The Scottosphere

pen, print, and paper

2008-11-15T22:28:45Z

Portland printer David Wolfe’s lecture, “Letterpress: The Conduit of Knowledge,” was an eagerly anticipated part of this rainy weekend. Unfortunately, while Wolfe is apparently a fine printer, he is not the most riveting public speaker. Disappointed, I sought to claim more value from my admission ticket by walking the floor of the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair.

There was a wealth of very old stuff—a mix of nicely ornamented but inaccurate maps and beautiful leather-bound volumes—from sellers as near as New England and as distant as the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. How about a 1713 edition of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica? The binding is in “like new” condition! I’ve seen old books before, but the book fair differs from museums and libraries in a number of ways. One can hold and browse pretty much anything. Many sellers will talk endlessly in praise of a piece, offering interesting historical context. And if beautiful print is not enough for you, many titles bear inscriptions penned by famous hands.

Something about the handwritten inscription captivates me. I saw the signatures of Marie Curie and Charles Lindbergh. Sir Ernest Shackleton dedicated his massive tome, The Heart of the Antarctic, to someone long forgotten. Ah, the age of discovery and exploration! Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded one copy of Moby Dick to a kid who won a school contest. (That book is now worth $2500.) John F. Kennedy wrote an indecipherably messy gift message for a copy of Profiles in Courage on a White House business card. “Joe Heller” dedicated an early copy of Catch-22 to a “fellow airman.”

There was plenty of ephemera. Some were very reasonably priced, like a program from the funeral of William Henry Harrison (not autographed). Others were more extravagant, like an 1860 copy of Base Ball Player’s Pocket Companion ($20,000).

One bookseller had a copy of Claude Shannon‘s 1937 master’s thesis—the one which demonstrates for the first time that Boolean algebra, and therefore computers, could solve any numerical problem. There was also a copy of the Bell System Technical Journal in which Shannon outlined some of the fundamentals of cryptography. Once it was established that we all went to MIT (I, the bookseller, and Claude Shannon), a 1904 handout appeared, documenting the details of the proposed merger between MIT and Harvard. It was marked “Confidential.”

The craziest binding clearly belonged to a book by Belgian artist Edgar Claes, whose cover is a colorful meshwork of interconnected gears.

The document that held my attention the longest was also one of the most plain. It was a simple card on stationery marked “SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.” It informed the bearer that he was about to “embark upon the Great Crusade” in Normandy. In closing, it offered: “Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” [signed] Dwight Eisenhower

It can be yours for $6500.

kodak: film is far from dead

2008-11-15T02:13:20Z

Film is far from dead and is making a 'significant' comeback this year, especially among 'young professionals', according to Kodak's US HQ headquarters. After several years of 'double-digit decline', Kodak tells us that certain black & white films are bucking the downward trend in demand among professional photographers in Western Europe and the US.

...Reports from young professional photographers in particular suggest that film is 'in vogue' once again, according to the firm. The student market has helped buoy sales, which, Kodak asserts, 'may be even a little better' than last year.

—Amateur Photographer Magazine, November 6, 2008

organ at trinity church, boston

2008-11-14T02:59:47Z

Michael Kleinschmidt plays Saint-Saëns on the organ at Trinity Church, November 1, 2008.

voting booth photo booth

2008-11-10T03:51:50Z

A spirited election season such as this one called for a spirited party. And what better to build for a post-election party than a full-scale voting booth that takes your picture when you vote?

I built this voting booth entirely out of scrap wood. The side pieces of masonite are reinforced with Dexion at the top to withstand emphatic pulling of the curtains. A fluorescent light illuminates the “voting” area (Sharpie markers provided). The voting handle, which looks suspiciously like an old hockey stick, moves smoothly in a machined plastic block. Elastic bands in the back (see picture to the right) give the handle a bistable spring action. A microswitch detects when the voting handle is thrown to the right. The switch input connects to a serial port on a FreeBSD machine, where a custom C program detects the “vote.” Using libgphoto2, the program remotely controls a USB-tethered digital SLR mounted overhead. The picture is taken, immediately transferred back to the computer, and deleted from the memory card. The program drops the image onto a Web site, updating a link so that within seconds, an auto-refreshing Web page displays the latest picture full-screen on a nearby monitor.

After the early demise of 2006’s earthquake dance floor, I wanted to make this one completely indestructable, so I used the most badass limit switch in my parts bin. Unfortunately there is only so much you can do to withstand the gentle touch of dozens of drunk people confronted with a 12 inch lever. The switch fell apart later in the evening, but amazingly I was able to get it going again with just a couple of bolts and some electrical tape.

But enough with the technical details—on to the evening's pictures!

a musical interlude

2008-11-02T16:57:30Z

I should feel privileged to live down the street from Boston’s Trinity Church, the striking stone edifice in Copley Square that the AIA still considers one of the ten most significant buildings in the United States. I pass it nearly every day, but somehow I had never bothered to explore it. Finally yesterday, on the occasion of the church’s 275th anniversary, I stepped inside for the first time.

An architect was on hand to explain some of the more unique features of the church’s design, like the 4500 fir piles on which the church’s foundation depends and the subterranean granite pyramids which spread the load from the four massive central columns. (Perhaps contrary to Biblical advice, it is built not on solid rock but landfill.) He also filled in some gaps in my knowledge of local history: Trinity’s late 19th century rector, Phillips Brooks, had already achieved some fame for his sermon at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. But it was in Brooks’s rejection of 9 more established architects for the construction of the 1873 church building—awarding the commission instead to his little-known college buddy H. H. Richardson—that Brooks probably made his most lasting mark on society. Trinity Church propelled Richardson to fame, established a new genre of architecture, launched the careers of artists such as John La Farge, and left Boston with a world-class building.

Organist Michael Kleinschmidt demonstrated Trinity’s large pipe organ—actually two physically distinct organs played from the same console. He opened with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” (written, as it happens, by Phillips Brooks) then invited us to walk around while he played Danse Macabre, chosen for the wide variety of voices it demonstrates and the proximity to Halloween. I took some pictures, which, given the present backlog, you might expect to see in a few years.