1 efforts ag ains t w hat it viewe d as heresies, such as the execution of printers like William l e typ ewriter and Tyndale, who produce d the firs t Eng lish Bible in 1526, the Church could not prevent the to his bro ther on 1 (reprmted ;M C Reform ation from spreading thr oughout Europe (Fang, 1997; Mu mb y, 1930). Letterpress U l urn 2 . HI STO RY O F W RIT ING TECHNOLO GIES 27 it may h ave been the printing technology created as well two powerful gro ups, the pr inters and stationers and the library's eventual area tly expanded the litera te class (Curran, 2002; Lebvre & Martin, 1984). The printed book ht face excommunica­ ~ep laced the manuscripts once done by monks and created a need for such innovations as 1, 1930). the modern title pa ge and improved book-binding techniques (Mumby, 1930). lent of ink, paper, and However, centur ies passed befo re the first trul y significant change in printing technol­ ?hy, which eventually ogy occurred. Stereotyping-a term coine d in the late 18th cen tury-elimina ted lead type's mnot be understated cons tan t shortage by crea ting an imp ression of a type-set page for use and reuse (Fang , pinpointing an exac t 1997). In 1803, th e Earl of Stanhope received one of the first patents for this process (Kubler, rancis Carter notes, its 1927). Other changes, such as Friedrich Koenig's steam p ress tha t pr inted on bo th sides of other historian, Joseph a sheet of paper an d Rich ard Hoe's faster, rotary cylinder press, us hered in a new age of id 880 CE, adding that mass-produced, printed text. These and later press technologies, such as lithography and hniques use. Officials offset lithography, which transferred a picture of the printed page ont o a metal plate, grad­ 3 and ideographic text ually rep laced the labor-intensive letterpress and relegated it to arcane and artisan endeav­ might strengthen the ors (Fang, 1997). sd texts for distribution By a rare coincidence, Gutenberg's printing press appeared almost concurren tly w ith a ninth-century CE reli­ grea ter availability of pap er, which was a result of a short-lived surplus of clo th rags cre­ ourses on the "s ubjec t ated by the Black Death that had ravaged Europe's population . Still, printing only s. 1997; Kub ler, 1927). increased a de mand for paper, and techn ology needed to keep pace. In the early 18th cen­ .1Y'S use is evident on tury, the French naturalist and physicist Rene de Reaumur made an imp ortant observation about certain wasps' nests, which he noted were made from a pasty wood like substance resemb ling paper. Printing's reliance on expensive, handmade paper from cloth rags or parchment w ould come to an end when, fina lly, decades later, a Germ an cleric working wi th Rea umur's ideas crea ted paper from wood pulp, a cheap and abundant paper source (Hun ter, 1930). In late 18th-century France, Nicholas Robert built a machine that mass-pro­ duced paper in a continuo us sheet cut to appropriate lengths, and across the Channel, paper, rema in in com­ Englan d's Fourdrinier bro thers financed refinement of Robert's machine that now bears ical pr inting technolo­ their name an d not Robert's. o prin ting p ress and Although the typewriter ushere d in portable mechanica l printing technology during the out made little use of 19th century, the machine's conceptualization originated de cades earlier when Henry Mill In the West. Johannes received a queen's patent for "an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcrib­ form the basic wine­ ing of letters singly or progressively one after ano ther" in 1714 (Adler, 1973, pp. 47-48; soldsmith knew much Bliven, 1954). In subsequent decades, inventors tink ered with other "proto" type-writing .onizing printing tech­ machines variously called the mac hine tadrfgraphique, universal compositor, and mechanical into a wo oden frame, typographer (Lundmark, 2002). Some resembled small pianos, and mo st were considered mes as desired (Fang, mechanical wa ys to help th e blind "read" printed pages. Although many of these early nse in Eur ope, whose typewriters passed into his tory, the "Sholes and Glidden Type Writer" made history. ly few characters, ver­ Christopher Latham Sholes and his partners, working for the Remington gun company, whose riches was p re­ develop ed an upstrike machine that sold for $125 (Ci telman, 1999; Lundmark, 2002). 