
The Mystery of the Phantom Page Turner - benbreen
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-mystery-of-the-phantom-page-turner/
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gumby
Most people apparently don't get the "uncut pages" joke in the Great Gatsby.

But I'd never heard of a page turner (except when describing a book itself).
It's hard to imagine how it could be useful!

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dogma1138
That's because people don't understand how books are made.

They were printed on a long paper then folded onto itself which creates the
pages and then stitched in the middle, the folds are then are cut on the sides
to free the pages.

Books today are usually precut and then glued, I did however encounter a few
books with the odd uncut page usually texts books.

Other than that page turners were and are used for high value books and in
some cases sacred books to avoid damage (or if touching the book is taboo)
Jewish synagogues for example use a "pointer" to read from the scroll it self
because those scrolls are usually to valuable to touch.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad)

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Finnucane
>Books today are usually precut and then glued,

Actually, most books are still printed from folded sheets. The folds are
shaved off the signatures in the bindery (3 sides for a sewn binding, 4 sides
for a glue bind).

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wtbob
When I was in college I found a number of books on the shelves which had uncut
pages; I used to just use my student ID to open them up. It'd have been great
to have had a paper knife to do the job.

Funny how folks forgot so quickly what uncut books were like, when we still
have them on our bookshelves today!

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madaxe_again
Yeah, our extortionately expensive physics text books at university came
completely uncut, as they were printed as cheaply as possible - didn't have a
paper knife, so ended up doing it by hand - ragged and torn pages everywhere!

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avip
Ivory and otter foot, together at last.

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Coincoin
I had never heard of a page turner before in my life and know nothing of
antiques in general. Yet, my first guess looking at the picture and before
reading the article was that it must have been some kind of dull knife for
opening uncut book pages.

Now you're telling me antique dealers couldn't figure this out before that guy
came in? I call bullshit.

