Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our Invention series
Speaker 1: on the history of document duplication and fac simile technology.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard part one yet, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? You might want to go back and listen
Speaker 1: to that one first, But I guess before we get
Speaker 1: started today we could do a brief refresher on what
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode, so uh Rob.
Speaker 1: We discussed the emergence of document based culture and business, politics, religion,
Speaker 1: and society through the ancient world, and some examples of
Speaker 1: ways that ancient people and people in documents scarce environments
Speaker 1: might think about documents and copying differently than we would
Speaker 1: tend to think about those subjects today. We talked about
Speaker 1: the long history of the scribe, a figure of a
Speaker 1: vast importance who usually spend most or even all of
Speaker 1: their time merely copying documents. We discussed some early labor
Speaker 1: saving devices designed to duplicate documents without the need for
Speaker 1: hand copying. Of course, you know most copying since since
Speaker 1: the invention of writing has been done not by machines
Speaker 1: but by scribes or human copy is having to make
Speaker 1: copies of books and letters and everything by hand. But
Speaker 1: these early labor saving devices included things like the so
Speaker 1: called polygraph, not the Lie detector test, but this was
Speaker 1: a name for a device designed to produce an exact
Speaker 1: copy of a handwritten document at the time of its
Speaker 1: origin by transferring the movement of your pin through a
Speaker 1: system of levers to a second pin writing on a
Speaker 1: second piece of paper. Uh. And then also we talked
Speaker 1: about things like the copy press or the letter copying press,
Speaker 1: which refers to a family of related device is which
Speaker 1: I'll operate on the principle of moistening a very thin
Speaker 1: piece of paper and then smashing it against an original
Speaker 1: document in a gigantic clamp or sometimes in a kind
Speaker 1: of press or roller to cause some ink to bleed
Speaker 1: through from the original document onto the copy paper, giving
Speaker 1: you a copy to keep for your records. And we
Speaker 1: talked about how versions of the copy press were widely
Speaker 1: used throughout the nineteenth century and even somewhat into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, though they will start to overlap with other
Speaker 1: technologies and and uh, duplication and facsimile solutions that we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about today. Now, I wanted to throw in
Speaker 1: a quick note about Facsimile's uh we do. We titled
Speaker 1: these episodes facsimile, and I thought we might point out
Speaker 1: that you get into the idea of duplications and duplicated documents,
Speaker 1: but then there is the realm of of facsimiles, which
Speaker 1: is where you're really getting the idea of something that
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a perfect copy, a perfect reproduction
Speaker 1: of a given text um. And this this can be
Speaker 1: seen in the Latin. The Latin is to make a
Speaker 1: like uh, and it forms the root of the of
Speaker 1: the fac simile that is referenced in the in the
Speaker 1: word fax machine, though a fax machine doesn't really produce
Speaker 1: a true fac simile because this generally again this gen
Speaker 1: generally denotes a copy that is perfect or as close
Speaker 1: to perfect as possible in every regard, and in some
Speaker 1: cases we're talking about not merely the contents of the text,
Speaker 1: but the way in which it is written, illustrated, and
Speaker 1: even bound. In some cases, so a fac simile is
Speaker 1: especially useful if the original is both highly desired in
Speaker 1: its original form but also fragile, exceedingly rare or valuable,
Speaker 1: not ideal for wider use or travel. Um. They're numerous
Speaker 1: examples of this, but but one that I was looking
Speaker 1: at just yesterday. I mean not the book itself, obviously,
Speaker 1: but as an example. There's this book called the Codex Gigus,
Speaker 1: and it is the largest extent medieval illuminated manuscript. It
Speaker 1: was created in the thirteenth century, and it is thirty
Speaker 1: six inches or cimeters long, and it also contains a
Speaker 1: full page portrait of the devil. Um So I included
Speaker 1: a photograph of a fac simile of this manuscript for
Speaker 1: you to look at here. Joe, Oh, yes, I've seen this.
Speaker 1: I've seen this devil illustration before. And a funny note
Speaker 1: on on originals and copies. I think when I've seen
Speaker 1: this before, the comparison that happened in my mind is, oh,
Speaker 1: that's similar to the illustrations of Terry Gilliam, like the
Speaker 1: ones that appear in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: But actually I think I've got the continuity backwards there,
Speaker 1: don't I. So I guess probably Gilliam was trying to
Speaker 1: imitate some of the medieval illustration style, like we would
Speaker 1: see here like this looks kind of like the the
Speaker 1: beast in the cave in the Holy Grail, but the
Speaker 1: beast in the Cave is probably somewhat imitating this sort
Speaker 1: of drawing. Yeah, this devil has a wild and comedic appearance,
Speaker 1: at least to modern He's he's pretty, he's pretty narn
Speaker 1: It looks like he could be on the bottom of
Speaker 1: us of a skateboard or writing a rat fink car
Speaker 1: around you know. Um, there are other great examples I
Speaker 1: think of of modern facsimiles. For instance, the poetry of
Speaker 1: of William Blake. Uh. These were originally printed from copper plates.
Speaker 1: They were hand colored. And certainly you can read the text.
Speaker 1: You can read. You can just you know, look up
Speaker 1: the text of a poem by William Blake on the Internet,
Speaker 1: read it in a simple text format and and it
Speaker 1: will be great. I mean, the poetry, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: does not lose anything via its transformation into modern text. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you can just pull up the illustrations and look at those.
Speaker 1: But the originals were unique and they provided a distinct
Speaker 1: reading experience, So one can understand why the facsimile experience
Speaker 1: is still desired. And yes, you can still get facsimiles
Speaker 1: of William Blake's original publications, And of course the same
Speaker 1: is true of various historic illuminated manuscripts, where the book
Speaker 1: itself is a work of our art. The same can
Speaker 1: be said of various historic government documents. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you get into the realm of fiction, I guess
Speaker 1: you could also say that you would desire a facsimile
Speaker 1: of certain books that do great harm, like the Necronomicon,
Speaker 1: the Book of the Nine Gates, the Kingdom of Shadows,
Speaker 1: of the Book of Sand, something like that. Or maybe
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. Maybe the strange things that make them dangerous
Speaker 1: are only going to be found in that singular text,
Speaker 1: and maybe each in their own way. These are commentaries
Speaker 1: on the the desirability of a singular text, of having
Speaker 1: that book in your hand that has some sort of
Speaker 1: history that reaches back through time in a way that
Speaker 1: it hasn't been translated, it hasn't been transformed by a scribe. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course the idea of making exact copies of
Speaker 1: a page as it as it looks in its original
Speaker 1: form would become much easier later on with digital effects.