335). Gutenberg also Sholes gave the machine its name and chose its easil y memorized but inefficient QWERTY 1soot, which adhered keyboard layo ut, which prevented too-qu ick typ ists from jamming the keys by forcing typ­ 3. page (Kub ler, 1927). ists to press wi th weaker fingers the most frequently used letters. Because the mac hine's )0 Bibles with 42 lines other design flaw prevented the typist from see ing the page while typing, the Sho les type­ ang, 1997). Of the first wri ter lost the mar keting edge to its major competitor, Underwood's "fron tstri ke" paper. Like past inn o­ m achine. This machine solved the "typing blind" problem in 1894, and typing "visibility" oof his letterp ress and became a sellin g po int with the public and with business. As the typewriter 's commercial id, including England, use increased, many women found they could find work outside the h ome. About this lumby, 1930). Sho les is to have said, "I do feel I h ave done something for women who have always had -produced in the com­ to work so hard. This will enable the m to more easily earn a living" (Fang, 1997, p . 59; .rn Euro pe and helped Thursc hwell, 2001). The machine also changed composition, as media technology scho lar of important Christian Lisa Gitelman argued, by separating the author from the text during its crea tion. Pame la : Church's reactionary Thurschwell similarly observes tha t in timac y is mediated through "teletechnologies" like f printers like William the typ ewr iter and the telegraph. Mark Twain, one first n otable au thor-typist, typed a note could no t prevent the to his brother on his Remington tha t said it "piles an awful stack of words on one page" lby; 1930). Letterpress (reprinted in Current, 1954, p. 72). To his publisher, Twain subm itted th e first typewritten 28 Gf\ B RIA I .

manuscript, Life on the Mississippi (Lundmark, 2002). Althou gh some technologies like the you may trans typewriter increased office jobs, others like the mimeograph machine eliminated them.The rival systems first mimeograph machine ma de in 1884 by Chicago inventor Albe rt B. Dick , qu ickly Guglielmo Mi duplicated office documents while eliminating the need for office copyists or scriveners wireless, elech who had here tofore rep licated them ("Antique Copying Machines," 2006). Other electr In his book Power of the Written Word, Alfred Bums (1989) called the years from 1815 to their way intc 1914 the "Golden Age " of the printed word . Clea rly, new printing and paper-making tech­ Bain, pa tentee nologies created a new information age by making the printed w ord cheaper an d more impulses on SF available to a mass 19th-century audience. As a result, the publishing industry's grow th American invs exploded along with a de mand for popular literature and newsp apers, especially the penny 1800s (Adler, press (Fan g, 1997). The pe nny press era, w hich began with Benjamin Day's I ew York Sun resulted in the in 1833 and James Gordon Bennett 's New Yo rk Herald in 1835, created a news media for the patent attornej masses. The rise of the penny newspapers, which stressed scandal and human interest paper to devel stories over those of commercia l or partisan natures (Fang, 1997), led to the crea tion of the dry writing. C modem newsroom that separated prin ters from editors. New ma ss-communication tech­ and place of h nologies we re determining newspaper content as well, leading to wha t press historian York, a compar Donald Brazeal (2003) called the perishability of news. friendly ph oto Am erican and European pos tal systems also improved to keep pace with burgeoning 1999-2006). FOI amounts of newspapers, business, an d pe rsonal correspon dence for de livery. In Am erica, photocopy of a the Continental Congress created the future US. postal system by de creeing "that a line of are the same aE posts be appoin ted under the di rection of the Postmaster General from Falmouth in New As a piece 0 Eng land to Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he [sic] shall think fit" ("Th e lutionary. Duri Postal Service Begins, 1999-2006). In 1860, demand for fast de livery of news and correspon­ 17th century, t dence from east to west led to the creation of the Pony Express (Fang, 1997), which the calculator (McI transcontinental railroad and telegraph abru ptly turned into a romantic 19th-century arti­ mechanical COl fact. In England, sending corresp ondence became simpler and more reliable as the country 2000). In the la refined its p ostal system in the 1800s (N . Baron, 2000). In 1874, an in ternationa l agreement used punch cat reached in Berne, Switzerland, created the Universal Pos tal Union, which settled differences