
For Centuries, Know-It-Alls Carried Beautiful Miniature Almanacs - pepys
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/miniature-almanacs
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andrewl
This article reminded me of Alan Kay's essay _Our Human Condition "From
Space"_ [1], which starts with a discussion of pocket globes:

My favorite examples of early science, and a wonderful general metaphor for
what science does, are the attempts at highly accurate map-making started by
the Greeks, then lost for a thousand years, and then taken up again starting
in the 15th century. By the end of the 1700s, people delighted in being able
to buy a pocket globe of "The World As Seen From Space". 200 years later, we
went out into space, looked back at the world, took pictures of it, and saw
just what the 18th century map makers had already found out.

[1]
[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf)

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millzlane
Reminds me of the Pocket Reference.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Ref)

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AnotherGoodName
Pears Cyclopaedia is one i grew up with. It was a tiny book with ~1000 tissue
paper thin pages that seemed to always have everything i needed. From
logarithmic tables and maths/physics functions to a periodic table.

I went to school before wikipedia and this book helped a lot.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pears%27_Cyclopaedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pears%27_Cyclopaedia)

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ggm
I have a copy of this from the turn of the century (last century) which says
(in paraphrase) _Physics: some recent developments from physicists such as Dr
Einstein & Prof. Bohr suggest there may be further changes in our
understanding of this field_ -It's pre quantum mechanics classical physics
admitting its on the cusp of a significant change..

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Felz
> Smartphones are equally as portable, too—but it’s hard to argue that they’re
> even half as lovely.

Actually, why not? You could find an endearing custom printed case, and to an
extent personalize the software in a lovely and unique way.

Is the problem that they're not rare/irreproducible enough to be a collector's
item? If so, will we eventually see collectors obsess over out of production
phones?

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jeanlucas
Just bad writing, just like when people automatically say "the old times were
better" without even analyzing if it's true

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whoisterencelee
Here is a modern version of Know-it-all, instead of looking things up, the
answer looks for you.

It works by adding a monetary incentive to any type of question you might
encounter, for example:

We all look up answers on our phones, but what are some questions which you
have not been able to look up and wish you can get answers to? Answer with
Obyte and earn up to 34,196 bytes:
[https://particiate.net?#@208](https://particiate.net?#@208)

~~~
knolax
Last comment was four years ago...

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irrational
I've always preferred the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook.

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fearhugs
Looks like an ancient version of the PDG review booklet

[http://pdg.lbl.gov/index.html](http://pdg.lbl.gov/index.html)

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exabrial
And now-a-days we have a smartphone and Wikipedia