Speaker 1: Simile in duplication techniques and and even to some extent
Speaker 1: with like zuographic techniques, which we'll talk about later in
Speaker 1: this episode, that those would probably often not be producing
Speaker 1: perfectly faithful or full color copies, they would at least
Speaker 1: give you, uh the gist of the appearance of an
Speaker 1: original page rather than just say the the code of
Speaker 1: the text appearing on that page. Speaking of codes, I
Speaker 1: thought it might be good, especially before we sort of
Speaker 1: leave the ancient world behind us and and continue to
Speaker 1: talk about more recent inventions in the world of document
Speaker 1: reproduction and duplication. Uh yeah, I thought we might talk
Speaker 1: about some of the the origins of document security. So
Speaker 1: in our last episode we did mention the use of
Speaker 1: sealed envelopes on tablet tablets and Mesopotamia. This, of course,
Speaker 1: is one way to secure a document and make it
Speaker 1: so that no one can read it without making it
Speaker 1: blatantly obvious that somebody did so. But another way is
Speaker 1: of course, to keep the information itself, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as the plain text, secret by encoding it.
Speaker 1: In this we turned to the realm of encryption, and
Speaker 1: encryption dates back to ancient Egypt, at least as far
Speaker 1: back as nineteen hundred b c. E h. This, according
Speaker 1: to anthropologist Brian Fagan, working with writing historian Andrew Robinson,
Speaker 1: has written some uh some some wonderful books about the
Speaker 1: history of writing UM. This has pointed out in the
Speaker 1: seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World UM. But military
Speaker 1: cipher's date back to around the fifth century BC in Greece,
Speaker 1: where they were used by the Spartans, and the substitution
Speaker 1: cipher was used by the Romans during the first century CE.
Speaker 1: So the examples that Fagan and Robinson bring up UM
Speaker 1: in in this brief chapter in the seventy Grade Inventions
Speaker 1: are really quite interesting. So first of all, the Egyptian example,
Speaker 1: this wasn't actually used to send messages, but rather as
Speaker 1: a way of encoding multiple readings into a single um
Speaker 1: stela of hieroglyphics, which meant that it was all about
Speaker 1: just challenging the reader. You can think of it as
Speaker 1: just sort of encryption, uh, merely for I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: entertainment purposes, but without any true practical purpose. Well, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't discount the entertainment function. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: most entertaining things is to have the sensation that you
Speaker 1: have discovered a secret, meaning there there are there are
Speaker 1: whole genres of literature based around this. Now, the Spartan
Speaker 1: example is really neat because the Spartan Uh, the Spartans
Speaker 1: made use of a special staff kyled a scattally and uh.
Speaker 1: And yes, Dune fans out there, this is the name
Speaker 1: of the of the face dancer character of the Talilaxa
Speaker 1: that shows up in Doom Messiah, which is rather fitted.
Speaker 1: But this would be the way the system works is
Speaker 1: you would have this special staff, the scattally, and then
Speaker 1: you would have a leather strip that would be wrapped
Speaker 1: around this, you know, specific wooden staff in a spiral
Speaker 1: fashion without overlap. Um. I hope everybody can picture that
Speaker 1: in your head. Otherwise you can just look up an
Speaker 1: image of this. It's s c y T A l E.
Speaker 1: Then what you would do is you would write your
Speaker 1: message horizontally down the staff. UM. So you know, here's
Speaker 1: the staff. If you had if you had the staff
Speaker 1: with this wrapping around it, and you laid it out
Speaker 1: on the table in front of you while there would
Speaker 1: be your message across it, and then you could you know,
Speaker 1: sort of roll it almost like a like like the
Speaker 1: roller of a typewriter to see other lines of text. Okay,
Speaker 1: Once that message is in place, you unwind the strap,
Speaker 1: which now is just going to be nonsense if you
Speaker 1: try to read it. If you try and read it,
Speaker 1: you know, as a as a ribbon of of text,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be nonsense. And you can't just wrap
Speaker 1: it around any staff, uh and uh and reproduce it.
Speaker 1: First of all, you have to know you know how
Speaker 1: it's to be wrapped, and then you need a staff
Speaker 1: with the exact same diameter. And so this is what
Speaker 1: is called a transposition cipher. Okay, so this is basically
Speaker 1: a nu miracle cipher for unlocking the code. But the
Speaker 1: cipher is based in the circumference of the staff in
Speaker 1: your hand. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, tied up with this this
Speaker 1: physical key to unlock the code. Though, to be clear,
Speaker 1: transposition ciphers don't necessarily need a stick or you know,
Speaker 1: but this is this is the earliest example we have
Speaker 1: of this sort of thing. The Romans, however, again, they
Speaker 1: made use of a substitution cipher, in which your symbols
Speaker 1: are replaced by new symbols, usually via a certain algorithm,
Speaker 1: and it can be a very simple algorithm. The basic
Speaker 1: version of this as used by the Romans would be
Speaker 1: to list out all the Latin letters and then sub
Speaker 1: each one out for a letter three down from its
Speaker 1: current position. Uh. And this was exactly the system that
Speaker 1: Julius Caesar used. Now this makes me think about how
Speaker 1: security issues with the contents of sensitive documents have really
Speaker 1: changed since the ancient world, when documents themselves were scarce.
Speaker 1: I mean, there you could say, Okay, I will imagine
Speaker 1: there's a sensitive document. Maybe you don't want certain people
Speaker 1: seeing it, you don't want people making unauthorized copies of it,
Speaker 1: you don't want people making changes to it. For whatever reason.
Speaker 1: You need to keep that documents secure. It's a lot
Speaker 1: easier when there's just one fixed physical form of that
Speaker 1: document to start with. Uh. We live in a totally
Speaker 1: different world now, right. We live in a world of limitless,
Speaker 1: lossless copying in which most documents are digital, and that
Speaker 1: unleash is completely different concerns about security, because you can't
Speaker 1: look at where the one original physical copy of the
Speaker 1: document is. If the original is digital, you can assume
Speaker 1: that there is pretty easy copying of it or of
Speaker 1: the information in it, and it can be really difficult,
Speaker 1: especially given all of the other technology we have to
Speaker 1: put limits on that, Like, people can try to do
Speaker 1: things like password protect access to documents, encryption for for
Speaker 1: the retrieval of sensitive documents and stuff like that. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's got a camera in their phone and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So even if like you're in a
Speaker 1: secure location looking at a document that's for your eyes only,
Speaker 1: if you've got your camera, you can take a picture
Speaker 1: of the screen. I mean, we just live in a
Speaker 1: completely different environment when it comes to the sensitivity of
Speaker 1: document contents. It's a lot harder to keep a lid
Speaker 1: on things today. But assuming you trust the person who's
Speaker 1: actually looking at the document not to take pictures of
Speaker 1: it and share them with whoever. H there are tools
Speaker 1: available today that I guess we're not available at this time,
Speaker 1: such as the stuff we're just mentioning, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: password protection, encryption and digital gating of access to documents
Speaker 1: and things like that. So, in a weird way, like
Speaker 1: access has become easier than ever to control, but also
Speaker 1: harder to control in the in the strictest possible sense.
