The First Transit Map: a Close Look at the Subway-Style Tabula Peutingeriana of the 5th-Century Roman Empire

in History, Maps | September 12th, 2022

The first sub­way train, as we know such things today, entered ser­vice in 1890. Its path is now part of the North­ern line of the Lon­don Under­ground, itself the first urban metro sys­tem. The suc­cess of the Tube, as it’s com­mon­ly known, did­n’t come right away; the whole thing was on the brink of fail­ure, in fact, before cre­ations like 1914’s Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town aid­ed its pub­lic under­stand­ing and bol­stered its pub­lic image.


At the time, Britain still com­mand­ed a great empire with Lon­don as its cap­i­tal; the Won­der­ground Map placed the Lon­don Under­ground in the con­text of the city, mak­ing leg­i­ble the still fair­ly nov­el con­cept of an under­ground train sys­tem with copi­ous whim­si­cal detail.

Nor was the Roman Empire any­thing to sneeze at, even dur­ing the fourth and fifth cen­turies after its decline had set in. Though it came up with some still-impres­sive inven­tions, includ­ing long-last­ing con­crete and mon­u­men­tal aque­ducts, the tech­nol­o­gy to build and oper­ate a sub­way sys­tem still lay some way off.


But that did­n’t stop Mar­cus Vip­sa­nius Agrip­pa, a gen­er­al, archi­tect, and friend of emper­or Augus­tus, from com­mis­sion­ing a map of the empire that read more or less like Mas­si­mo Vignel­li’s 1972 map of the New York sub­way. That ambi­tious work of car­tog­ra­phy, his­to­ri­ans now believe, inspired the Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana, which sur­vives today as the only large world map from antiq­ui­ty. The video above from Youtu­ber Jere­my Shuback approach­es the Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana as “the first tran­sit map,” despite its dat­ing from the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, and even then prob­a­bly being a copy of a fourth- or fifth-cen­tu­ry orig­i­nal.


While the Roman Empire did­n’t have elec­tric trains and pay­ment cards, they did, of course, have tran­sit: the word descends from the Latin tran­sire, “go across.” Many a Roman had to go across, if not the whole empire, then at least large stretch­es of it. In the­o­ry, they would have found a map like Tab­u­la use­ful, with its sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of geog­ra­phy in order to empha­size city-to-city con­nec­tions. But that was­n’t its pri­ma­ry pur­pose: as Shuback puts it, this over­sized map of all lands dom­i­nat­ed by the Romans was “made to brag.” Who­ev­er owned it sure­ly want­ed to imply that they pos­sessed not just a map, but the world itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hear Queen Elizabeth II Give Her Very First Speech to the British People, During World War II (1940)

in History | September 9th, 2022

“Her Majesty’s a pret­ty nice girl, but she does­n’t have a lot to say,” sings Paul McCart­ney on the Bea­t­les’ “Her Majesty.” That com­ic song clos­es Abbey Road, the last album the band ever record­ed, and thus puts a cap on their brief but won­drous cul­tur­al reign. In 2002 McCart­ney played the song again, in front of Queen Eliz­a­beth II her­self as part of her Gold­en Jubilee cel­e­bra­tions. Ear­li­er this year her Plat­inum Jubilee marked a full 70 years on the throne, but now — 53 years after that cheeky trib­ute on Abbey Road — Her Majesty’s own reign has drawn to a close with her death at the age of 96. She’d been Queen since 1953, but she’d been a British icon since at least the Sec­ond World War.

In Octo­ber 1940, at the height of the Blitz, Prime Min­is­ter Win­ston Churchill asked King George VI to allow his daugh­ter, the four­teen-year-old Princess Eliz­a­beth, to make a morale-boost­ing speech on the radio. Record­ed in Wind­sor Cas­tle after intense prepa­ra­tion and then broad­cast on the BBC’s Chil­dren’s Hour, it was osten­si­bly addressed to the young peo­ple of Britain and its empire.

“Evac­u­a­tion of chil­dren in Britain from the cities to the coun­try­side start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 1939,” says BBC.com, with ulti­mate des­ti­na­tions as far away as Cana­da. “It is not dif­fi­cult for us to pic­ture the sort of life you are all lead­ing, and to think of all the new sights you must be see­ing and the adven­tures you must be hav­ing,” Princess Eliz­a­beth tells them. “But I am sure that you, too, are often think­ing of the old coun­try.”