marlY mill W Ol amo ng nations rega rding postal rates. Although not a writing technology per se, the sim ple thus, became p postage sta mp would symbolize America's success in quickly distributing communication. as the Ludditet As the Industrial Age propelled the wo rld through the 19th cen tu ry, which hi storian Henri­ "Analytical En Jean Ma rtin (1988) called the "cent ury of the commun ication revolution " (p.480), it ushered machine to tab in the electrical and electronic age in mass-communication technology. "The Jacquard: Scientists we puter, the ENI} ballisn- firing ti ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES (Meadow 1998 entire roa'm wit) In some respects, the history of electrical and electronic w riting technologies is a story of to keep from 0" technology catching up to science. The ancient Greeks and the scientists of the Enlightenment, neede d full-tim for example, experimented with and we re fascinated by electromagnetism ("A Ridiculously (McCarmey, 19S Brief History " 1999). Yet the idea that ene rgy cou ld be harnessed for communication tha t used binary did not happen until 1843 when Cha rles Wheatstone and William ooke built the first elec­ Further com] trical telegraph line, which paralleled England's Great Western Railroad (Fang, 1997). The 2001) and solid telegraph mad e communication instant over long distances an d turned electricity int o a com­ grated circuit an mon carrier of communication (H. Martin, 1988). A me tho d to standardize these electrical 1940s, improver im pulses into a universally accepted communication sy: tem developed in Am erica when ?f data, and, by ' Sam ue l B. Morse perfected his codes of dots and dashes. Morse, after observing printers at In dat a-processi work and noting their efficient arr angement of lette rs, realized that the most commonly used start, the news . letters should become the most easily memorized codes (Winston, 1998).With US. government used a UNIVAC fun ding, Morse established the first U S. telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington, DC 1997). However and sent along that wire his famou s "What ha th God wrought?" message to assistant Alfred tual shift about 'I Vail on May 24, 1844. Later th at ye ar, Morse warn ed Vail of the telegraph's misuse and In 1964, Interr ways of hi3.I1dlin cautioned Vail to "be especially careful no t to give a pa rtisan character to any information . ! 2 HIS TORY OF WRITING TECHNOLOGIES 29

; technologies like the you may transmit" ("Sam uel F. B. Morse Preview," 1997). Morse code eventually pushed all ,eliminated them. The rival sys tems into the footno tes of communi cation history. By the 19th century's end, bert B. Dick, quickly Guglielmo Marconi's successful experiments on England's Salisbury Plains proved that copyists or scriveners wireless, electrical communication was also possible (Fang, 1997). 2006). Other electrica l writing technologies emerged in the 19th and 20th cen turies and found he years from 1815 to their wa y into the modern business office. One of Morse's chief competitors, Alexander rd paper-making tech­ Bain, paten ted in 1843 the first facsimile machine that re-created images with electric .rd cheaper and more impulses on specially treated paper (Bellis, 2006; Fang, 1997; Meadow, 1998), and the great .ng indus try 's growth American inventor Thomas Edison patented the first elec tric typew riter by the end of the ;, especially the penny 1800s (Adler, 1973). Later, a combination of photoconductivity an d human ingenuity l Day's New York Sun resu lted in the first photocopier. In Astoria, New York, Chester Carlson, a shy soft-spoken a news me dia for the patent attorne y, along wi th his assistan t experimen ted wi th India ink, a lightbulb, and wa x 1 and human interest paper to develop a feasib le process that Carlson called xerography, which in Greek meant I to the crea tion of th e dry wr iting. Carlson, whose firs t photocopy read "10-22-38 ASTORIA," signifying the date -cornm un ication tech ­ and place of his succe ss, finally sold the idea to the Haloid Company of Rochester, Ne w what press historian York, a company that becam e better known as the Xerox Corporation. It sold the first offi ce­ friendly photocopier, the Xerox 914, in 1959 (Fang, 1997; "Making Copies," 2004; Xerox, race w ith burgeoning 1999-2006). For many office workers, to Xerox is an infinitive defined as the act of making a delivery. In America, photocop y of a printed page. The same principles underlying Carlson's early pho