The persistence of scrolls
Random pointless thoughts.

When I 'build' and animate various devices, I have to study the real thing via patents and descriptions. I perform the same sequence of actions in paid courseware or blog animations. The mental process of putting it all together and making it move properly helps me to see why it's built the way it is; helps to understand the motives of the inventor and the perceived needs of the situation. (With courseware, the devices are alive and the inventor is God, but my end of the procedure is the same.)

Latest example, the Webster Chicago. I knew that it was favored by police but I didn't understand WHY until I formed up the shapes and pieces.

Overall this is tautologous. Learning by doing is the ONLY way to learn. Building the real physical object with metal and wood and resistors and tubes would bring vastly more learning, but it would also be vastly more expensive in tools and time and labor. Some of these devices would take years to build. Virtual is a pretty good compromise.

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One small common point that converges in many of these devices is the use of rolled-up paper or scrolls. The Hall brailler and the Hammond typewriter stored a roll of paper inside the carriage, and pulled it out to type on it. Dictaphone cylinders were a scrollish representation of sound, and the metadata sheets were rolled up inside. Pigeons carried messages in rolled-up form. Wire recorders and tape recorders scrolled the wire off one reel and onto the other.

These were all invented before 1910. Other household devices like windowshades and toilet paper were also earlier inventions.

The opposite of scrolls is pages. Flat pieces of sheepskin or bark or paper fastened to a central stalk or spine.

Which is more natural? Pages. Leaves on a stem, ribs on a spine. The names give it away. Scrolls aren't found in nature. Scrolls are a purely human invention. Flowerbuds are sort of halfway rolled up, but they don't unwrap like a scroll; they unfold like pages. (Radial pages, a technique rarely used in human inventions.)

Before 1500, scrolls were the only way to hold written messages. Printing started the move toward pages. From 1910 to 1990, scrolls were almost entirely gone from everyday life. Books and magazines were the only way of reading and writing. Windowshades were replaced by page-style venetian blinds. Only toilet paper and Scotch Tape continued the scrolling tradition.

In 1990 we resumed scrolling on computer screens. After a decade of competition between virtual paging and virtual scrolling, the latter has decisively won. Of course digital paper doesn't bend, and we don't show the cylinders above and below the screen, but we imagine them.

Why did scrolls fade out? Again the wire recorder tells the story, but toilet paper already made it clear. Pulling paper or wire OFF a scroll or reel is easy. Putting it back ON takes special techniques, and even with the techniques it sometimes fails. Toilet paper continues in everyday use because it's strictly a one-way process.

Scrolling succeeds on a computer because the cylinders aren't really there.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, Experiential education

  ¶ 6:48 AM