In the event, mil­lions of young and old around the world heard the broad­cast, which arguably served Churchill’s own goal of encour­ag­ing Amer­i­can par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war. But it also gave Britons a pre­view of the dig­ni­ty and forth­right­ness of the woman who would become their Queen, and remain so for an unprece­dent­ed sev­en decades. As Paul McCart­ney implied, Queen Eliz­a­beth II turned out not to be giv­en to pro­longed flights of rhetoric. But though she may not have had a lot to say, she invari­ably spoke in pub­lic at the prop­er moment, in the prop­er words, and with the prop­er man­ner. Today one won­ders whether this admirable per­son­al qual­i­ty, already in short sup­ply among mod­ern rulers, has­n’t van­ished entire­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Win­ston Churchill Prais­es the Virtue of “Brevi­ty” in Mem­os to His Staff: Con­cise Writ­ing Leads to Clear­er Think­ing

How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Train­ing Film from 1943, Fea­tur­ing Burgess Mered­ith

Watch Col­orized 1940s Footage of Lon­don after the Blitz: Scenes from Trafal­gar Square, Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus, Buck­ing­ham Palace & More

Win­ston Churchill’s List of Tips for Sur­viv­ing a Ger­man Inva­sion: See the Nev­er-Dis­trib­uted Doc­u­ment (1940)

Watch Annie Lei­bovitz Pho­to­graph and Get Scold­ed by Queen Eliz­a­beth: “What Do You Think This Is?”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When Sliced Bread Got Banned During World War II

in Food & Drink, History, Video - Politics/Society | September 9th, 2022

Home baked sour­dough had its moment dur­ing the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, but oth­er­wise bread has been much maligned through­out the 21st cen­tu­ry, at least in the West­ern World, where carbs are vil­i­fied by body-con­scious con­sumers.

This was hard­ly the case on Jan­u­ary 18, 1943, when Amer­i­cans woke up to the news that the War Foods Admin­is­tra­tion, head­ed by Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture Claude R. Wickard, had banned the sale of sliced bread.

The rea­sons dri­ving the ban were a bit murky, though by this point, Amer­i­cans were well acquaint­ed with rationing, which had already lim­it­ed access to high-demand items as sug­ar, cof­fee, gaso­line and tires.

Though why sliced bread, of all things?

Might depriv­ing the pub­lic of their beloved pre-sliced bread help the war effort, by free­ing up some crit­i­cal resource, like steel?

Not accord­ing to The His­to­ry Guy, Lance Geiger, above.

War pro­duc­tion reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it­ed the sale of indus­tri­al bread slic­ing equip­ment for the dura­tion, though pre­sum­ably, exist­ing com­mer­cial bak­eries wouldn’t have been in the mar­ket for more machines, just the odd repair part here and there.

Wax paper then? It kept sliced bread fresh pri­or to the inven­tion of plas­tic bags. Per­haps the Allies had need of it?

No, unlike nylon, there were no short­ages of waxed paper.

Flour had been strict­ly reg­u­lat­ed in Great Britain dur­ing the first World War, but this wasn’t a prob­lem state­side in WWII, where it remained rel­a­tive­ly cheap and easy to pro­cure, with plen­ty left­over to sup­ply over­seas troops. 1942’s wheat crop had been the sec­ond largest on record.

There were oth­er ratio­nales hav­ing to do with elim­i­nat­ing food waste and reliev­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sure for bak­ers, but none of these held up upon exam­i­na­tion. This left the War Pro­duc­tion Office, the War Price Admin­is­tra­tion, and the Office of Agri­cul­ture vying to place blame for the ban on each oth­er, and in some cas­es, the Amer­i­can bak­ing indus­try itself!

While the ill con­sid­ered ban last­ed just two months, the pub­lic uproar was con­sid­er­able.

Although pre-sliced bread hadn’t been around all that long, in the thir­teen-and-a-half years since its intro­duc­tion, con­sumers had grown quite depen­dent on its con­ve­nience, and how nice­ly those uni­form slices fit into the slots of their pop up toast­ers, anoth­er recent­ly-patent­ed inven­tion.

A great plea­sure of the His­to­ry Guy’s cov­er­age is the name check­ing of local news­pa­pers cov­er­ing the Sliced Bread Ban:

The Lodi News-Sen­tinel!

The Har­ris­burg Tele­graph! 

