[HN Gopher] Paper cuttings made by 17th-century schoolgirls disc...
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Paper cuttings made by 17th-century schoolgirls discovered beneath
floorboards
Author : benbreen
Score : 200 points
Date : 2024-07-23 04:33 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| pulvinar wrote:
| There's no mention in the article as to why the cuttings were
| beneath the floorboards. My guess is one girl got mad at another
| and slipped her classwork between the boards. Possible since this
| predated tongue & groove (the technology angle).
| floam wrote:
| According to another article, they just slipped through the
| cracks on the floor from time to time and accumulated over the
| years.
|
| https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/london/sutton-house-a...
|
| I imagine the debris also included coins and the like.
| martyvis wrote:
| Reminds of this story where they found paper planes in the
| school house ceiling dating before 1910 -
| https://youtu.be/A555LYvAPp0?t=16m08s
| romanhn wrote:
| Earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41045233
| metadat wrote:
| Thanks! Macro-expanded:
|
| _Lost by Schoolgirls: A display of 17th century papercuts_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41045233 - July 2024 (20
| comments)
| thih9 wrote:
| Is there a public script for macroexpanding? Or is parent
| commenter a moderator? (if the latter, thanks for your work!)
| macintux wrote:
| Moderator. Check out the profile, especially the end.
| lholden wrote:
| My mom lived in a historical house when she was a kid in the 60s.
| Since then, the house has become a museum. There are a lot of
| "artifacts" on display that "came from the 1800s" that are
| actually just toys my moms brothers made. My mom got a good laugh
| about it when she took me to visit the place.
|
| I'm sure these finds must have dated in some way to verify the
| authenticity, but I always think back to seeing my uncles toys on
| display as if they were historical artifacts when I see stuff
| like this.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Has your mom got in touch with the museum to tell them that, so
| they can improve? If not why not?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| It's not their mothers responsibility to correct their
| incompetence, or (imo) more likely negligence and information
| falsification.
| have_faith wrote:
| Maybe they just made a mistake.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| A) I didn't say it was their responsibility
|
| B) I don't wanna assume malice where incompetence will do
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| If you walked into a old house and found a random toy,
| would you automatically assume the toy is as old as the
| house?
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| If you saw something broken that's not your
| responsibility would you fix it?
|
| I know the answer in your case, but believe me that a lot
| of people would.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| With his rhetorical question, he's saying it must be
| malice because no museum operator would be that
| incompetent. They're actively making a false claim to
| their customers. They could have just not said anything
| about the age of the toys since they know they didn't
| verify it. I think you can see this must be the case
| since you didn't answer his question.
|
| In my country, if a business makes a factual claim about
| its products, it has to have already verified the
| correctness of it to some reasonable level and have the
| documentation so show that. There's no room for this "oh,
| I just assumed it was true because I'm incompetent"
| excuse.
| CalRobert wrote:
| A lot of these historical house "museums" are a pleasant
| diversion for tourists more than anything else. Note how they
| are all haunted - ghost tours are pretty easy money
| elric wrote:
| I have never come across a house museum that claims to be
| haunted. Must be a cultural thing that doesn't exist in
| Belgium. Possibly because loads of things are ancient here
| anyway, no need to embellish with more nonsense I guess.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yes, probably an american thing. i am very much not a fan
| of these "ghost tours"
| nmridul wrote:
| >> sure these finds must have dated in some way to verify the
| authenticity ....
|
| What happens if the uncle used very old wood or cloth to make
| the toys. Will the dating technique be able to find the actual
| age ?
| curiouscavalier wrote:
| Dating is done with more than just material analysis.
| Evidence of tools used to make the toy, techniques for things
| like joins and stitching, etc. can all be indicative of
| methods that can give at least a lower bound. How applicable
| method differentiation is to this specific case obviously
| depends on a number of things.
| disillusioned wrote:
| My wife found a cool 1896 Harper's School Geography textbook at
| an antique shop and got it for me, and it had the original
| pupil's name and signature (and date of 1897!) written on the
| front matter, but there are also a few other handwritten notes
| and the name of the school itself... it's such a neat little
| self-contained time capsule.
|
| It also boggles my mind:
|
| 1. How accurate it was, in terms of map fidelity
|
| 2. The quality of the illustrations and prints, many of which are
| in several (what I imagine was offset?) colors!
|
| 3. How well it's held up. The cover looks essentially completely
| trashed, but the interior of the book's pages are almost entirely
| intact, and in great shape. (I'm not worried of them turning to
| dust in my hands, for instance.)
|
| It's always fascinating to see just how little has changed,
| especially among schoolkids in nigh on 300 years!
