The Dead Media Notebook (50 page)

Petty showed that wealth is a function not only of how much money is accumulated, but of the velocity with which the money is moved around. This led to the realization that money, like information but unlike material objects, can, by assuming different forms, be made to exist in more than one place at a single time.

An early embodiment of this principle, preceding the Bank of England by more than five hundred years, was the ancient institution known as ‘tallies’, notched wooden sticks issued as receipts for money deposited with the Exchequer for the use of the king.

“As a financial instrument and evidence it was at once adaptable, light in weight and small in size, easy to understand and practically incapable of fraud,” wrote Hilary Jenkinson in 1911.

“By the middle of the twelfth century, there was a well-organized and well-understood system of tally cutting at the Exchequer. . . and the conventions remained unaltered and in continuous use from that time down to the nineteenth century.”

A precise description was given in 1850 by Alfred Smee [a remarkable, and remarkably-neglected, artificial intelligence and neural network pioneer]. As resident surgeon to the Bank of England and the son of the accountant general, Smee was able to state with authority concerning some tallies preserved as relics that “curiously enough, I have ascertained that no gentleman in the Bank of England recollects the mode of reading them.”

“The tally-sticks were made of hazel, willow, or alder wood, differing in length according to the sum required to be expressed upon them,” reported Smee.

“They were roughly squared, and one end was pointed; and on two sides of that extremity, the proper notches, showing the sum for which the tally was a receipt, were cut across the wood. All these operations were performed by the officer called ‘the maker of the tallies.’ “On the other two sides of the instrument were written, also in duplicate, the name of the party paying the money, the account for which it was paid, the part of the United Kingdom to which it referred, and the date of payment; recorded with ink upon the wood, by an officer called ‘the writer of the tallies.’

“When the tally was complete, the stick was cleft lengthwise by the maker of the tallies, nearly throughout the whole extent, in such a manner that both pieces retained a copy of the inscription, and one half of every notch cut at the pointed end.

“One piece was then given to the party who had paid the money, for which it was a sufficient discharge; and the other was preserved in the Exchequer. Rude and simple as was this very ancient method of keeping accounts, it appears to have been completely effectual in preventing both fraud and forgery for a space of seven hundred years. No two sticks could be found so exactly similar, as to admit of being identically matched with each other, when split in the coarse manner of cutting tallies; and certainly no alteration of the particulars expressed by the notches and inscription could remain undiscovered when the two parts were again brought together.

“And, as if it had been further to prove the superiority of these instruments over writing, two attempts at forgery were reported to have been made on the Exchequer, soon after the disuse of the ancient wooden tallies in 1834.” [3] Exchequer tallies were ordered replaced in 1782 by an “indented cheque receipt,” but the Act of Parliament (23 Geo. 3, c. 82) thereby abolishing “several useless, expensive and unnecessary offices” was to take effect only on the death of the incumbent who, being “vigorous,” continued to cut tallies until 1826.

“After the further statute of 4 and 5 William IV the destruction of the official collection of old tallies was ordered,” noted Hilary Jenkinson.

“The imprudent zeal with which this order was carried out caused the fire which destroyed the Houses of Parliament in 1834.” [4] The notches were of various sizes and shapes corresponding to the tallied amount: a 1.5-inch notch for 1000 pounds, a 1-inch notch for 100 pounds, a half-inch notch for 20 pounds, with smaller notches indicating pounds, shillings, and pence, down to a halfpenny, indicated by a pierced dot.

“The code was similar to the notches still used to identify the emulsion speed of sheets of photographic film in the dark. The self-authentication achieved by distributing the message across two halves of a uniquely- split piece of wood is analogous to the way large numbers, uniquely split into two prime factors, are used to authenticate digital financial instruments today.