The Indi­anapo­lis Star! 

An absence of data did not pre­vent a reporter for the Wilm­ing­ton News Jour­nal from spec­u­lat­ing that “it is believed that the major­i­ty of Amer­i­can house­wives are not pro­fi­cient bread slicers.”

One such house­wife, hav­ing spent a hec­tic morn­ing hack­ing a loaf into toast and sand­wich­es for her hus­band and chil­dren, wrote a let­ter to the New York Times, pas­sion­ate­ly declar­ing “how impor­tant sliced bread is to the morale and sane­ness of a house­hold.”

The more stiff upper lipped patri­o­tism of Ver­mont home eco­nom­ics instruc­tor Doris H. Steele found a plat­form in the Barre Times:

In Grandmother’s day, the loaf of bread had a reg­u­lar place at the fam­i­ly table. Grand­moth­er had an attrac­tive board for the bread to stand on and a good sharp knife along­side. Grand­moth­er knew that a steady hand and a sharp knife were the secrets of slic­ing bread. She sliced as the fam­i­ly asked for bread and in this way, she didn’t waste any bread by cut­ting more than the fam­i­ly could eat. Let’s all con­tribute to the war effort by slic­ing our own bread.

Then, as now, celebri­ties felt com­pelled to weigh in.

New York City May­or Fiorel­lo LaGuardia found it ludi­crous that bak­eries should be pre­vent­ed from putting their exist­ing equip­ment to use.

And Hol­ly­wood actress Olivia de Hav­il­land approved of the ban on the grounds that pack­aged slices were too thick.

Watch more of the His­to­ry Guy’s videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the World’s Only Sour­dough Library

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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See the First 8K Footage of the Titanic, the Highest-Quality Video of the Shipwreck Yet

in History | September 8th, 2022


First the Titan­ic was claimed by the ocean; now it’s being eat­en by the ocean. “The icon­ic ocean lin­er that was sunk by an ice­berg is now slow­ly suc­cumb­ing to met­al-eat­ing bac­te­ria,” the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ Ben Fin­ley report­ed last year. “Holes per­vade the wreck­age, the crow’s nest is already gone and the rail­ing of the ship’s icon­ic bow could col­lapse at any time.” Giv­en the loss to bac­te­ria of “hun­dreds of pounds of iron a day,” some pre­dic­tions indi­cate that “the ship could van­ish in a mat­ter of decades as holes yawn in the hull and sec­tions dis­in­te­grate.”

This makes the doc­u­men­ta­tion of this best-known of all ship­wrecks a more press­ing mat­ter than ever — and, inci­den­tal­ly, pro­vides a con­ve­nient rea­son for enter­pris­ing ocean-explor­ers to pro­mote and sell the expe­ri­ence of Titan­ic tourism.

“Ocean­Gate, a pri­vate­ly owned under­wa­ter explo­ration com­pa­ny found­ed in 2009, began offer­ing annu­al jour­neys to the wreck of the Titan­ic in 2021,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Michelle Har­ris. “This year, civil­ian ‘mis­sion spe­cial­ists’ paid $250,000 each for the priv­i­lege of join­ing div­ing experts, his­to­ri­ans and sci­en­tists on the expe­di­tion.”

Ocean­Gate’s lat­est expe­di­tion pro­duced the video above. It fea­tures a brief clip of footage of the Titan­ic in 8K res­o­lu­tion, the high­est-qual­i­ty video yet used to shoot the ship in its final rest­ing place two and a half miles beneath the North Atlantic. (Stephen Low’s 1992 doc­u­men­tary Titan­i­ca used IMAX film, an extreme­ly high-res­o­lu­tion medi­um but one dif­fi­cult to com­pare with mod­ern dig­i­tal video.) That lev­el of detail cap­tures aspects of the Titan­ic pre­vi­ous­ly only sug­gest­ed in pho­tographs, or indeed nev­er before seen — at least not in this ruinous and eeri­ly majes­tic sub­o­cean­ic state. The sur­vivors of the sink­ing are all long gone, but how long will the ship itself be able to reveal its secrets to us?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in This Real-Time 3D Ani­ma­tion

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When Mikhail Gorbachev, the Last Soviet Leader, Starred in a Pizza Hut Commercial (1998)

in History, Politics, Television | September 8th, 2022

Mikhail Gor­bachev, the 8th and final leader of the Sovi­et Union, died last month at age 91, a news event that trig­gered respons­es rang­ing from “Who?” to “Wow, was he still alive?” The first response reflects poor­ly on the teach­ing of his­to­ry: jour­nal­ists report­ing on Gorbachev’s death have been oblig­ed to explain his sig­nif­i­cance to many Amer­i­can read­ers just a few decades after his name filled U.S. head­lines. But it’s also true that Gor­bachev left a thor­ough­ly ambigu­ous lega­cy that seems to grow only more mud­dled with time.