Speaker 1: So the examples that bring up here, you know, largely
Speaker 1: just sort of provides basic bedrock of of encryption. You know, Obviously,
Speaker 1: the ages in which these were you it was a
Speaker 1: different it was a different time. Um and uh and
Speaker 1: if memory serves um. Fagan and Robinson also pointed out that,
Speaker 1: you know, you just don't see as many examples of
Speaker 1: encryption in the ancient world as as you might expect
Speaker 1: to find because it's as we as we related, documents
Speaker 1: were important. These these empires and um and and kingdoms.
Speaker 1: They they they were run on documentation. Uh and so
Speaker 1: you would think you would see more examples of encryption.
Speaker 1: But uh, maybe part of that is just a lot
Speaker 1: of times you're dealing with singular documents and uh and
Speaker 1: you know, something far removed from what we have in
Speaker 1: the modern world. Yeah. So there's a physical scarcity, there's
Speaker 1: only a single original document to begin with. But I
Speaker 1: guess also there is lower lower levels of literacy means
Speaker 1: that means there is less opportunity for someone to read
Speaker 1: this sensitive document. There's more I want to come back to,
Speaker 1: actually later in this episode about how the world has
Speaker 1: changed when we transition from documents scarcity to not only
Speaker 1: document abundance but probab document overload. But but I guess
Speaker 1: before we get there, we should talk more about the
Speaker 1: history of these document duplication and facsimile technologies than so
Speaker 1: picking up after the example of things like the copy
Speaker 1: press that we talked about in the last episode, what
Speaker 1: took over before we got to things like computers in
Speaker 1: the modern photocopier. Well, I think it is time to
Speaker 1: talk about carbon paper. Yes, so carbon paper was. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've used carbon paper, you know. This is not something
Speaker 1: that completely vanished but before we were born in I
Speaker 1: remember I've had some jobs where actually had to do
Speaker 1: stuff on carbon paper. This was in the twenty one century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not at how stuff works, right, I don't remember most
Speaker 1: ever having to write articles on carbon paper. But so, okay,
Speaker 1: carbon paper was invented long before it became a dominant
Speaker 1: player in the document duplication world throughout office settings and stuff.
Speaker 1: And there are many variations, but basically all carbon paper
Speaker 1: works something like this. You have the carbon paper itself,
Speaker 1: which is a thin piece of paper covered on one
Speaker 1: side with some kind of ink or pigment, often bound
Speaker 1: to the paper with wax. And then to use the
Speaker 1: carbon paper, you would create a stack of at least
Speaker 1: three sheets of paper lined up on top of one another,
Speaker 1: so you'd have the original paper copy on top and
Speaker 1: then you'd have the carbon paper in the middle underneath that,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have the paper you intended for the
Speaker 1: second copy on the bottom. So you write or type
Speaker 1: your message on the top sheet, and as you do,
Speaker 1: the pressure from your pencil or pin bearing down, or
Speaker 1: the pressure from the type bars of a typewriter striking
Speaker 1: the page will cause the dried ink or pigment on
Speaker 1: the back of the carbon paper sheet to leave a
Speaker 1: mark on the copy page underneath. So the work of
Speaker 1: making one copy creates a second copy automatically. The pressure
Speaker 1: pushes the pigment through and it imprints on that second page.
Speaker 1: Credit for the invention of carbon paper is often given
Speaker 1: to an English inventor named Ralph Wedgewood because of an
Speaker 1: eighteen o six patent he received for an invention called
Speaker 1: the manifold style a graphic writer h So this is
Speaker 1: an invention that, like the polygraph, drew the interest of
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, and in a letter to Charles Wilson Peel
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine, remember Charles Wilson Peel was the
Speaker 1: guy who perfected the design of the polygraph, Jefferson complained
Speaker 1: that the carbon paper only really worked if you wrote
Speaker 1: with a hard pointed stylus on a hard surface, which
Speaker 1: I guess he didn't like to do, and also complained
Speaker 1: that quote the smell of the paper is so fetted
Speaker 1: that one could not stay in a room where there
Speaker 1: was much of it. This is something we'll come back
Speaker 1: to numerous times here. But uh, we were so far
Speaker 1: removed from this for the most part in today's world,
Speaker 1: Like we don't think about the uh, the fact that
Speaker 1: you might need to open a window or have proper
Speaker 1: ventilation in a room if you're going to be engaging
Speaker 1: in the work of the scribe and or any kind
Speaker 1: of document duplication. But this seems to be the case.
Speaker 1: You see this reference to, you know multiple times. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean so a lot of these methods would produce fumes.
Speaker 1: Though it's funny he's complaining about the smell here. Some
Speaker 1: of the technologies we're going to talk about in a bit,
Speaker 1: I guess they would have been using different kinds of
Speaker 1: dyes or inks or something produce smells that that many have.
Speaker 1: Many people today is still alive today have great nostalgia
Speaker 1: for if you found the part of the internet where
Speaker 1: everybody's just like, oh, I miss the smell of the mimiograph. Um.
Speaker 1: I did not find that part of the Internet, but
Speaker 1: I did find some wonderful videos with people demonstrating some
Speaker 1: of these uh uh these techniques, which I found very
Speaker 1: helpful because some of the techniques we end up talking
Speaker 1: about there there may be a little difficult to picture
Speaker 1: in your mind. Uh, but if you see someone doing it,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, I can I can
Speaker 1: see what's what what they're doing there. I see the acess.