Source: (Addison-Wesley, 1997) pages 162-163 Quantulumcunque Concerning Money by Sir William Petty (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1695), page 165. “Exchequer Tallies,” by Hilary C. Jenkinson Archaeologia, second series, vol. 12 (1911) page 368. Instinct and Reason: Deduced from Electro-biology by Alfred Smee (London: Reeve, Benham and Reeve, 1850), pp. xxix-xxxii

From Stefan Jones

“It was a time when the modern form first flourished, in the city where mechanized tattooing was invented, by a Bowery tinkerer named Samuel O’Reilly, who modified Edison’s electric engraving pen in the 1890’s to make the first tattoo machine.”
[Bruce Sterling remarks: Edison
’s electric pen was not an :”engraving pen.” It used a darting needle to repeatedly puncture a sheet of stiff paper, which was then used as a stencil template for inking multiple copies of the document. The Electric Pen was patented in 1875, so it took some twenty years to discover this pen’s useful ability to repeatedly pierce human skin.]

Source: New York Times, July 27, 1997, page 31 article Cappucino With Your Tattoo? Try That on a Sailor by Randy Kennedy

From Trevor Blake

“A new format in graphics and advertising caught the eye of the world at the turn of the century. Miniscule in size, universal in appeal, and blazing with all the varied colors of the rainbow, this was the poster stamp, an esoteric rarity among collectibles. As the name suggests, it is a poster in stamp form. Always gummed and a little larger than the regular postage variety, these stamps normally were printed up in perforated sheets so they could easily be torn apart and stuck to invoices, envelopes, and correspondence, or simply collected as sheets into albums. In the name of art, commerce, and even propaganda, the poster stamp presented diminutively all that the largest billboard displayed, accomplishing everything that is required of an efficient poster. Although not issued for revenue, this ‘currency of commerce’ presented immense opportunities both for the vision of the graphic artist and the keen businessman.

“Germany created poster stamps or ‘REKLAME MARKEN’ (literally ‘advertising stamps’) around 1907, just as that country had previously pioneered the fancy post card. Munich, Nuremberg, and Cologne all claimed the honor of having originated this new medium. Its sole reason for existence was to advertise and promote a product or event. Up until that time, the only stamps produced were revenue or postage, and those usually were intricate, single-color etchings or line engravings. Exhibition seals issued in the late 1800s were considered the forerunners of the colorful poster stamp, as were the earlier chromolithographic trade cards. The new poster stamp, with its vivid splash of brilliant colors, was a bold contrast to the drab black-and-white graphic landscape that was permissible at the time among most distinguished lines of business.”

“The year 1915 seems to have been a high-water mark for the hobby. Poster stamps were displayed at a merchandise show in Madison Square Garden, and THE POSTER STAMP BULLETIN was published in Yonkers, New York, for a growing number of enthusiasts in that area. The Society of Modern Art, catering mainly to the graphic artist, printed THE POSTER STAMP ART SUPPLEMENT, which contained many examples of art posters in stamp form. The market was flooded with millions of flakes of brightly hued paper as clubs and societies formed to collect and preserve the humble poster stamp.

“The poster stamp made possible the novel use of brilliant color in advertising to attract the stoic eye. Every known process was employed in producing them, lithography, three- and four-color process, zinc and copper-plate etching, steel engraving, and photogravure. While European varieties from the Belle Epoque and the Secessionists eras were even embossed, lithography and the printing of broad, flat areas of color were responsible for the most striking graphic examples.

“Increasing business through advertising simplicity was the main intent of poster stamps, but they also brought high art to the masses on a level that could never have been achieved otherwise. Poster stamps were the common man’s art gallery. Adults as well as children were charmed by the stamps from the very beginning, collecting and pasting them into books specially made for that purpose. It was possible for the layman, with a minimum amount of effort and practically no expense, to accumulate a much finer collection of posters than he could buy in any larger format. They were widely considered handsome works of art even then and truly worthy of being sought after for permanent possession.” [.] page 16 “As national subscription magazines entered homes throughout America and elsewhere in the 1920s and ‘30s, business sought a larger piece of the advertising pie. Effective advertising meant reaching the largest possible market. Although poster stamps had made incredible inroads, it began to be felt that the advertising dollars were better spent on full-page, full-color ads in high- circulation publications that offered plenty of room for information copy rather than on the minimalist, small- scale poster stamps. Even though there were exposition stamps and seals for the various world fairs and events of the 1930s, as well as propaganda stamps issued in the early 1940s to boost patriotism at the beginning of World War II, the days of poster stamps were clearly numbered.

