Friday, July 10, 2020
Why so much French?
In the last few years I've been focusing a lot on old French technology and the French history that goes with it. Especially heavy this week.
Why? Not from familiarity. I don't have any French ancestry, have never been to any French places, and have only vaguely known one Frenchman. I did own and love a Renault for a while, but I owned a lot more VWs.
Mostly it's just drunk streetlight. The old French books on technology have MUCH better pictures! The diagrams are clear, and the books often have lively and dramatic illustrations of the history and use of the tech. British and American and German books are vastly inferior in this area.
But there's something outside the visual field of the streetlight. French technology, including the Renault I owned, has a humanistic flavor that's hard to define. The controls are designed to use human skills and express human language and emotions.
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Semirelevant sidenote: Old French tech books generally have the table of contents at the back, along with the plates and figures. So I'm accustomed to starting at the back in those PDFs. The first thing you see is the checkout slip.
Old books found in the Old Stacks of college libraries weren't checked out often. Back when I was exploring those Old Stacks physically, I was often the first checkout for a book that had been there several decades.
Here's an extreme case:
This book was checked out just once, in May 1880.
This book was checked out just once, in May 1880.Labels: Asked and sort of answered, skill-estate
¶ 3:34 PM