|
| Here's essentially the exact book I'm talking about, so it's not
| _that_ uncommon. Looks to be in almost identical condition, too:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/184283104558
| asddubs wrote:
| looks like you made a sale. Almost makes me wonder if this was
| an elaborate ploy to promote your ebay store. In which case,
| well done
| elygre wrote:
| Prolly a nitpick, but closer to 100 than 300 years. Rather
| significantly, too.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| I believe the GP was referencing the posted article with the
| 300 years comment.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Is it due to a bias on our part that we think that it's
| fascinating? Why would people be different? People haven't
| changed, we just have phones now.
| blowski wrote:
| > we just have phones now
|
| That's a huge understatement. We have electricity,
| refrigeration, medicine, mass transit (including
| international), human rights, enormous increases in
| population, fast media, internet, nuclear weapons, universal
| literacy, factory lines, spaceships, cities of many millions
| of people. Anyone that's played Civilisation knows how far
| the tech tree goes once you hit the Enlightenment.
|
| And you can see how much internet and social media have
| changed society, so imagine the impact of all those things
| combined on the human brain.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Right but _people_ , their nature, hasn't changed.
| blowski wrote:
| I find this a vague, reductionist view. When I have
| dinner with my family today, there's more than one
| nature, while my own nature has changed in the last 10
| years. To say most people have had the same nature at
| least for the last 300 years is only true if you reduce
| "nature" to something so banal that it means nothing at
| all.
| quonn wrote:
| The distribution has not changed. Nobody said that an
| individual data point is fixed and that all data points
| are equal.
| throwaway_2494 wrote:
| I think what was intended was that _human_ nature hasn't
| changed.
| jvan wrote:
| I think anyone making that claim is going to have to
| define human nature in a way that has eluded several
| fields of study for generations.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i feel that by the turn of the 20th century we generally had
| fully accurate maps. 1897 is not really all that long ago - we
| were well on our way to discovering special relativity at that
| point
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > by the turn of the 20th century we generally had fully
| accurate maps
|
| New Zealand may having something to say about that...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_m.
| ..
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i'm not sure why an article describing the modern day
| accidental omission of NZ in maps is really relevant. they
| also often exclude Antarctica - not from lack of knowledge
| of the existence
| qup wrote:
| I have an "autograph book" that belonged to my great-great
| grandmother, with many signatures from around 1886. It's the
| equivalent of kids signing a yearbook.
|
| What boggles my mind is how incredible all these kids'
| handwriting was. Precise, flowing, beautiful cursive.
|
| It's also a quality cover and paper.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A few years ago I visited a high school for some competition
| that one of my kids was in. They had posters of each
| graduating class going back decades, and most of the photos
| had the kid's signature underneath. It was amazing to compare
| the signatures from the 1970s and 1980s to the modern ones.
| The old ones were neat, and showed a lot of individual style.
| As time went on they looked less confident and showed less
| individual variation -- most of them looked like standard
| elementary school cursive. The newest ones were the worst,
| some were a shaky-looking cursive, some were just printed.
|
| Penmanship, and even just ordinary cursive writing, is just
| not taught anymore. I understand that it's hardly needed in
| today's world, but there's something about putting thoughts
| to paper by hand that enforces some deliberate thinking,
| unlike keyboarding or speech-to-text. Some studies show that
| taking class notes by hand is more effective than using a
| keyboard or recording.
| firewolf34 wrote:
| I was reading a book (1) which talked about that and
| emphasized the importance of writing on formulating
| thoughts and ideas. The funny thing is, it seems it has
| less to do with writing being some magical input method
| that makes you think better, and more to do with the fact
| that writing is just plain slow and forces you to think
| through and sort of sum up your thoughts as you go. So
| ironically, it being an inefficient method actually has a
| positive! But I still feel like you could get most of the
| way there by just being more deliberate when using a
| different input method, for example, forcing yourself to
| stop and think as you type, or using outlining tools, or
| maybe even artificially limiting your input speed...
|
| (1) "How to take Smart Notes" by Soenke Ahrens
| saagarjha wrote:
| I mean the act of signing things is also less common today.
| My parents put their signatures on credit card terminals
| and employment agreements; I grew up with contactless
| payments and Docusign.
| whyenot wrote:
| I wonder whether a YouTube video, a post on Instagram, or
| similar artifact of our modern world would ever be able to
| survive 350 years. This ...longevity(?) seems to be something
| that is unique to physical objects like books, printed
| photographs, or paper cuttings. In 350 years, will we look back
| at this time and considering it another dark age because so
| little of the content we are producing will still exist in an
| accessible form?
| honkycat wrote:
| I wonder how old they were, they are quite good!
|
| I've often wondered if people back then were more skilled at
| music and art overall since there were fewer mindless leisure
| activities.
|
| But, at the same time, I'm sure a guitar or ink and paper were
| comparatively expensive, so who knows.
|
| Plus people could drink at 10 back then, so I'm sure they found
| plenty of mindless distraction.