Speaker 1: I see how this is producing a duplication of text. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll try to be as clear as we can to
Speaker 1: help you picture it. But yeah, looking up videos is
Speaker 1: always helpful. Um. So, carbon paper was not like a
Speaker 1: photo copier. Again, you could not mechanically produce copies of
Speaker 1: a pre existing document. Instead, it was more like the
Speaker 1: polygraph machine. It was an invention that would allow you
Speaker 1: to produce extra copies of a document at the point
Speaker 1: of the documents composition or at the point of the copying.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes writing or typing in order to
Speaker 1: make the copies that will give you extra copies. But
Speaker 1: assuming you're either composing in the first place or you're
Speaker 1: able to type or rite out a copy by hand,
Speaker 1: you actually didn't have to stop at that single carbon
Speaker 1: paper sandwich and it's single extra copy. You can actually
Speaker 1: create a stack of carbon paper sandwiches, so you'd have
Speaker 1: original on top, then carbon paper than the paper for
Speaker 1: the first copy, then carbon paper than paper for the
Speaker 1: second copy, and so forth. But as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: the quality of the copies deteriorates pretty rapidly the further
Speaker 1: down the stack you go, So there was a technical
Speaker 1: limit to how many copies you could duplicate from a
Speaker 1: single original if you cared about them being legible. I
Speaker 1: think anyone who has used a physical checkbook can probably
Speaker 1: understand what we're getting at here, because the physical check
Speaker 1: book will often have those carbon pages. That that mean
Speaker 1: that when you write out that check, you have an
Speaker 1: automatic copy of it underneath on the carbon sheet. However
Speaker 1: you can it's not going to be as clear as
Speaker 1: your original check it's going to be, you know, very legible.
Speaker 1: You can imagine if you had multiple layers, uh, you
Speaker 1: know that there are going to be huge limitations about
Speaker 1: how deep you can go. Apparently, the use of carbon
Speaker 1: paper became even more pronounced starting in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Around the eighteen seventies, or eighteen eighties with the spread
Speaker 1: of typewriters. Since you know the hard punch of a
Speaker 1: typewriter key, when that bar hits the page, that's pretty
Speaker 1: good at driving the carbon imprint through several layers. But
Speaker 1: carbon paper is not going to solve all of the
Speaker 1: world's duplication need problems. Because so in the last episode,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about the difficulties created when you
Speaker 1: need a medium number of copies of something and it's
Speaker 1: something of medium importance. So if you just need two
Speaker 1: or three copies, you could use the existing methods, you
Speaker 1: could use carbon paper, or you could use the copy press.
Speaker 1: If you needed thousands of copies of something and you
Speaker 1: had the budget and the time and the access, you
Speaker 1: could hire out a printing press and they do all
Speaker 1: the you know, the setting the movable type, and they
Speaker 1: print out a run for you. But if you're in
Speaker 1: the medium zone, so you just need fifty copies of something,
Speaker 1: especially if it is some piece of ephemeral office memoranda,
Speaker 1: some kind of small business document, or if it's a
Speaker 1: grade school worksheet or church bulletin or anything in that
Speaker 1: kind of category, it would not make sense to hire
Speaker 1: out a printing press. You know, you don't have the time,
Speaker 1: the lay burn, the money involved would just not really
Speaker 1: be justified for that kind of printing. And yet it's
Speaker 1: definitely more than you could easily make with a stack
Speaker 1: of carbon paper sandwiches under a pencil or a typewriter.
Speaker 1: And so this kind of mid level document duplication, for
Speaker 1: for for schools, for small businesses, for whatever was constantly
Speaker 1: in demand all throughout society. But there was nothing exactly
Speaker 1: to satisfy this kind of need until we get to
Speaker 1: a a few inventions that will mention in just a minute,
Speaker 1: but briefly, before we leave the idea of carbon paper,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to, uh flag an interesting fact that
Speaker 1: even though carbon paper is pretty much obsolete, it is
Speaker 1: still latent in our language. For example, when you talk
Speaker 1: about a carbon copy of something that comes from the
Speaker 1: idea of carbon paper. Uh, and it's even there in
Speaker 1: our email fields. You know, if you see see somebody
Speaker 1: on an email, the c C stands for carbon copy,
Speaker 1: which is funny because you know, I'm sure in offices
Speaker 1: of of sixty seventy years ago was everyday occurrence that
Speaker 1: you type up a letter and send it to somebody,
Speaker 1: and then there would be a carbon you know, a
Speaker 1: copy made with carbon paper underneath it that would go
Speaker 1: to the person who you literally wanted to see ce
Speaker 1: on that physical message. But now we're doing it with
Speaker 1: digital duplication, and the digital duplication possible with the computer
Speaker 1: has so much more fidelity than carbon paper copies ever did. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So first of all, I don't think I knew this
Speaker 1: until just now that what c C stood for. I
Speaker 1: just never thought about it. But but yeah, to your point,
Speaker 1: you can you can see see a single individual on
Speaker 1: an email, which falls in line with what you would
Speaker 1: be doing with carbon copy. But you can also, especially
Speaker 1: with like a distributional list, you can see see everyone
Speaker 1: within a given corporation, that sort of thing, which is
Speaker 1: well beyond what you would have been able to handle
Speaker 1: with carbon paper. Oh that ties into something I want
Speaker 1: to get back to you later on. But first, uh,
Speaker 1: let's talk the mimiograph. So, so here's where Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: enters the pick. Sure. Yeah, So I was reading about
Speaker 1: some of these technologies in a book from titled The
Speaker 1: Four Photo Copying The Art and History of Mechanical Copying
Speaker 1: by Barbara J. Rhodes and William W. Um Street and
Speaker 1: in this they were talking a little bit about the
Speaker 1: mimeograph and um they said that it is essentially an
Speaker 1: American file plate stencil duplicator. There's a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: in this book about the different terms for what these
Speaker 1: different technologies are, and a patent for this sort of
Speaker 1: device has been filed for this by duplication inventor uh
Speaker 1: Eugenio D. Zuccado, and I believe this was eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: So his idea was to use a thin sheet of
Speaker 1: paper that was coated with wax on one side, and
Speaker 1: you do your writing then over a rough surface. And
Speaker 1: this is described in the book as as a surface
Speaker 1: being like that of a file you know, like the
Speaker 1: rough suffa rough metal surface that you used to file
Speaker 1: something down with. But you're putting your your wax coated
Speaker 1: paper on top of that and then you bust out
Speaker 1: your metal stylus. And the the pressure applied to the
Speaker 1: paper over the rough edges in the writings surface would
Speaker 1: cause perforations in both the wax and the paper fibers.
