Posts tagged History

MySpace was where you went in the past, WordPress and Movable Type were where people went if they had the patience and writing output to maintain a traditional blog, Facebook was where you went to define yourself by schools and checkboxes, and Tumblr was where you went to make your own identity and express your creativity.
Marco Arment (one of Tumblr’s early developers) in a nice little ode to David Karp and Tumblr, on Tumblr’s history and why he’s hopeful about Yahoo’s acquisition. If you’re still wary about the whole deal, it’s a nice read.

What Our Words Tell Us

This is interesting. 

David Brooks sifts through findings based on Google’s database of books published between 1500 and 2008 to see how frequently particular words were used at different epochs and then tells a story about how this reflects society’s cultural changes over time.

For example:

The first element in this story is rising individualism. A study by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile found that between 1960 and 2008 individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases.

That is to say, over those 48 years, words and phrases like “personalized,” “self,” “standout,” “unique,” “I come first” and “I can do it myself” were used more frequently. Communal words and phrases like “community,” “collective,” “tribe,” “share,” “united,” “band together” and “common good” receded.

And:

A study by Pelin Kesebir and Selin Kesebir found that general moral terms like “virtue,” “decency” and “conscience” were used less frequently over the course of the 20th century. Words associated with moral excellence, like “honesty,” “patience” and “compassion” were used much less frequently.

The Kesebirs identified 50 words associated with moral virtue and found that 74 percent were used less frequently as the century progressed. Certain types of virtues were especially hard hit. Usage of courage words like “bravery” and “fortitude” fell by 66 percent. Usage of gratitude words like “thankfulness” and “appreciation” dropped by 49 percent.

FJP: Granted the narrative he constructs based on these findings—that society has becoming more individualistic and less morally aware, for example—is prone to confirmation bias (which he admits), but it’s interesting to think about nonetheless.

Bonus: Explore the Google Books Ngram View here.

We knew what the people wanted: the same thing the Doors wanted. Freedom.

Ray Manzarek, legendary Doors co-founder and keyboardist, who passed away yesterday. RIP.

Rolling Stone:

Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek died today in Rosenheim, Germany, after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. 

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement.  “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.” 

Manzarek grew up in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to study film at UCLA. It was there he first met Doors singer Jim Morrison, though they didn’t talk about forming a band until they bumped into each other on a beach in Venice, California, in the summer of 1965 and Morrison told Manzarek that he had been working on some music. “And there it was!” Manzarek wrote in his 1998 biography, Light My Fire. “It dropped quite simply, quite innocently from his lips, but it changed our collective destinies.”

Read on.

Since <Blink> won’t blink in Blink, Firefox would be the only remaining browser that allows text to actually flash using the <Blink> element.

Vijit Assar, The Evolution of the Web, In a Blink, The New Yorker.

FJP: It must have been really fun to write that sentence. The whole piece is worth a read if you want an easy enough 101 on the history of internet browsers and what’s coming next. Which, if you use a web browser, you should. And it’s in The New Yorker, so you can show this to your grandma and maybe she’ll read it too.

Distraction Free Thinking Cap, 1925 Edition Consider this the anti-Google Glass. Via Pacific Standard: Decades before Twitter, Snapchat, and viral cat videos, inventor Hugo Gernsback bemoaned the difficulty of concentrating on desk work. Even back in the 1920s, noise from the street and the frequency with which “a telephone bell or a door bell rings somewhere … is sufficient, in nearly all cases, to stop the flow of thoughts,” he wrote. Even more perniciously: “You are your own disturber practically 50 percent of the time,” always willing to be distracted by the wallpaper’s pattern or a buzzing fly, he warned. Gernsback’s solution, presented in the July 1925 edition of Science and Invention magazine, was elegant in its simplicity, if not its design: the Isolator, a head-enveloping helmet that sealed out external sounds and sights. Narrow eye slits would prevent the wearer from seeing anything but a piece of paper directly in front of his or her face. As Pacific Standard points out, an oxygen tube was provided to help ward off drowsiness. Image: The Isolator, via Pacific Standard.