As his­to­ri­an Richard Sak­wa wrote on the 20th anniver­sary of the short-lived Sovi­et empire’s col­lapse, Gor­bachev is remem­bered in the U.S. — depend­ing on who’s remem­ber­ing — as either a “mag­nif­i­cent fail­ure” or a “trag­ic suc­cess.” Some for­mer Sovi­ets, espe­cial­ly those more par­tial to the author­i­tar­i­an­ism of a Stal­in or Putin, omit any pos­i­tive descrip­tions of Gorbachev’s major achieve­ment – to wit, reform­ing the U.S.S.R. out of exis­tence in the late 1980s with lit­tle need, real­ly, for Rea­gan’s extrav­a­gant nuclear pos­tur­ing.

Putin him­self calls the fall of the U.S.S.R. “the great­est geopo­lit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe” of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, an assess­ment shared by many who agree with him on noth­ing else. At the end of the 80s, how­ev­er, an emerg­ing gen­er­a­tion of Rus­sians had no clear sense of what was hap­pen­ing as their coun­try fell apart. “I was 6 when the Sovi­et Union broke up,” Ana­toly Kur­manaev writes at The New York Times. “I had no idea at the time that the per­son most respon­si­ble for the over­whelm­ing changes trans­form­ing my home­town in Siberia was a man called Mikhail Gor­bachev. I remem­ber stand­ing in line for bread in the dying days of Com­mu­nism, but I don’t remem­ber much dis­cus­sion of his ‘per­e­stroi­ka.’ ”

Mixed admi­ra­tion and con­tempt for Gor­bachev trick­led down to a younger gen­er­a­tion a few years lat­er. “The snatch­es of con­ver­sa­tion I could hear were about peo­ple being fed up,” writes Kur­manaev, “not about the man with a dis­tinc­tive birth­mark sit­ting in the Krem­lin…. Iron­i­cal­ly, my first dis­tinct, inde­pen­dent mem­o­ry of Mr. Gor­bachev, as per­haps for many of my gen­er­a­tion, dates to a 1998 com­mer­cial for Piz­za Hut,” an ad made by the U.S. fast-food com­pa­ny to cel­e­brate the open­ing of a restau­rant near Red Square, and made by Gor­bachev because… well, also iron­ic, giv­en the ad’s premise… he need­ed the mon­ey.

Writ­ten by Tom Dar­byshire of ad agency BBDO, the com­mer­cial stages a debate between patrons at the restau­rant before Gor­bachev’s arrival calms things down. “Meant to be tongue-in-cheek,” Maria Luisa Paul writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, the ad intend­ed to show that “piz­za is one of those foods that brings peo­ple togeth­er and bridges their dif­fer­ences,” says Dar­byshire. In yet anoth­er irony, Gor­bachev him­self — who nego­ti­at­ed for a year before agree­ing to the spot — refused to eat piz­za on cam­era, allow­ing his grand­daugh­ter the hon­or instead.

Though he would­n’t touch the stuff, Gor­bachev defend­ed him­self against crit­ics, includ­ing his own wife, Raisa, by say­ing “piz­za is for every­one. It’s not only con­sump­tion. It’s also social­iz­ing.” What was the talk at Gor­bachev’s local Piz­za Hut on the day he popped in with his grand­child to social­ize? Why, it was talk of Gor­bachev.

“Because of him, we have eco­nom­ic con­fu­sion!” one din­er alleges.

“Because of him, we have oppor­tu­ni­ty!” retorts anoth­er.

“Because of him, we have polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty,” the first responds.

An old­er woman breaks the impasse by stat­ing their obvi­ous mutu­al affini­ties for piz­za, to which all reply, “Hail to Gor­bachev!”

Try as they might, not even Piz­za Hut could heal the wounds caused by the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic con­fu­sion and polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty.