tocop ier creeing "that a line of are the same as those ap plied later to modern facsimile machin es and laser printers. om Falmouth in New As a piece of writing technology, the computer's use wa s more evolu tionary than revo­ I shall think fit" ("The lutionary. Dur ing th e Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci envision ed a computer, and, in the :new s and correspon­ 17th century, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal created an eight-digit mechanical m g, 1997), which the calculator (McCartney, 1999). By the Industria l Age, the first practical comput ers w ere ntic 19th-centu ry arti­ mechanical contraptions made for business and government use (Freiberger & Swaine, 'eliabl e as the coun try 2000). In the late 1700s, the Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacq uard designed a machine that :ernational agreement used p unc h cards to repeat intricate wo ven patterns. Because the machine also eliminated ich settled differences man y mill worker jobs, some incensed workers destroyed these Jacquard 's loo ms and, logy perse, the simple thus, became participants in the anti-industrialization, an titechnology movem en t known rtin g communi cation. as the Luddites. In 1833, Ch arles Babbage adapted a similar punch card method for his rhich his torian Henri­ "Analytical Engine" and , by the centur y's end, Herman Hollerith built a punch card in" (p.480), it ushered machine to tabulate the 1890 Ll.S. census in the remarkab le span of 6 weeks (Fang, 1997; 'I. "TI1e Jacqu ard Loom," 2001-2003; McCar tney, 1999). Scientists working at the University of Pennsylvania built the first truly electronic com­ pu ter, the ENIAC- shor t for electronic n umerical integrator and computer-to compute ballistic firing tables th at required relati vely simple decimal-based mathematical operations G IES (Mead ow, 1998; Winston, 1998). The m assive device weighed some 30 ton s, took up an entire room wi th its nearly 19,000 vacuum tubes, and required a cool, constant stream of air nologies is a sto ry of to keep from ove rheating. ENIAC and oth er early, similar computers were not digi tal and of the Enlightenment, needed full-time staffs to rewire hardware to enab le the machin es to handle new functions tism ("A Ridiculously (McCartney, 1999; Stern, 1981). In 1938, William Hewitt and David Packard built a computer [ for communi cation that used binary code in a Palo Alto, Califo rnia, garage ("The Digital Centu ry," 1999). .ke buil t the first elec­ Fur ther computer refinements su ch as random access memory in 1957 (Khurshcdov, rad (Fang, 1997). The 2001) and solid-state transistor teclmology made computers smaller and faster. The inte­ electricity into a com­ grated circuit and the microchip further incre ased speed and red uced size. Begirming in the ardize these electrical 1940s, improvements in magnetic storage meant comp uters could ma intain larger amounts led in America when of data, and, by the 1970s, hard dis k drives resembling washing machines became common observing printers at in data-processing departments m anaging pa yro ll and other bu siness functions . From the most commonly used start, the news media recognized the compu ter 's po ten tial, and, for example, CBS News With us government used a UNIVAC compu ter to predict an Eisenh ow er presidential victory in 1952 (Fang, 2 to Washington, DC, 1997). However, the view that computers could also be word processors required a percep­ 1ge to assistant Alfred tu al shift about them and their use (Ernst, Oettinger, Branscom b, Rubin, & Wikler, 1993). 2graph's misuse and In 1964,International Business Machines (IBM), which defined word processingas "electronic ;r to any information wa ys of handling a standard set of office activities-eomposing, revising, printing, and filing 30 GABRIAL written documents," took the lead in word processing 's development. In the early 1960s, the Wyatt, 2004,p. com pan y perfected its iconic Selectric typewriter with its unique go lf ba ll-size typ ing ele­ wha t had one ment and stationary carriage. By 1964, IBM introduced a system called Magnetic all documents Tape /Selectric Typewriter (MS/ST) that used reusa ble magnetic tape (Kunde, 1986-2001). The via e-mail att: introductions of the flop py disk in 1972 (Ernst et al., 1993) and IBM's pe rsonal computer (PC) memory cap a for home and office use in 1981 ma de the marr iage of computers to word processing feasible (Khurshc dov, and desirab le. (Although Apple Computer had been selling