[Trevor Blake remarks: LICK ‘EM, STICK ‘EM is full of reproductions of poster stamps and even includes a sheet of sixteen poster stamps for the book and the publisher. The book includes chapters on poster stamp themes such as transportation, world’s fairs, fashion, advertising and political propaganda. Poster stamps were an engaging medium: imagine all the beauty and power of turn-of-the- century poster art done for those tiny ads in the back of old comic books. While poster stamps were yet another medium that in its day everyone took for granted, the only large-scale living descendants of poster stamps in the United States are Easter Seals.]

Source: LICK ‘EM, STICK ‘EM / THE LOST ART OF POSTER STAMPS by H. Thomas Steele. New York: Abbeville Press 1989

From Stefan Jones

The 1897 Sears catalogue contained many pages offering musical instruments, sheet music, accessories and lesson books.

“Do it yourself” seemed to be the way to go back then. However, automation was making some inroads even in 1897. Besides a single phonograph (actually, a “graphophone”) and a few dozen cylinders, Sears offered music boxes. Page 524 depicts seventeen music boxes, ranging from a tiny cylinder a few inches across to “roller organs” which played paper music rolls. The catalog offers to send lists of available rolls where appropriate, but does not provide even a sample of the selections. On Page 523 is a music box of another order: The Regina.

“The Queen of Automatic Musical Instruments. The first of the kind ever manufactured in America, and it surpasses anything of similar nature manufactured by anyone anywhere. The mechanism of these music boxes is entirely different from any other. Interchangeable music sheets are used instead of the round cylinder found in the old style music box. In the case of the latter, only one to a dozen tunes could be played without the great expense of an extra cylinder. [Reality check: Extra music rolls for the “roller organs” on the next page cost 23 cents.] “With the Regina, however, the expense of extra tune sheets is only about that of ordinary piano and organ music and they can be obtained in any quantity. The latest airs on the market can be secured almost simultaneously with their publication in paper form. This one fact is sufficient to render the Regina the most popular instruments of the kind on the market.

“The motive force in the Regina consists of an extremely solid, and yet in its unique combination, an extremely simple clockwork. One valuable feature of this clockwork lies in the fact that all the parts are interchangeable and we are able to supply duplicates of any part they may be broken by accident or otherwise.” [”Otherwise”? Did the Regina’s melodies inspire thoughts of sabotage in some users?]. “The Regina is the only music box having duplex combs. The two combs face each other; the steel tongues are tuned and actuated in pairs, by corresponding star-wheels. An extraordinary volume and sweetness of tone is the result, and makes it possible to have as many as 156 keys in a small space, a range far exceeding that of the piano.”

[The above will be clearer if you’ve ever dissected a music box. Each flat tongue of the metal comb corresponds to a different note. In traditional boxes, the comb lightly brushes the surface of a cylinder studded with small metal posts; as the cylinder turns the posts “twang” the tongues, causing the note to play.].

“The list of tunes increases every day, and is already large and varied enough to meet the taste of every purchaser. The metallic tune sheets are easily interchanged, thus making it possible for each individual box to play an unlimited variety of airs. The sale of these tune-sheets at a very reasonable price will continue for years after the boxes are sold. A guide for operating, oiling and repairing the Regina music box goes free with each instrument.”

[ The ad copy anticipates fears that the boxes and sheets will go out of production. Were people aware of media obsolescence even then? ]

Three different Regina music boxes are described next. Surprise: they look astonishingly like a disc record player. They consist of a wooden box with a hinged lid. The disc is mounted on a spindle, and a drive rod snapped on top. The rod, which runs from the spindle to the perimeter, has three or four small wheels. The tune ‘sheets’ are actually discs. They are depicted as white in color, with a printed (?) logo and graphic flourishes, and what appear to be hundreds of small slots. Are these simple punch holes, or does a tongue of metal protrude from the lower surface?