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| Can't remember where I first heard but in the 18th century in
| England they had wooden cat gin vending machines. You walk up,
| say a magic phrase, put a coin in and it would pour gin through
| its paw. This was apparently a way to skirt a licensing law.
|
| https://www.gin1689.com/blogs/news/puss-mew
| jon_richards wrote:
| > the first vending machine was specifically created to serve
| gin
|
| The first vending machine was actually first century and
| dispensed holy water. It was actually mechanized similarly to
| pre-electronic vending machines.
| https://www.logicvending.co.uk/history-vending-machines
| Archelaos wrote:
| > But, at the same time, I'm sure a guitar or ink and paper
| were comparatively expensive, so who knows.
|
| When I once came across the price for paper in mid 18th century
| Germany (I did not keep a reference unfortunately), I compared
| it to the estimated average annual wage of that time and used
| today's average annual wage to calculate a price in Euro. The
| result: the price of a DIN A4 sized piece of paper (623.7 cm2)
| was aprox. 1 Euro. Not cheap, but in principle still affordable
| in low quantities for most people. And this is half of today's
| typical price for one such sheet of handmade paper.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| The majority of instrument makers of that time had to work
| almost solely to the market which was primarily working
| musicians who generally did not make much money, they did not
| have a massive middle class buying their instruments like we
| have today so most instruments were not terribly expensive. But
| music did not become a past time for the average person for a
| couple centuries with the rise of the guitar which was cheap on
| a whole new level and much cheaper than the lutes it replaced.
| The guitar gave us a good sounding instrument that was easy to
| make and easy to play without years of training and all the
| luthiers, musicians and composers were hopping on that band
| wagon to make a little extra cash which only fueled the
| romantic era guitar craze. The vast bulk of innovation when it
| comes to the acoustic guitar happened in this period and most
| of the "new" ideas we see these days were actually done
| centuries ago and a surprising amount of it by Rene LaCote who
| does not get anywhere near the recognition or credit he
| deserves.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| I'd assume singing was much more ubiquitous in the past,
| since it was one of the few ways ordinary people could
| entertain themselves/each other (this was clearly the case
| well into the 1900s in most, if not all, Western societies).
| ofalkaed wrote:
| What changed was the mentality, how the average person
| related too music. Before the romantic era most people
| could not afford any instrument beyond a folk instrument
| and certainly could not afford lessons or time to dedicate
| to practicing. So singing may have come out of going to
| church and people so inclined would sing as they went about
| their day but they would not sit down with some sheet music
| and practice, that was for the well off. Folk instruments
| tended to be fairly limited in what they could do and did
| not require much in training or practice although some
| people have taken these simple instrument to great extremes
| and done wonderful things with them.
|
| During the romantic era we had the rising middle class with
| more freetime and money to spare and all those musicians
| eager to have some more income from giving lessons. The
| composers started writing lesson books and methods suited
| to the amateur and the luthiers started building
| instruments for them including variations like the
| Decacorde by Carulli and La Cote [0] which was meant to be
| an easy instrument for the amateur.
|
| Should mention, with "romantic era" I am not really
| referring to the literal era but the school and tradition
| of the romantic guitar as the dominant school which goes
| until the Spanish guitar and Western steel string took over
| around the turn of the 20th give or take depending on where
| you are in the world and how you want to look at things.
| The romantic school still exists to this day, the parlor
| guitar is a romantic guitar in everything but name and the
| Viennese guitar is still going in parts of Europe.
|
| 0. https://www.carlyle-
| circle-30.is.ed.ac.uk/showcase/guitar-de...
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| Fun aside re: guitars:
|
| Guitars as we know them are actually quite new, and going by
| "350 years" in the article, didn't really exist when these bits
| of paper were dropped through the floorboards.
|
| Vermeer's _The guitar player_ dates back to just over 350 years
| ago, shows a baroque guitar, and as far as I am aware these
| were complex, really expensive things.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-TOg-y_BI
|
| I would guess there were lots of lutes and gitterns, though;
| they are relatively less complex. And I would absolutely think
| that the children who went to this school saw, owned and were
| expected to play musical instruments; they came from those
| sorts of families.
| tempodox wrote:
| Too bad "hean" was a misspelling. A hitherto unknown mythical
| bird would have been even more interesting. Or was it a species
| that became extinct?
| veltas wrote:
| Standard spelling was only being proposed around this time, so
| it's not a misspelling.
| maronato wrote:
| The article says it is a misspelling.
| thechao wrote:
| The fact that misspelling doesn't have 3 s's is one of the
| great tragedies of English orthography.