personal com puters by the late communicatic 1970s, it notably did not have IBM's m arketing or financial clout.) In a rare move, lI3M also contracted with Intel and Micros oft com panies to m anufacture PC com puter microchips and disk operating softwa re (Freiberger & Swaine, 2000), thus allowing other PC man ufacturers to flourish. As a resul t, IBM and its clones do minated the personal computer market. The explosion of PC clones in the 1980s crea ted nat ural demands for word-processing Just as centuri software. One of the first, the "Electric Pen cil" (Freiberger & Swaine, 2000), and early ver­ knowledge ill sions of Word, WordPerfect, and AppleWriter II were hardly user-friendly. One pop ular Furthermore, program, WordStar, was described as "difficult to learn" but "easy to use on ce the com­ medi a remain mands and the control keys bec ome fam iliar" (Langman, 1998, ap pendix) . As the word­ moment at wl processing m arket expanded, prog ram s impr oved so th at u pdated versions replaced the a new technc earlier ones with their strange codes and key strokes (Baron, 2000). Today, word processors printed mater commo nly present electronic pa ges to the typist just as they appear in pr inted and eve n equally likely published forms. Such innovation s turned word processing into a primary computer use, (e.g., Sellen & and the advent of easy-to-use deskto p-publishing software programs, such as the Adobe pre ss' standar Compan y's PageMaker, enable anyone to produce prin ting ho use-quality docu m ents. do the oppos True paperless, electronic communication began in the late 1960s with the sim ultane ou s "Electroni c rn . developments of the Internet an d the U.S. Department of Defense's Ad vanced Research strenuously a Project Agency's system of tran sferring pa ckets of information (ARPAnet) (Sholle. 2002). By seems that no the 1980s, the early Internet was a sophisticated communication medium that use d hyp er­ nin g of this cr text pro tocols to transfer who le electronic text pages to computer screens (Swiss, 2004). With dom instead c electronic communication came electronic-mail delivery. Ray Tomlinson, a computer engi­ page, ano ther neer working on ARPAne t's crude electronic-mail system, chose the "@" symbo l to d enote wisdom that a Web ad dress and sent the first e-mail message, that read, "QWERTYUIOP" (Bellis, 2006). Although an Improvemen ts such as the developm ent of Hypert ext Markup Lan gu age (HTML) enabled onto a printec compute rs to share electronic documents regardless of the software application used to cre­ effects that VI ate them (Sellen & Harp er, 2002). By the 1990s, anyone with Web design software could commun icati( invite global visitors to an Internet Websi te, cont aining vast, perhaps unlimited amounts of the present ar electronically crea ted digital ma terial. In McLuh anesque fashion, the Internet has crea ted new digital globa l Villages where, according to Paul Levinso n (1999), "cen ters are every­ where and margi ns are nowhere" (p . 7). Ironically, increasing electronic and d igital com­ munication has not decreased paper 's use , as Abigail Sellen and Richa rd Ha rp er argue in The Myth of the Paperless Office. Instead, they prop ose that the electronic age has simply Ad ler, M. (1973 switched communication's distribution from printing-then-distribution to electronic distribu­ Albu s, v., Kra s' tion-then-priniing. Althou gh the "he gemo ny of pap er" m ay not be at an end, as Sellen and Prestel. H arp er (2002. P 5) note, the "new technologies will shift the role of paper rather than replace The a maZing it" (p. 194; italics original ). paperu / all , Antique cOPY-iJ The Intern et as a communication technology could not have developed witho u t previ ­ copy_m aChiI ous writing and com p uter technologies (Sholl e, 2002) and has become a hugely respon sive Baron, 0 (1999) and popular "me ans of communication" in th e 21st cen tury (Meadow, 1998). Advanc es in (Eds.), Passio d igital and electronic communication technologies have created a boom in knowle dge-based Baron, N. (2000 industries, including libr aries, news, and publishing, w here som e pub licatio ns are now dis­ [Jellis, M. (1997­ tribute d strictly online , provi di ng au thors wi th ne w venues for their work. In newsrooms abo ut.com/I; thr ougho ut the w orld, journ alists and their editors are converging media as they update Bellis, M. (2006' a b o u t. ~ the ir online newspaper and broa dcast editions. Even more remarkable, Mic hael A. Keller, tors. [Jellis, M. (200 the head librarian at Stanford Uni versity, has predicted the following: "Within two Com/library decades, most of the world 's knowled ge will be digitized and available, one hop es for free Bliven, n, Jr. (1 reading on the Int ernet, jus t as there is free read ing in libraries today" (cited in Ma rkoff & 2 . HI ST ORY OF W RIT ING T ECHI'."OL OGIES 3 1