Speaker 1: The stylus would also displace some of the wax. But
Speaker 1: the key here is that the ink could then flow
Speaker 1: into these perforations to reproduce the writing. Now, this was
Speaker 1: also called the papyro graph, and then there was a
Speaker 1: more advanced typograph that was also produced. The main drawback
Speaker 1: to this, uh, this technological approach was just the cost
Speaker 1: of the plate itself, which was was not just something
Speaker 1: you could be thrown together. You would have to have
Speaker 1: a skilled individual create these things. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: the principle of the stencil. The mimiograph is going to
Speaker 1: become one of the major duplication technologies to the last
Speaker 1: couple of centuries, and it operates on the principle of
Speaker 1: a stencil similar to screen printing techniques that were not
Speaker 1: new at this time. They've been in use for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years in China and Japan, I think, especially for
Speaker 1: for printing on cloth or garments. Yeah, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that a number of these now outdated duplication techniques have
Speaker 1: been reclaimed by artists. Artists, especially fiber artists and so forth,
Speaker 1: have gone back and looked at them and figured out
Speaker 1: ways to play with them and create unique artistic expressions
Speaker 1: through them. But let's get back to Edison, because Edison
Speaker 1: wants a slice, right right, Okay, Yes, So in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, the American inventor and according to some patent holder,
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison, received a patent for the device that would
Speaker 1: come to be known as the mimeograph. It wasn't called
Speaker 1: this initially, and this would be one of the most
Speaker 1: important duplication technologies basically until the advent of computers and
Speaker 1: photocopiers a century later. Though there was also an important
Speaker 1: competing technology that I think Robby you're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in a minute, um, But basically Edison's version was
Speaker 1: you would use an electric pin which was part of
Speaker 1: the patent, to cut out a stencil page. So imagine
Speaker 1: writing out your document. You you do your writing of
Speaker 1: text or drawing of illustrations, whatever it is you want
Speaker 1: to copy, not with ink on paper, but with this
Speaker 1: electric pin that would cut holes in a type of
Speaker 1: card sheet, and then you would smash the stencil page
Speaker 1: in a flatbed press between an ink soaked surface and
Speaker 1: a blank piece of paper, and so the ink would
Speaker 1: traverse through the gaps in the stencil and then make
Speaker 1: a near perfect copy of your stencil document. Now, not
Speaker 1: long after Edison's patent there was some design improvements introduced
Speaker 1: by a Chicago inventor named Albert Blake Dick who came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of calling it the mimiograph. And
Speaker 1: while the earliest model was a flatbed press, later models
Speaker 1: tended to use sometimes a rolling press which could be
Speaker 1: operated by hand crank or even by an electric motor.
Speaker 1: And you could say the proposing and cons of the
Speaker 1: mimiograph there were a lot of pros. Actually, Like with
Speaker 1: a mimiograph, you could make pretty much as many copies
Speaker 1: as you wanted. It wasn't like carbon paper were legibility
Speaker 1: declined significantly after the third copy. Uh. It tended to
Speaker 1: be very cheap. I mean, I think even actually buying
Speaker 1: the mimiograph machine itself was pretty cheap. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if part of that I'm not sure about this, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if part of that is that manufacturers were
Speaker 1: selling the mimiograph machine at a pretty low rate because
Speaker 1: they knew they could continue to sell the equipment that
Speaker 1: went with it, like the the ink and the stencil
Speaker 1: cards and stuff. But of course there were there were
Speaker 1: still Consuh. This was still not a method for immediately
Speaker 1: producing a facsimile or copy of an existing document. So
Speaker 1: like a lot of the other methods we've talked about,
Speaker 1: this duplication technique still requires work to happen at the
Speaker 1: front end of the copying process. You had to cut
Speaker 1: out the stencil, which there were methods for doing with,
Speaker 1: you know, either like the hand operated stylus or with
Speaker 1: with say a typewriter of sorts, and you could punch
Speaker 1: the stencil, but you had to make it at the
Speaker 1: front end. You couldn't just take a document, stick it
Speaker 1: in there and get copies to come out right, or
Speaker 1: you would at least have to make use of someone
Speaker 1: who is acting in the role of a scribe to
Speaker 1: take your document and transcribe it into the miniograph format
Speaker 1: so that it then could be duplicated with ease. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now the mimiograph was not on its own because there
Speaker 1: was another sort of parallel technology that did pretty much
Speaker 1: the same thing but worked differently, widely known as the
Speaker 1: Ditto machine. But I think the principle underneath it is
Speaker 1: the idea of a spirit duplicator. And actually, when I
Speaker 1: mentioned there was nostalgia for the smell of the mimiograph,
Speaker 1: I can't remember if I said this, but there's apparently
Speaker 1: nostalgia for the smell of the spirit duplicator as well.
Speaker 1: People liked sniffing these things. Well, we'll get to the
Speaker 1: smell here in a second. Um. Now, I'll be the
Speaker 1: first to admit that the idea of a spirit duplicator
Speaker 1: was instantly appealing, because my mind instantly went to, uh,
Speaker 1: the idea of the of the of the you know,
Speaker 1: the spirit in the supernatural or religious sense. So I
Speaker 1: was wondering, okay, is this is a device by which
Speaker 1: the human soul may be duplicated? Or perhaps it's a
Speaker 1: means by which the haunting spirit of the deceased might
Speaker 1: be reproduced. It also made me think of I haven't
Speaker 1: actually seen this film, but I've has wonderful posters the
Speaker 1: sci fi film The Human Duplicators. Oh, that's got a
Speaker 1: good tagline. It says, made to kill or love on command,
Speaker 1: a masterpiece of shock in color. I've never seen this one.