|
| > missspelling
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I was suprised to see that claimed as a misspelling. The
| lettering was very neat, nearly perfect otherwise, so with that
| evident attention to detail I thought a misspelling was
| unlikely. I assumed it was just an older variation of the
| spelling.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Why where they so much more skilled than today's schoolchildren?
| firtoz wrote:
| Were they?
| mseepgood wrote:
| Look at the perfectly printed writing, even in italics, and
| the delicate crosshatching shading.
| latexr wrote:
| You're judging two wildly different generations of children
| based on one of them being able to do something the other
| one wasn't even thought.
|
| Imagine training a chihuahua to do tricks, then looking at
| an untrained golden retriever, _not even try to teach them_
| , and saying "why are chihuahuas so much smarter than
| golden retrievers?"
| lolinder wrote:
| No one said "smarter", they said "more skilled".
|
| A perfectly legitimate answer to that question might be
| that we stopped teaching them.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Well, presumably outliers exist. I don't think we have a
| large enough sample to conclude anything. Pretty sure
| there are plenty of children these days who are
| significantly more "skilled" (just like back then).
|
| Of course modern writing/drawing utensils are on an
| entirely different level and paper was very expensive
| back then e.g. an average labourer supposedly only made
| enough per day to purchase less than 100 sheets, so
| practising was expensive.
| jeltz wrote:
| There are kids today that can draw that well too. The
| handwriting, probably not, but we do not teach them that
| level of handwriting.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's schoolwork.
| elric wrote:
| Because that's what they practiced, presumably. Given that they
| misspelled a 3 letter word, I suspect they were better at arts
| and crafts than writing?
| radiator wrote:
| Don't you know that language changes over 350 years? Why do
| you say it is a misspelling? Why do you judge them by today's
| rules?
| marcel_hecko wrote:
| Its explicitly said in the article that its a misspelling.
| radiator wrote:
| Yes, I read that, and I obviously disagree with the
| article as well.
| gjm11 wrote:
| (I'm not the grandparent poster, but:)
|
| OED https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hen_n1?tab=forms#1717329
| says "hean" was never a standard spelling of "hen". 350
| years ago would be the late 1600s when there were "hen" and
| "henn" and "henne". (I don't know exactly when in the 1600s
| the latter two stopped being used; 350 years ago might
| actually be too late for those.)
|
| On the other hand, the idea that for every word there is a
| single Correct spelling, as opposed to "write it however
| you like so long as it's clear to the reader", wasn't so
| well established in the late 1600s. But I _think_ most
| 17th-century English folks would have regarded "hean" as
| wrong, not merely unusual.
|
| (The article itself calls "hean" a misspelling, though of
| course that doesn't prove much.)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well, it's an attested spelling now so it will have to be
| added to future dictionaries. After all, the girls were
| probably native speakers.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I wonder if that misspelling is some kind of inside joke lost
| to time.
| tetraca wrote:
| If the only way you could entertain yourself is either make
| something interesting or (maybe) read the Bible, you'd be very
| good at making things.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Why where they so much more skilled than today's
| schoolchildren?
|
| Because today's school children spend a little more time
| studying mathematics and science. Music, arts and crafts took
| up a much larger part of 17th century girls education. Upper
| and middle class girls were being taught what they needed to be
| good wives.
|
| > The school provided lessons in writing, reading, math, music
| and art. The girls studied paper cutting alongside other
| crafts, such as embroidery and needlework
| vundercind wrote:
| No cable, radio serials, abundant and cheap ready-made toys,
| recorded music, game boys, smart phones, pre-made mass
| manufactured decorations for nearly no money, dirt-cheap puzzle
| books at every store, clothes so cheap they're disposable, et
| c.
|
| If you want creative and skillful culture to be mass culture,
| just make stuff really expensive and eliminate recording and
| mechanical reproduction. Elevate the social and financial
| rewards of sub-superstar levels of craft, art, and creativity.
| We're losing those things because the value of them's been
| driven into the ground.
| markatkinson wrote:
| We used to hide fruit in sockets with a small piece of paper
| signed "Decay Inc". Looking forward to a Smithsonian article
| about it in 350 years.
| amelius wrote:
| Sorry but that paper looks too white.
| tokai wrote:
| You have no idea of the white balance settings used.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm assuming they use correct settings.
| qwytw wrote:
| IIRC paper was mainly made from linen or cotton back then and
| it actually was less likely to turn yellow than more modern
| wood pulp paper (which was only invented in the early 1800s)
|
| Paper made from textile is slightly alkaline and contains very
| little lignin which is highly reactive and causes paper to turn
| yellow over time. Pulp paper is also more acidic which also
| makes it more susceptible to degradation.
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