Distraction Free Thinking Cap, 1925 Edition

Consider this the anti-Google Glass.

Via Pacific Standard:

Decades before Twitter, Snapchat, and viral cat videos, inventor Hugo Gernsback bemoaned the difficulty of concentrating on desk work. Even back in the 1920s, noise from the street and the frequency with which “a telephone bell or a door bell rings somewhere … is sufficient, in nearly all cases, to stop the flow of thoughts,” he wrote. Even more perniciously: “You are your own disturber practically 50 percent of the time,” always willing to be distracted by the wallpaper’s pattern or a buzzing fly, he warned.

Gernsback’s solution, presented in the July 1925 edition of Science and Invention magazine, was elegant in its simplicity, if not its design: the Isolator, a head-enveloping helmet that sealed out external sounds and sights. Narrow eye slits would prevent the wearer from seeing anything but a piece of paper directly in front of his or her face.

As Pacific Standard points out, an oxygen tube was provided to help ward off drowsiness.

Image: The Isolator, via Pacific Standard.

The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi Via Slate: Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret. When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene: “[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.” We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon. Overview: How the United States kept him silent for 12 years. Part 01: Endless Interrogations. Part 02: Disappeared. Part 03: Family. Timeline of Slahi&#8217;s detention. Image: Handwritten page from Mohamedou Ould Slahi&#8217;s memoir (PDF), via Slate.

The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Via Slate:

Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret.

When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:

“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”

We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon.

Overview: How the United States kept him silent for 12 years.

Part 01: Endless Interrogations.

Part 02: Disappeared.

Part 03: Family.

Timeline of Slahi’s detention.

Image: Handwritten page from Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir (PDF), via Slate.

A newspaper published a story about the Surgeon General’s office that contained information about the size and location of the Army of the Potomac. A furious Hooker complained to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that the chief of the Secret Service “would have willingly paid $1,000 for such information” about Confederate forces.

Ford Risely, The New York Times, Birth of the Byline.

Risley, a professor of communications and head of Penn State’s journalism department takes us through Civil War era journalism and how the byline came to be.

Indeed, during the first two years of the war, an increasingly aggressive and competitive press had published stories that infuriated military leaders on both sides. The Civil War was the first war widely covered by American newspapers. And in their zeal to report the greatest event of their lives, newsmen produced a decidedly mixed bag of stories.

On one hand, many reporters honestly and faithfully chronicled the fighting. Tireless correspondents went to extraordinary lengths to report stories, often on tight deadlines. However, other newsmen mistakenly, and in some cases recklessly, reported the conflict. Correspondents less concerned with the facts and more interested in rushing stories into print wrote damaging stories that hurt their side.

Following the journalistic practice of the day, correspondents wrote anonymously during the war, most using a pen name or no name at all. Newsmen liked the custom, believing the secrecy allowed them do their work better. As one reporter wrote, “The anonymous greatly favors freedom and boldness in newspaper correspondence … . Besides the responsibility it fastens on a correspondent, the signature inevitably detracts from the powerful impersonality of a journal.”

However, commanders did not like the practice because newsmen often could not be held accountable for what they wrote. McClellan had complained to Stanton of reporters repeatedly “giving important information” about the Army in their stories. “As it is impossible for me to ascertain with certainty who these anonymous writers are,” he wrote, “I beg to suggest that another order be published holding the editors responsible for its infraction.”

After the news leak, General Order No. 48 was issued, which required that all reporters with the Army of the Potomac—of which Hooker (mentioned above) was commander—“publish their communications over their own signatures.” 

And the byline was born.

Related: A few more thoughts on journalism history from our archives.

