Paper machines
by Markus Krajewski, Peter Krapp · first published 2011
33% recommend67% neutral
"Today on almost every desk in every office sits a computer. Eighty years ago, desktops were equipped with a nonelectronic data processing machine: a card file. In Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski traces the evolution of this proto-computer of rearrangeable parts (file cards) that became ubiquitous in offices between the world wars. The story begins with Konrad Gessner, a sixteenth-century Swiss polymath who described a new method of processing data: to cut up a sheet of handwritten notes into slips of paper, with one fact or topic per slip, and arrange as desired. In the late eighteenth centu
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Related & recommended: Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 By Markus Krajewski > Why the card catalog — a “paper machine” with rearrangeable elements — can be regarded as a precursor of the computer. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines
on “How the Index Card Catalogued the World (2017)” ↗Since no one has mentioned it yet, this is a wonderful book on the evolution of index cards: Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548 – 1929 (History and Foundations of Information Science) (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines)
on “The joy of index cards (2009)” ↗…this topic comes up, it reminds me of a book I really enjoyed about index cards. > Why the card catalog—a “paper machine” with rearrangeable elements—can be regarded as a precursor of the computer. Paper Machines: About Cards and Catalogs, 1548-1929 - https://web.archive.org/web/20220531211447/https://mitpress....
on “The Librarian of Congress Weighs in on Why Card Catalogs Matter (2017)” ↗Thanks :-) I'll add Cataloging the World, by Alex Wright and Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 by Markus Krajewski plus few relatively recent articles: - Note Taking as an Art of Transmission http://doi.org/10.1086/427303 - From Note-Taking to Data Banks https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492615…
on “The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information” ↗…Blair (She is a scholar that has a lot on the subject.) * Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe by Alberto Cevolini (This is a collection of pretty deep essays.) * Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs by Markus Krajewski (This is about the development of paper-based databases.)
on “Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?” ↗…Before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair * Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account by Niklas Luhmann * Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design * Writing the Laboratory Notebook by Howard M Kanare * Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs by Markus Krajewski * A System for Writing by Bob Doto * Building a Second Brain By Tiago Forte * Index, a History of the by Dennis Duncan * Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management…
on “Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?” ↗