Speaker 1: But in the interest of as we always try to
Speaker 1: uh making the mundane weird again, I mean, it is
Speaker 1: important to remember that there is a kind of spirit
Speaker 1: duplication going on with all of these machines. Which are
Speaker 1: these are mechanical methods for making the contents of someone
Speaker 1: else's brain visible to people across time and space. Absolutely so, ye,
Speaker 1: spirit is not completely, uh, you know, off the mark here,
Speaker 1: but the spirit in spirit duplicator is actually referring to alcohol,
Speaker 1: but it's it's still very interesting. Also known as a
Speaker 1: as a rexograph ditto machine, also the banda machine. And
Speaker 1: I was reading about this again in before photo Copying
Speaker 1: by Rhoads and Street or according to the authors, it
Speaker 1: is a variation of the hectograph, and a hectograph is
Speaker 1: something that I must admit also sounds like weird magic
Speaker 1: when I initially read about it. You know, the idea
Speaker 1: that say, a wizard may produce a copy of a
Speaker 1: sacred text by first filling a shallow pan with a
Speaker 1: certain slime, and then the wizard may place the document
Speaker 1: in the slime, the slime shall copy the woods and
Speaker 1: glyphs therein, and applying a second piece of paper to
Speaker 1: the pan, the slime shall imprint upon it the sacred magics.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not far off because this method literally
Speaker 1: uses like gelatin, right yeah, yeah, And this is one
Speaker 1: where I recommend, I do recommend looking up a video
Speaker 1: of this because I I had to look at a
Speaker 1: video to really get it, uh the exactly what a
Speaker 1: hectograph is, but basically a special pin is used to
Speaker 1: write the original document. And I've I've read that the
Speaker 1: teachers would use this to do lesson plans. Uh, you
Speaker 1: would uh and uh. And also you would have a
Speaker 1: tray of gelatine that was prepared, or you might have
Speaker 1: a gelatine pad, and you you press and roll the
Speaker 1: paper against the gelatine and then you remove it. And
Speaker 1: now when you press blank sheets against the gelatine, it
Speaker 1: reimprints the contents all the original document. Wow. So look again,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Worth looking up a video. Left. So
Speaker 1: you make a special print original, then you smash it
Speaker 1: into a big tray of jello and then you press
Speaker 1: pages against the jello to get the to get the
Speaker 1: copies off correct. Yeah, all right, So now let's get
Speaker 1: act of the Spirit duplicator, a machine that hinges on
Speaker 1: some of these techniques. So, according to Rhodes and Street
Speaker 1: or the hectographic carbon sheets formed the basis here quote,
Speaker 1: which was carried out on hectograph machines with rotary cylinder
Speaker 1: printing surfaces. The master sheet was typed with the carbon
Speaker 1: sheet behind it so as to create a reverse image
Speaker 1: of the text. It was then fastened to the cylinder
Speaker 1: with the ink facing out, and then they continue a
Speaker 1: master was prepared then run under a cylinder with a
Speaker 1: gelatin coated covering. This picked up the ink, as would
Speaker 1: a roll of hectographic paper to create the quote unquote
Speaker 1: negative from which the copies would be made. This sounds
Speaker 1: slimy and complicated. Yeah. They go on to write that
Speaker 1: in spirit duplicators, blank sheets of paper are run under
Speaker 1: the cylinder on a on a carriage moistened first with
Speaker 1: a special duplicating liquid. And this liquid is where the
Speaker 1: spirit comes in, because we're talking about an alcohol based liquid.
Speaker 1: The dissolve small amounts of ink on the master sheet
Speaker 1: or gelatine cylinder and then transfers that to blank sheets.
Speaker 1: So that's the spirit, that's the alcohol playing an important part.
Speaker 1: So these were in action by the late ninety twenties,
Speaker 1: and they apparently printed darker in a good way and
Speaker 1: more uniformly than purely gelatin methods like I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Also, they point out that these copies were
Speaker 1: more permanent, as they died the fibers of the paper
Speaker 1: as well as opposed to just the surface of the paper.
Speaker 1: Uh So it was good for quote small to medium
Speaker 1: print orders. Um and it was often seen as an
Speaker 1: ideal thing for a school or office setting, small businesses, etcetera,
Speaker 1: good for newsletters. The main drawback they mentioned it's just
Speaker 1: the initial cost of the machine. But I've also seen
Speaker 1: some papers out there at least discussing the possibility of
Speaker 1: harmful methanol fumes from this device, at least if the
Speaker 1: machine was used in a place without ideal than a Asian.
Speaker 1: But then, like you said, some people were just super
Speaker 1: nostalgic for the the smell I guess of of all
Speaker 1: of this um methanol coming off of the document duplication process. Well,
Speaker 1: let me be clear, I'm not encouraging people to inhale
Speaker 1: harmful fumes for nostalgia's sake. I'm just reporting what I
Speaker 1: saw people saying. But it's interesting, right because within this
Speaker 1: machine we have we have mechanical technology, we have a
Speaker 1: chemical approach to duplication as well as a physical you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about rollers and imprinting and so forth, and
Speaker 1: and the alteration of paper. And I was also reading
Speaker 1: that like the basic process involved here, UH is apparently
Speaker 1: still used by some tattoo artists as a means of
Speaker 1: applying an initial temporary tattoo to guide the permanent work.
Speaker 1: So perhaps if there any tattoo artists out there, you
Speaker 1: can shime in on this this h on this factoid.
Speaker 1: Oh I should also mention, you know, describing this process. Yes,
Speaker 1: videos are helpful, but also you might look up a
Speaker 1: photograph of the machine itself because it it's it's it's
Speaker 1: rather interesting. I'm not sure I would be able to
Speaker 1: identify what it is if I saw it. I might
Speaker 1: guess that it's something involved and printing or something with paper. Um.
Speaker 1: You you definitely see like a large in the model
Speaker 1: I was looking at here, you do see a large
Speaker 1: like drum rolling cylinder and you see, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the various apparatus is there that are necessary to guide
Speaker 1: paper through it? And I guess you're also seeing various dials, um,
Speaker 1: and they're in place so you can apply certain settings
Speaker 1: to the process. Now, eventually, after this era we do
Speaker 1: get into the modern realm of of photocopiers based on
Speaker 1: things like zerography and two computers of course, which you know,
Speaker 1: digital duplication of documents is a whole other realm. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the uh realm boundary has been crossed.
Speaker 1: Once you're talking about digital duplication. We don't have time
Speaker 1: today to talk about all of the other duplication technologies
Speaker 1: that came in between, but I did briefly want to
Speaker 1: talk about the zerography process that made photo copying possible,
Speaker 1: because before this I actually would not have been able
Speaker 1: to explain how that worked. I didn't know, but uh,
Speaker 1: in reading about it, it's pretty interesting. So the photo
Speaker 1: copier rose during the second half of the twentie century,
Speaker 1: and it operates on this principle called zerography, which translates
Speaker 1: essentially to dry riding, because the photocopier uses no wet ink. Instead,
Speaker 1: it uses a type of uh, dry ink you could
Speaker 1: think of a dry coloring agent called toner. And the
Speaker 1: main principle that enables the the copying of imagery or
Speaker 1: documents through the photo copy or astatic electricity. So inside
Speaker 1: a photo copy or machine, there is an electrostatically charged
Speaker 1: surface made out of a photo conductive material, and this
Speaker 1: element is known as the drum. This is down inside
Speaker 1: the machine, underneath that transparent surface where you lay down
Speaker 1: the document you want to copy. So you lay your
Speaker 1: original down face down on this transparent surface and then
Speaker 1: I guess usually you want to cover it, but the
Speaker 1: machine shines a really bright light up against the original
Speaker 1: page and that light is reflected off of the page
Speaker 1: back onto the drum. Again, the drum is this electrostatically
Speaker 1: charged metal surface, but the key is that the light
Speaker 1: is reflected selectively based on what is on the page
Speaker 1: you're shining the light on. So white and brightly colored
Speaker 1: areas on the page, such as blank space, will reflect
Speaker 1: a lot of light, while black and darkly shaded areas
Speaker 1: of the page, such as the letters on a text document,
Speaker 1: will reflect little to no light. And this light pattern
Speaker 1: reflects onto the drum, which is selectively electrically modified by it.