Hello, Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America launched today with &#8220;photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States.&#8221; Its goal is to create &#8220;an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that would draw on the nation’s living heritage from libraries, universities, archives, and museums in order to educate, inform, and empower everyone in current and future ­generations.” Exhibitions are here. And your inner hacker can access the DPLA&#8217;s API here. Yes, the library has an API, which is awesome. One app currently using it is the Library Observatory: Library Observatory is an interactive tool for searching and visualizing the DPLA collections, accompanied by an interactive documentary that weaves together history, visualizations, and audio about the making, use, and enduring significance of library data and the collections they describe. Another app searches both the DPLA and Europeana, a European project similar to it, simultaneously giving results from each. Start exploring.

Hello, Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America launched today with “photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States.”

Its goal is to create “an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that would draw on the nation’s living heritage from libraries, universities, archives, and museums in order to educate, inform, and empower everyone in current and future ­generations.”

Exhibitions are here. And your inner hacker can access the DPLA’s API here. Yes, the library has an API, which is awesome. One app currently using it is the Library Observatory:

Library Observatory is an interactive tool for searching and visualizing the DPLA collections, accompanied by an interactive documentary that weaves together history, visualizations, and audio about the making, use, and enduring significance of library data and the collections they describe.

Another app searches both the DPLA and Europeana, a European project similar to it, simultaneously giving results from each.

Start exploring.

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg Survival Facts: If you were a third class passenger, your chance of survival was 25 percent First class passengers had a 62 percent survival rate. Second class passengers had a 41 percent survival rate. The crew had a 24 percent survival rate. Fun Fact: What happened to the iceberg? Bonus: Images of the Titanic wreck made by stitching together hundreds of optical and sonar images collected by robots via Scientific American Woods Whole Oceanographic Institute, and National Geographic. Image: April 16, 1912 edition of the New York Times.

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg

Survival Facts: If you were a third class passenger, your chance of survival was 25 percent

First class passengers had a 62 percent survival rate. Second class passengers had a 41 percent survival rate. The crew had a 24 percent survival rate.

Fun Fact: What happened to the iceberg?

Bonus: Images of the Titanic wreck made by stitching together hundreds of optical and sonar images collected by robots via Scientific American Woods Whole Oceanographic Institute, and National Geographic.

Image: April 16, 1912 edition of the New York Times.

Jackie Robinson

todaysdocument:

Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. This decision would not only integrate baseball, but would help the country work to achieve equal rights for all. Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., once commented to baseball pitcher Don Newcombe, “Don, you and Jackie will never know how easy you made my job, through what you went through on the baseball field.”

Before becoming famous, Lt. Jack R. Robinson was court-martialed at Camp Hood, Texas, because he refused to move to the back of the bus after being told to do so by a bus driver and disobeying an order from a superior officer. Robinson was acquitted of all charges and received an honorable discharge, but this was not the only experience he would have in fighting discrimination.

After retiring from baseball, Robinson turned much of his attention to civil rights issues. He wrote to several Presidents about the cause, and even attended the March on Washington.

Many of these milestone events from Robinson’s life are documented in primary sources from the National Archives.

via The Rest of 42’s Story: Jackie Robinson as Civil Rights Activist

FJP: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives,” Robinson wrote in his autobiography. “I cannot possibly believe I have it made while so many of my black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.”

Happy Birthday, Joseph Pulitzer! Today in 1847, the legendary Joseph P. was born. He&#8217;s also the namesake of Columbia J-school and we&#8217;re getting cupcakes on his behalf today, so here&#8217;s a nod, a smile, and a question in his direction.&#8212;Jihii Q: How does the half-Jewish, half-Roman Catholic man from Hungary behind yellow journalism get to be remembered as the father of great American journalism and a great American journalism school? A: His contributions outweigh his slip-ups, he was incredibly enterprising, and he got a lot of things done.  For starters, he wanted to be in army but was rejected on account of his sickliness till he met a bounty recruiter for the US Union Army, enlisted in the Lincoln Cavalry for a year, then worked his way to St. Louis as a muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter. His journalism career began with a job at a German language daily, and some significant hops, skips and jumps later (including ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), he bought the The New York World, which was in dire financial states. The yellow journalism period came into full play during a four month long circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst&#8217;s Journal.  Pulitzer.org: In the view of historians, Pulitzer&#8217;s lapse into &#8220;yellow journalism&#8221; was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry. Notable accomplishments include tremendous improvements in circulation of both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The New York World, innovations such as the first extensive use of illustrations in the paper, exposing tremendous corruption, crazy news stunts (such as the time he raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York Harbor for the Statue of Liberty to be emplaced), and of course, Columbia J-school and the Pulitzer Prizes. Read his full bio here. Image: via Kenmore Stamp Company.

