
An Archive of a Different Type - josephscott
http://blog.archive.org/2020/08/26/an-archive-of-a-different-type/
======
jacquesm
Nice wordplay.

What an incredible collection. Once again, the IA is one of the most important
bits to come out of the internet. Long after Facebook and Twitter are
forgotten (does anybody remember the name of the town crier in Alexandria?)
the Archive will hopefully continue to exist and will continue to amaze.

I learned how to type when I was 15 on one of those clunky old Scheidegger
machines with anonymized key caps. 40 years later I still use that skill every
day, so this article probably resonated with me for that reason alone.

But to see the physical part of the Archive really warms my heart, at least
one group has their eye firmly on the ball and is able to say 'we'll take all
of it' in cases like these.

~~~
yourapostasy
I sure hope the IA gets funded enough some day to get the kind of metrology
gear [1] it would take to scan in the physical artifacts like these
typewriters.

We don't have nanoscale metrology yet, but it would be nice to start at least
with this level of scanned-in measurements when the original manufacturing
descriptions and specs are long gone. Maybe then, one day our descendants will
thank us for the foresight to capture these relics in sufficient detail to
make their VR games' retro artifacts authentic.

[1]
[https://www.zeiss.com/metrology/home.html](https://www.zeiss.com/metrology/home.html)

~~~
metalliqaz
Funded enough? They probably won't even survive their recent library lending
fiasco.

~~~
EamonnMR
It's incredibly frustrating that a resource that holds so much unique content
and history decided that the hill it was going to die on was content that is
readily available elsewhere.

~~~
PostOnce
The content wasn't "readily available".

People were either locked at home, the libraries were closed, or else disease-
ridden.

Archive.org was providing knowledge in a time of emergency when people had no
other means of access to knowledge, and people who may have been out of work
due to a pandemic, and thus unable to afford to buy the stuff if it even was
available via mail.

It wasn't some trivial lark.

~~~
EamonnMR
I'm just not convinced that what they provided couldn'tve been provided just
as well by proper pirate sites, or that they are more discoverable than pirate
sites.

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earthboundkid
If you like this, you may also like [https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-
happens/issues/the-las...](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-
happens/issues/the-last-interview-262191) in which the author interviews Mr.
Tytell shortly before his death.

~~~
jacquesm
That's great writing, thank you very much for posting this link, it deserves a
thread of its own, if you submit I will definitely upvote.

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sanqui
Bless the Internet Archive, despite being fairly well known in tech circles it
doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

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jmholla
> Imagine you mount a letter wrong while crafting a typewriter, and it causes
> a country (Burma) to change that letter to accommodate your mistake.

Does anyone know the details behind this?

~~~
toomuchtodo
A few references I could find:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewri...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewriter-
man/376988/)

[http://languagehat.com/polyglot-
typewriting/](http://languagehat.com/polyglot-typewriting/)

~~~
yorwba
Linked from a comment in the languagehat article is the Wikipedia talk page
for the "Burmese alphabet" article, which puts that claim into doubt:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_inverted_due_to_typewriter_error%3F)

~~~
toomuchtodo
A friend is reaching out to Ian Frazer, who authored a piece called
"typewriter man" that references this claim, to obtain the provenance of it. I
will return to provide an update (and update Wikipedia), if something of
substance results.

If I don't return before the reply window closes for this thread, check
Wikipedia for those who encounter this thread in the future.

~~~
textfiles
I'm going to trust the family over Wikipedia.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I didn’t say they were lying. I thought it’d be enjoyable to keep pulling the
historical thread to see where it leads and codify it in a knowledge
repository of some permanence (stick the docs into an IA item, cite it in
Wikipedia). Scratching my digital historian itch, doing the future a favor,
that’s all.

Regardless, thanks for the post, I really enjoyed a peak into Pearl and
Martin’s work, and yours.

~~~
textfiles
I have a reaction when we've got years (and years and years) of this and
someone says "well, they're fighting about it on Wikipedia" like that means a
single darn thing.

Glad you like the stuff; always up for people having the specific link.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I don’t blame you at all. I just wanted to make my intent clear.

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userbinator
_Some of these books are very old; an 1892 treatise on the ins and outs of
bookkeeping was particularly beautiful._

One of the things I really like about books is the ease with which you can
immediately start reading one, despite it possibly being over a century old;
some things just have not changed much over time. It's a very refreshing
feeling for someone working in an industry obsessed with change and breaking
things every few months.

...and "prototype design drawings for the first HP laser printer" \---
definitely looking forward to seeing that one!

~~~
JohnBooty

         It's a very refreshing feeling for someone working 
         in an industry obsessed with change and breaking 
         things every few months.
    

I agree. The last few hobbies I've acquired are pretty mature and they appeal
to me for exactly that reason.

There are still exciting innovations occurring in each of these hobbies, but
for the most part, they were perfected to a large extent in previous decades.

------
082349872349872
It's excellent that they could, institutionally, release their set margins,
allowing carriage of such otherwise unjustified material.

~~~
myself248
I feel like you really had to hammer some of those puns in, but they really
made an impression on me.

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Cthulhu_
I love this and posts like it, it makes me want to quit my job and become an
archivist, just spend my time going through all of this material, digitizing
it and publishing about it and becoming a typewriter nerd even though I've
never used one outside of playing with old busted ones.

If I were a rich internet company, I'd gladly fund them gratuitously. For now,
a monthly contribution will have to do.

------
textfiles
Thanks for enjoying the article, everyone.

------
bluntfang
i think they mean a normal archive of physical materials. archivist have been
working with collections like these long before the internet archive existed.

~~~
compyman
It's a pun! :)

~~~
bluntfang
and archive.org doesn't listen to archivists

~~~
dublinben
Are Archive.org not themselves archivists?

~~~
bluntfang
according to the archivists i know, they are cowboys who don't listen to the
advice or follow the historic practices of archivists. For example, you should
ask permission before you archive something. You have the right to be
forgotten, and archive.org scoffs at that premise by ingesting and serving the
whole historic web without permission from the owners.

