Week 5: History of Print!

     The trip we took to Archives and Special Collection was super fun. To learn about the history of paper was an interesting experience. My favorite part was looking really close at the different papers with the microscopes. Some of the older texts looked wooden- like they were one solid mass. The other texts look sinewy- I could see the strands of each individual part used to make the paper, which was cool. To see the animal hides in contrast to the actual paper was interesting, too. It isn't something I think about often, nor have I ever seen it, so to be able to physically look at and interact with older forms of media was a unique experience that was very informative.

    I think the complexity of the different formats we saw definitely contributed to the literary history of each text. I imagine that paper before modern technology was more tedious and expensive to make and replicate, so texts weren't as widely available. I would be curious to know if that led to writers being more concise and straightforward to save physical space? I see that a lot in Equiano- he is very blunt and compact with what he says so that it doesn't take up much space on the page. On top of this, before the concept of a modern book existed, I could see it being harder to create a long story. How would the accordion, or the cuneiform for that matter, be used to hold a story that would take hundreds of a book-pages to tell? I would not be surprised if older stories are less complex and shorter to accommodate these limitations.

    

Comments

  1. Audrey SchroederFebruary 10, 2023 at 10:36 AM

    Hey Jalen! I, too, really enjoyed looking at the books with the microscopes. It was fun to see the different types up paper up close, as well as the different inks/decorations. I also enjoyed seeing the different types of texts and it was interesting to hear about how tedious to printing process was. Definitely makes me appreciate modern-day printers.

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  2. HeatherLFebruary 10, 2023 at 5:48 PM

    Hey Jalen! I was also impressed by the complexity and likely tediousness of old printing techniques. I never thought about writers being pressured to author shorter pieces because of that process, so your question is really interesting to me. I know that Victorian writers were often paid by word, so they were actually motivated to write wordier, longer pieces. I wonder when the shift came from Equiano-age brevity to that?

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  3. AnonymousFebruary 10, 2023 at 10:08 PM

    Hi Jalen! I loved looking at all of the papers with the microscopes. It was actually insane how it looked. I did not expect it at all. I thought all the fibers and ink were so interesting—you could see everything! I think your assumption that longer stories are more difficult to publish makes sense, forcing people to be more concise. I wonder if older stories are less complex as you mentioned.

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  4. Catalina DegnanFebruary 11, 2023 at 7:25 PM

    Hey Jalen! I also had a blast examining all the different documents under the microscopes. That's interesting that you focused on the look of the material that the text was printed on. I focused more on close-ups of the ink, so it's cool to know that you were able to differentiate the materials based on texture once they were blown up in size.

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  5. Eloise DanielloFebruary 12, 2023 at 10:25 PM

    Hi Jalen. I have been wondering about that as well about how they were able to produce as well written stories as we are today considering their materials were much more expensive and harder to produce. I assume they probably worked much slower and put much more consideration into what they were writing about. I wonder if everyone wrote as much as we do nowadays back then? How much did this change education considering almost everything we do is written out?

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  6. Paulos HabtewoldFebruary 21, 2023 at 11:12 PM

    Hi Jalen, I did not read a paper copy of Equiano, so it was really interesting to see how you connected what you learned in Artifacts and Special Collections to the book we are reading in class. In the online version I was reading it did seem to be a bit compact with no spacing between lines, but I always just assumed that had to with just the way that the publishers formatted it specifically online, not that Equiano wrote it very compactly in the first place. I think it makes sense that it was so compact seeing that paper was probably expensive during that time period.

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