Happy Birthday, Joseph Pulitzer!

Today in 1847, the legendary Joseph P. was born. He’s also the namesake of Columbia J-school and we’re getting cupcakes on his behalf today, so here’s a nod, a smile, and a question in his direction.—Jihii

Q: How does the half-Jewish, half-Roman Catholic man from Hungary behind yellow journalism get to be remembered as the father of great American journalism and a great American journalism school?

A: His contributions outweigh his slip-ups, he was incredibly enterprising, and he got a lot of things done. 

For starters, he wanted to be in army but was rejected on account of his sickliness till he met a bounty recruiter for the US Union Army, enlisted in the Lincoln Cavalry for a year, then worked his way to St. Louis as a muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter. His journalism career began with a job at a German language daily, and some significant hops, skips and jumps later (including ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), he bought the The New York World, which was in dire financial states. The yellow journalism period came into full play during a four month long circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst’s Journal. 

Pulitzer.org:

In the view of historians, Pulitzer’s lapse into “yellow journalism” was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry.

Notable accomplishments include tremendous improvements in circulation of both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The New York World, innovations such as the first extensive use of illustrations in the paper, exposing tremendous corruption, crazy news stunts (such as the time he raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York Harbor for the Statue of Liberty to be emplaced), and of course, Columbia J-school and the Pulitzer Prizes.

Read his full bio here.

Image: via Kenmore Stamp Company.

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.

Henry Kissinger, in a 1975 conversation at the Foreign Minister’s Office in Ankara, Turkey. WikiLeaks, Cable 0860114-1573.

Background, via Slate:

Wikileaks released a searchable database of over 1.7 million diplomatic cables from the years 1973 to 1976 today. Because so many of them — over 200,000 — are connected to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the collection is being informally dubbed the “Kissinger Cables.” But unlike previous Wikileaks document collections, this release isn’t a whistleblower leak. Instead, it’s the result of an effort to obtain and organize public documents obtained from the National Archives and Record Administration.

So, what’s in them? The findings, so far, are more interesting than they are damning. In that light, the “Kissinger Cables,” officially called “PlusD,” seem most notable as a well-organized, historical archive of the scope, tone, and depth of U.S. diplomacy around the world.

FJP: Pesky FOIA.

The Beauty of Letterpress

The Beauty of Letterpress is a new site showcasing the beauty and innovation of letterpress work today in an effort to assist the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in its move from its current Wisconsin location to a new one.

The site contains image galleries of letterpress examples and will have a monthly design issue curated by designers that highlight their favorite project. The premiere issue is called Form and Function and explores moveable type and the influence modern technology is having on it.

About the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum:

With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and more than 1,000 styles and sizes of patterns, Hamilton’s collection is one of the premier wood type collections in the world. In addition to wood type, the Museum is home to an amazing array of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s, and all of the equipment necessary to make wood type and print with it, as well as equipment used in the production of hot metal type, tools of the craft and rare type specimen catalogs.

The Hamilton Museum is a non-profit and is looking to raise $250,000 to help move its 30,000 square feet of printing history.

Walter Cronkite’s Home Office of the 21st Century (circa 1967)

Check out the Smithsonian’s Paleofuture Blog (which documents the history of the future than never was) for a full tour of the home of 2001.

Video: via paleofuturist Matt Novak.