Speaker 1: So the area is hit by bright light become electrically neutralized,
Speaker 1: while the area is not hit by bright light retain
Speaker 1: their charge. And then the toner, which is a collection
Speaker 1: of these charged particles with some kind of pigmentation on them,
Speaker 1: that's then applied to the drum. And the toner has
Speaker 1: an opposite charge to the initial charge of the drums,
Speaker 1: so through static electricity, it sticks to whichever parts of
Speaker 1: the drum received less light, so for example, the marked
Speaker 1: parts of a document. And then the drum is applied
Speaker 1: to oppositely charged paper printing a copy of whatever was
Speaker 1: dark on the original page. And then finally the toner
Speaker 1: is fused to the page, usually by some combination of
Speaker 1: heat and pressure, which I guess probably some of that
Speaker 1: fusing process gives the pages coming out of a photocopy
Speaker 1: or also their own distinct smell, which I don't actually
Speaker 1: have very fond memories of. Really, I don't know, you're
Speaker 1: just describing it, and I kind of took me back
Speaker 1: to making for photo copying pages out of books in college. Uh,
Speaker 1: often times it felt like just way too many pages
Speaker 1: out of books and there would be a distance, like
Speaker 1: the paper kind it's all hot and has that odor
Speaker 1: to it. And I was also just thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the way it captures text and images.
Speaker 1: If you have if your page happen to have, say,
Speaker 1: a wood cut illustration on it, well that might transfer perfectly,
Speaker 1: depending how you know, ultimately dark the background is. But
Speaker 1: then if you had, say, uh, in a oil painting
Speaker 1: or something in there, some you know, classic work of art, uh,
Speaker 1: it might just come out as a black smudge on
Speaker 1: on your page. So so that, yeah, there were definitely
Speaker 1: limitations depending on what you were trying to duplicate through
Speaker 1: this through this machine. Yeah, I think the zerography technique
Speaker 1: would work better for original imagery that was already high contrast,
Speaker 1: and the wider the background the better, I think. I
Speaker 1: remember also running into that issue if you had like
Speaker 1: kind of dark paper, um or darker paper than the normal,
Speaker 1: you could end up with kind of a real grimy
Speaker 1: look to it that was difficult to read. But I'm
Speaker 1: talking about this technology like, we don't still use it today.
Speaker 1: You know, they're there there, you can still you can
Speaker 1: still have to find ready access to to xerox machines
Speaker 1: and so forth. Though there's I would argue, in many
Speaker 1: ways far less need for it than there once was,
Speaker 1: just because of how much duplication takes place purely in
Speaker 1: the digital realm. Now, yeah, unless you're going through a
Speaker 1: process where physical copies are required and uh and and
Speaker 1: so forth, then um, then yeah, you probably don't need
Speaker 1: to use this machine. And it began. It seems like
Speaker 1: we even in the over the past fifteen years, you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen more of a movement towards say, digital signatures
Speaker 1: on things, right, and so the era of digital document
Speaker 1: sharing and duplication has introduced. You know, it's solved a
Speaker 1: lot of problems that existed during the era of only
Speaker 1: physical duplication, but it's also introduced some new ones. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've already alluded to issues with security. Like originally, if
Speaker 1: you had a very sensitive document, say you wanted to
Speaker 1: show it to ten people, you could maybe show it
Speaker 1: to them and then collect all ten copies back and
Speaker 1: you'd know that you had all of them. Of course,
Speaker 1: it becomes harder to control that information in its original
Speaker 1: form if you're sharing it digitally. And of course there's
Speaker 1: a whole uh, you know, realm of digital security solutions
Speaker 1: that have evolved specifically to combat that kind of problem.
Speaker 1: But there's another problem I think that is faced in
Speaker 1: the era of limitless, lossless copying of of documents through
Speaker 1: digital means, and that is, uh, I guess, actually a
Speaker 1: suite of problems that have to do with the changing
Speaker 1: economics of like reading and detention time. So we used
Speaker 1: to live in a global situation of document scarcity where
Speaker 1: it was where it was you know, cost intensive to
Speaker 1: both in terms of like labor and economics to make
Speaker 1: copies of documents. So as one uh, almost maybe trivial
Speaker 1: sounding consequence of that, I wonder how much that encouraged
Speaker 1: brevity in documents actually, like, would would there be a
Speaker 1: pressure to be more short? And to the point about
Speaker 1: documents that you know, in a realm in which any
Speaker 1: copying of that document would have to be done by hand? Uh,
Speaker 1: And do documents have a tendency to grow unnecessarily long
Speaker 1: if there's no palpable cost associated with adding additional lines
Speaker 1: and pages to that document when you need to copy
Speaker 1: and share it. Yeah, that's a good point. This and
Speaker 1: this got me thinking about you know, really long novels
Speaker 1: and and how especially in paperback form, they could they
Speaker 1: could be often just like almost unreadable. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: we've talked about that in the past. One particular edition
Speaker 1: of Done that came out is a real eye strain,
Speaker 1: super tiny print. Yeah. Uh, but I was even just
Speaker 1: thinking as it applies to, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: documents you would share in a business context. Yeah, keep
Speaker 1: it to one page, because it's that much more of
Speaker 1: a pain to to go and then use the mimiograph
Speaker 1: machine to create two pages, or especially if this is
Speaker 1: before the mimiographing got somebody like typing out copies on
Speaker 1: a typewriter. I mean, this is a huge part of
Speaker 1: labor all. You know, even in the twentieth century when
Speaker 1: the mimiograph existed, there was a lot of labor that
Speaker 1: just went into typing copies of things on on carbon sheets. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing to think about it was when you
Speaker 1: get into the realm of the printing press and you
Speaker 1: get into the room of newspapers, and just like the
Speaker 1: physical layout of a newspaper, at times it's going to
Speaker 1: constrict you, but other times it's going to create extra
Speaker 1: space that then has to be filled. So there's an
Speaker 1: interesting sort of push and pull when you start thinking
Speaker 1: about like the physical demands of the medium and what
Speaker 1: they require you to do to fill that medium. There's
Speaker 1: another thought I was having that is along these lines,
Speaker 1: but framed a little bit differently. Um, and that's that.