The ad has cir­cu­lat­ed on social media, and in his­to­ry class­es, before and after Gor­bachev’s death as an exam­ple of mass media that “still reflects his lega­cy,” writes Paul. Gor­bachev may be large­ly for­got­ten — at least in the U.S. — decades after the Piz­za Hut ad aired, but it would­n’t be his last attempt to leave his mark in adver­tis­ing, as we see in the 2007 Louis Vuit­ton ad above, fea­tur­ing a prod­uct much less acces­si­ble than piz­za to the aver­age Russ­ian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Sovi­et Rock: From the 70s Under­ground Rock Scene, to Sovi­et Punk & New Wave in the 1980s

The Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Making of Modern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Professor Timothy Snyder

in History | September 6th, 2022

This fall, his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der is teach­ing a course at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty called The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine. And he’s gen­er­ous­ly mak­ing the lec­tures avail­able on YouTube–so that you can fol­low along too. All of the cur­rent­ly-avail­able lec­tures appear above (or on this playlist), and we will keep adding new ones as they come online. A syl­labus for the course can be found here. Key ques­tions cov­ered by the course include:

What brought about the Ukrain­ian nation?  Ukraine must have exist­ed as a soci­ety and poli­ty on 23 Feb­ru­ary 2022, else Ukraini­ans would not have col­lec­tive­ly resist­ed Russ­ian inva­sion the next day.  Why has the exis­tence of Ukraine occa­sioned such con­tro­ver­sy?  In what ways are Pol­ish, Russ­ian, and Jew­ish self-under­stand­ing depen­dent upon expe­ri­ences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a mod­ern Ukrain­ian nation emerge?  Just how for that mat­ter does any mod­ern nation emerge?  And why some nations and not oth­ers?  What is the bal­ance between struc­ture and agency in his­to­ry?  Can nations be cho­sen, and does it mat­ter?  Can the choic­es of indi­vid­u­als influ­ence the rise of much larg­er social orga­ni­za­tions?  If so, how?  Ukraine was the coun­try most touched by Sovi­et and Nazi ter­ror: what can we learn about those sys­tems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colo­nial, mul­ti­lin­gual Ukrain­ian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, the Best­selling Book by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

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Two Women in Their 90s Recall Their Teenage Years in Victorian 1890s London

in Fashion, Film, History, Video - Politics/Society | September 6th, 2022


Mud everywhere…and where there wasn’t mud, there was fog, and in between was us, enjoy­ing our­selves. — Berta Ruck

Berta Ruck and Frances ‘Effy’ Jones were teenagers in the 1890s, and while their rec­ol­lec­tions of their for­ma­tive years in mud­dy old Lon­don are hard­ly a por­trait of Jazz Age wild­ness, nei­ther are they in keep­ing with mod­ern notions of stuffy Vic­to­ri­an mores.

Inter­viewed for the BBC doc­u­men­tary series Yesterday’s Wit­ness in 1970, these nona­ge­nar­i­ans are for­mi­da­ble per­son­ages, sharp­er than prover­bial tacks, and unlike­ly to elic­it the sort of agist pity embod­ied in the lyrics of a pop­u­lar dit­ty Ruck remem­bers the Cock­neys singing in the gut­ter after the pubs had closed for the night.

“Do you think I might dare to sing [it] now?” Ruck, then 91, asks (rhetor­i­cal­ly):

She may have known bet­ter days

When she was in her prime

She may have known bet­ter days

Once upon a time…

(Raise your hand if you sus­pect those lyrics are describ­ing a washed up spin­ster in her late 20s or ear­ly 30s.)

The 94-year-old Jones reach­es back more than 7 decades to tell about her first job, when she was paid 8 shillings a week to sit in a store­front win­dow, demon­strat­ing a new machine known as a type­writer.

Some of her earn­ings went toward the pur­chase a bicy­cle, which she rode back and forth to work and overnight hol­i­days in Brighton, scan­dalous­ly clad in bloomers, or as Jones and her friends referred to them, “ratio­nal dress”.

Ruck, pegged by her head­mistress as an “indo­lent and feck­less girl”, went on to study at the Slade School of Art, before achiev­ing promi­nence as a best­selling romance nov­el­ist, whose 90 some titles include His Offi­cial Fiancée, Miss Million’s Maid and In Anoth­er Girl’s Shoes.

