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#Post#: 13985--------------------------------------------------
Nyctography
By: luvcats Date: June 16, 2014, 2:39 am
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This is the kind of stuff I come across when I am having
insomnia. This is one of Lewis Carroll's (Alice in Wonderland)
inventions.
Nyctography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nyctography is a form of shorthand writing created by Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) in 1891.
Nyctography is written with a nyctograph (also invented by
Carroll) and uses a system of dots and/or strokes all based on a
dot placed in the upper left corner. Using the Nyctograph, one
could quickly jot down ideas or notes without the aid of light.
Carroll invented the Nyctograph and Nyctography because he was
often awakened during the night with thoughts that needed to be
written down immediately, and didn't want to go through the
lengthy process of lighting a lamp just to have to extinguish it
shortly thereafter.
The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares
[.25” square] and system of symbols representing an alphabet of
Dodgson's design, which could then be transcribed the following
day.
He first named it "typhlograph", but at the suggestion of one of
his brother-students, this was subsequently changed into
"Nyctograph".[1]
Initially, Dodgson used an oblong of card with an oblong cut out
of the centre to guide his writing in the dark.[1] This did not
appear to be satisfactory as the results were illegible. The new
and final version of the nyctograph is recorded in his journal
of September 24, 1891 and is the subject of a letter to “The
Lady” magazine of October 29, 1891:
Any one who has tried, as I have often done, the process of
getting out of bed at 2 a.m. in a winter night, lighting a
candle, and recording some happy thought which would probably be
otherwise forgotten, will agree with me it entails much
discomfort. All I have now to do, if I wake and think of
something I wish to record, is to draw from under the pillow a
small memorandum book containing my Nyctograph, write a few
lines, or even a few pages, without even putting the hands
outside the bed-clothes, replace the book, and go to sleep
again. … I tried rows of square holes, each to hold one letter
(quarter of an inch square I found a very convenient size), and
this proved a much better plan than the former; but the letters
were still apt to be illegible. Then I said to myself ‘Why not
invent a square alphabet, using only dots at the corners, and
lines along the sides?’ I soon found that, to make the writing
easy to read, it was necessary to know where each square began.
This I secured by the rule that every square-letter should
contain a large black dot in the N.W. corner. … [I] succeeded in
getting 23 of [the square-letters] to have a distinct
resemblance to the letters they were to represent. Think of the
number of lonely hours a blind man often spends doing nothing,
when he would gladly record his thoughts, and you will realize
what a blessing you can confer on him by giving him a small
‘indelible’ memorandum-book, with a piece of paste-board
containing rows of square holes, and teaching him the
square-alphabet.
From the description it appears that Dodgson’s nyctograph was a
single row of 16 boxes cut from a piece of card. Dodgson would
enter one of his symbols in each box, then move the card down to
the next line (which, in the darkness, probably, he would have
to estimate) and then repeat the process.
HTML http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Nyctograph_reconstruction.jpg/220px-Nyctograph_reconstruction.jpg
#Post#: 13986--------------------------------------------------
Re: Nyctography
By: luvcats Date: June 16, 2014, 3:26 am
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I am in a pensive mood. I am wondering if in general people are
smarter now than they were 25 years ago due to the plethora of
information on the internet? It is so easy to go look up an
answer these days. A person can find anything. But the people
(in general) 25 years ago had to figure things out more on their
own. What do you think?
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