Speaker 1: Another way to think about this is that over the
Speaker 1: course of the last few thousand years, we have transitioned
Speaker 1: from ah a regime of extreme documents scarcity. You know,
Speaker 1: like books were rare and extremely expensive, documents were incredibly
Speaker 1: laborious to make copies of, to not only an environment
Speaker 1: of document abundance, but an environment of document engorgement. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are overloaded with access to documents honestly, of which
Speaker 1: are of really no relevance to us. All the spam
Speaker 1: email you get that is people sharing documents with you
Speaker 1: that are not actually of interest to you. Uh And
Speaker 1: and this happens, you know, not just in your email
Speaker 1: in box, but all the time. I mean, you're You're
Speaker 1: constantly being presented with, especially digital access to pieces of
Speaker 1: written information that are competing for your time and attention,
Speaker 1: but they're not actually important to you. So when there's
Speaker 1: too much to read and too much to share with
Speaker 1: limitless lost less digital copying of documents, the problem of
Speaker 1: the world becomes not how do I get the information
Speaker 1: I need? But how do I tell which information is
Speaker 1: important and prioritize that. In fact, I would say that
Speaker 1: this is one of the major uh new problems created
Speaker 1: by the digital era, just being constantly presented with digital
Speaker 1: information that is essentially free for people to produce and
Speaker 1: put in front of you. So you're just constantly wading
Speaker 1: through all of this documentary noise to try to direct
Speaker 1: your attention to whatever information is actually of relevance to
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah, and even when you have constraints in place,
Speaker 1: like the fact that a lot of the books, I
Speaker 1: mean there are a lot of e books you can
Speaker 1: get for free, certainly, um, but then you do have
Speaker 1: to buy a lot of the books as well. But
Speaker 1: your major platforms are going to provide you with free samples,
Speaker 1: and so it's easy to just overload yourself with free
Speaker 1: samples of things that you might can receivably read and
Speaker 1: then are therefore easy to to then go on and
Speaker 1: purchase if you decide you're gonna keep going with it.
Speaker 1: Whereas when you're dealing with physical books, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're making these of the libraries with these things, but
Speaker 1: still like you can only check out so many physical
Speaker 1: books at a time, you could only probably buy so
Speaker 1: many physical books, or would only buy so many physical
Speaker 1: books at a time, and so there's a certain level
Speaker 1: of commitment. They're like, Okay, this is the book I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna go for. I'm gonna give this one
Speaker 1: a go, uh and I'll return it or if I
Speaker 1: don't want it, or you know, maybe I can trade
Speaker 1: it in or something. But um, now the options are
Speaker 1: they can certainly be overwhelming. I would say that the
Speaker 1: same sort of uh information over abundance problem applies even
Speaker 1: say within the controlled information flow of an office setting
Speaker 1: where you know, no disrespect to to one's bosses and
Speaker 1: co workers and all that. But I think anybody who
Speaker 1: works in an office is familiar with the problem of
Speaker 1: constantly receiving emails that are are not of any use
Speaker 1: to you, but you're they're taking your time because it
Speaker 1: was free to copy you on this email. So there's
Speaker 1: a massive amount of like lost productivity, even in in
Speaker 1: an office setting where there's limitless, lossless copying and sharing
Speaker 1: of documents, because you can share this document with everybody,
Speaker 1: so why not do it? But it will take people
Speaker 1: time of looking at that document to figure out that
Speaker 1: it's not actually useful to them and get back to
Speaker 1: whatever it is they needed to be doing. And then
Speaker 1: imagine maybe this happens dozens or hundreds of times a
Speaker 1: day for all of your employees, right right, Yeah, here
Speaker 1: it comes. It's a company wide email, Welcome Dale, and
Speaker 1: and then lo and behold. Sometimes it feels like hundreds
Speaker 1: of people do welcome Dale and go ahead and see
Speaker 1: see the entire company on their welcoming of Dale. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean in a way that's nice, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean kudos to Dale. He's a hard I mean welcoming
Speaker 1: people is nice, but I guess there probably are more
Speaker 1: and less tie and uh labor effective ways to do that.
Speaker 1: But then again, on the other hand, creating documents, duplicating documents,
Speaker 1: and getting to the people that need them. This has
Speaker 1: also led to the you know, it's a frequent almost
Speaker 1: a meme at this point, this meeting could have been
Speaker 1: an email, you know where Oftentimes it is easier to
Speaker 1: just create the document than to get everybody to even
Speaker 1: virtually a symbol for some sort of a meeting that
Speaker 1: is about the dissemination of information. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like the solution for a lot of the things we've
Speaker 1: been talking about is to keep a more human centric
Speaker 1: mindset when creating and sharing documents, Like remember that a
Speaker 1: document is a bid for somebody's time and attention, which
Speaker 1: is valuable, and so like, if you're going to make
Speaker 1: that document and you're going to share it with them,
Speaker 1: it's worth having a personal ethos, and if you're a
Speaker 1: company or something, having a company ethos of saying like,
Speaker 1: is this actually the best use of the time of
Speaker 1: the people I'm going to be sharing this with and
Speaker 1: being conscious of the fact that every time somebody gets
Speaker 1: another document shared with them, especially in a you know,
Speaker 1: high high information traffic environment, you are necessarily making their
Speaker 1: day a little more confusing, so you know, uh, it
Speaker 1: should at least have some information that is relevant or
Speaker 1: helpful to them, right, Okay, well we've we've come a
Speaker 1: long way. We you know, we we we live in
Speaker 1: this age now of hyper document duplication. But on on
Speaker 1: on another level, I mean, we are the human duplicators. Like,
Speaker 1: duplication of information has been a part of human civilization
Speaker 1: for a very long time. So I think it's a
Speaker 1: worthwhile experience, uh, and um an exercise to go through,
Speaker 1: at least in very broad strokes, the history of document
Speaker 1: duplication here. Uh, if you'd like to learn more about
Speaker 1: related topics, Yeah, we've covered writing books, various various other
Speaker 1: related topics on Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the past.
Speaker 1: You can find those episodes in this Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed. We have core episodes of our
Speaker 1: show that publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a
Speaker 1: listener mail episode that airs on Monday. On Wednesday, we
Speaker 1: do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
Speaker 1: on Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most of the science and technology and
Speaker 1: philosophy and history and just talk about a weird motion picture.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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