We do hope at least one of these fea­tures a hero­ine resent­ful­ly brush­ing a skirt mud­died up to the knees by pass­ing han­som cabs, an impo­si­tion Ruck refus­es to sweet­en with the nos­tal­gia.

As the British Film Institute’s Patrick Rus­sell writes in 100 British Doc­u­men­taries, the Yesterday’s Wit­ness series, and Jones and Ruck’s episode, in par­tic­u­lar, pop­u­lar­ized the oral his­to­ry approach to doc­u­men­tary, in which the direc­tor-inter­view­er is an invis­i­ble pres­ence, cre­at­ing the impres­sion that the sub­ject is speak­ing direct­ly to the audi­ence, unprompt­ed:

The series’ mak­ers suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed any temp­ta­tions to patron­ize or edi­to­ri­al­ize, and aimed at sym­pa­thet­ic curios­i­ty rather than nos­tal­gia. The two women tell their sto­ries flu­ent­ly, humor­ous­ly, intel­li­gent­ly — offer­ing con­sid­ered ret­ro­spec­tive com­ment on their generation’s assump­tions, nei­ther sim­ply accept­ing nor reject­ing them…Unlike text­books, and oth­er types of doc­u­men­tary, films like Two Vic­to­ri­an Girls gave the youth access to the mod­ern past as pri­vate­ly expe­ri­enced. 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Improbable Invention of Chinese Typewriters & Computer Keyboards: Three Videos Tell the Techno-Cultural Story

in History, Technology | September 6th, 2022

Even if you don’t speak a word of Chi­nese, you sure­ly know that the lan­guage uses not an alpha­bet, but ideo­graph­ic char­ac­ters: about 50,000 of them, all told, 3,000 to 5,000 of which must be mem­o­rized in order to achieve rea­son­able lit­er­a­cy. The poten­tial for con­flict between the Chi­nese writ­ing sys­tem and twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy hard­ly needs expla­na­tion. How, in short, do Chi­nese peo­ple type? Youtu­ber John­ny Har­ris offers an expla­na­tion in the video above, begin­ning with the per­haps coun­ter­in­tu­itive answer that Chi­nese peo­ple type with more or less the same key­board every­one else does — when they’re using a com­put­er, at any rate.

Our smart­phone age has giv­en rise to a num­ber of dif­fer­ent input sys­tems, all designed to per­form the same basic task of adapt­ing the ancient and elab­o­rate writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage to dig­i­tal moder­ni­ty. In Har­ris’ telling, these tech­nolo­gies turn on two major devel­op­ments: the cre­ation of pinyin, a ver­sion of the Latin alpha­bet that pho­net­i­cal­ly rep­re­sents Chi­nese char­ac­ters, and the devel­op­ment of algo­rithms that pre­dict which char­ac­ter the user wants to type next.

His expla­na­tion is breezy and not with­out its errors (the dia­gram about thir­teen min­utes in, for exam­ple, actu­al­ly shows the Kore­an alpha­bet), and you might con­sid­er sup­ple­ment­ing it with videos like expa­tri­ate Matthew Tye’s more detailed “How Do Chi­nese Peo­ple Type?” above.

But if you tru­ly want to under­stand the evo­lu­tion of Chi­nese typ­ing, you must begin with the Chi­nese type­writer — and so must read Tom Mul­laney. A Pro­fes­sor of East Asian Lan­guage and Cul­tures at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Mul­laney pub­lished The Chi­nese Type­writer: A His­to­ry five years ago, and has more recent­ly been at work on a fol­low-up on the Chi­nese com­put­er. In the lec­ture above, he recounts the Chi­nese type­writer’s once-impos­si­ble-seem­ing devel­op­ment in an hour and a half, con­nect­ing it to a host of cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, ortho­graph­ic, and tech­no­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na along the way. It’s a sto­ry of inge­nu­ity, but also of sur­vival. Chi­nese made it through the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry with­out being man­gled or abol­ished to meet the lim­i­ta­tions of West­ern engi­neer­ing, but not every writ­ing sys­tem was quite so lucky.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Chi­nese Lessons

Behold the 1940s Type­writer That Could Type in Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Japan­ese: Watch More Than a Thou­sand Dif­fer­ent Char­ac­ters in Action

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Writ­ing: From Ancient Egypt to Mod­ern Writ­ing Sys­tems

When IBM Cre­at­ed a Type­writer to Record Dance Move­ments (1973)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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