. In the early 1960s, the Wyatt, 2004,p. A1). Powerful Internet search engines like GOO GLE enable an yone to ob tain il f ball-size typing ele­ wha t had once been available in only printed text or to sp ecialists. As for the mails, almost tern called Magnetic all documents once res tricted to the mails (or fax) can be sent ins tan tly in original form (unde, 1986-2001). The via e-mai l attachment. The refore, a com bination of increasing computer speed, expanded -ers onal computer (PC) memory capac ity, durable and portable storage med ia like D-ROMs, DVDs, the In ternet ord processing feasible (Khurshodov, 2001; Meadow, 1998) have permanen tly changed the nat ure of writing and computers by the late communication. The inevitable results of such dramatic changes are still unknown. a rare move, IBM also nputer microchips and ther PC manufacturers CON CLUSION nputer market. s for word-processing Just as centuries ago when "new" media such as reeds and pap yms communicated human " 2000), and early ver­ knowledge and culture, so, too, do today's "new" media of electronic bits and bytes. frien dly. One popular Furthermore, these new media do no t necessarily replace old media if a need for that old to use once the com ­ media remains. It is important to understand, as Sholle (2002) notes, that "there is no clear oendix). As the word­ moment at which a techn ology is som ethin g radically new, nor is there a definite poin t where versions replaced the a new technology eradi cates previous technologies"(p. 9). Although it may happen that oday, wo rd processors printed material w ill become wha t Mead ow (1998) calls "techn ological artifacts"(p. 41), it is r in printed and even equally likely that readers w ill never completely forego printed wo rds for electronic ones .rima ry computer use, (e.g., Sellen & Harper, 2002; Swiss, 2004). Just as som e observers have noted the printing ns, su ch as the Adobe press' standardizing effect on language, others have warned that electronic technologies will uality documents. do the opposite. Truss (2004), the au thor of a popular English punctuation book, wrote: with the sim ultaneous "Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite 's Ad vanced Research strenuously agains t an y sort of historical perc eption " (p . 181). Despite her observ ation, it \net) (Sholle, 2002). By seems that no writing medium or technology has eve r guarant eed permanence. The begin­ :iium that used hyp er­ ning of this chap ter began w ith Socrates' warning that printing gave the "appearance of wis­ ens (Swiss, 2004). With dom instead of wisdom itself." Althoug h the philosophe r's words are preserved on a p rinted ison, a computer engi­ page, another prin ted page in another book pu ts Socrates' warning this wa y: " It is no true "@" symbo l to denote wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance" (Plato, 1952, para. 275). YUIOP" (Bellis, 2006). Although an awkward concluding poin t, the comparison suggests that words merely put uage (HTML) enabled onto a printed page (or any other medium) hard ly gu arant ee their immutability. As such, the pplication used to cre­ effects tha t writing technologies -in fact all technologies---have on humans and h uman :iesign software could communication will continue as an importan t debate among scholars and practitio ners for unlimited amounts of the presen t and the future. e Interne t has created )), "cen ters are every­ ronic an d digital com ­ REFERENCES -hard Harper argue in tronic age has Simp ly Adler, M. (1973). The writing machine. London: Allen & Unwin . 1 to electronic disiribu­ Albus, v., Kras, R., & Woodham, J. M.(Eds). (2000). Icons of design! The 20th century. Munich, Germany: an end, as Sellen and Prestel. lper rather than replace The ama zing hist ory of paper. (2001). Retrieved Nov. OS, 2006, from http:// ww w.tappi.org / paperu I alLabou t_paperI paperHis tory.htm eloped w ithout previ­ Antique copying machines. (2006). Retrieved Nov. 5, 2006, from http://www officemuseu m.com / te a hugely res ponsive copy_machines.htm Baron, D (1999). 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