{"id":481,"date":"2009-11-08T08:37:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T13:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/winedarksea.com\/?p=481"},"modified":"2025-02-10T17:54:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:54:38","slug":"pre-digital-iteration-the-lindstrand-comparator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Digital Iteration: The Lindstrand Comparator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-482\" href=\"http:\/\/winedarksea.com\/?attachment_id=482\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-482\" title=\"IMG_0529\" src=\"http:\/\/winedarksea.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/IMG_0529-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0529\" width=\"614\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/IMG_0529-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/IMG_0529-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/IMG_0529.JPG 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 614px) 100vw, 614px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just finished a terrific conference at Loyola organized by Suzanne Gosset on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctsdh.luc.edu\/?q=conferences\">The Future of Shakespeare&#8217;s Text(s)<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0This photo shows a device, used by one of the conference organizers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.luc.edu\/english\/faculty\/shillingsburg.shtml\">Peter Shillingsburg<\/a>, to perform manual collation of printed editions of texts. There is a <a href=\"http:\/\/etext.lib.virginia.edu\/etcbin\/toccer-sb?id=sibv053&amp;images=bsuva\/sb\/images&amp;data=\/texts\/english\/bibliog\/SB&amp;tag=public&amp;part=4&amp;division=div\">long tradition<\/a> of using optical collators to find and identify differences in printed editions of texts; this one, the Lindstrand Comparator, works on a deviously clever principle. Exploiting a feature of the human visual system, the Lindstrand Comparator allows you to view two different pages simultaneously, with each image being fed to only one eye at a time through a series of mirrors. When the brain tries to reconcile the two disparate images &#8212; a divergence caused by print differences on the page &#8212; these textual differences will levitate on the surface of the page or, conversely, sink into it. What is in actuality a spatial disparity becomes a disparity of depth via contributions of the brain (which is clearly an integral part of the apparatus).<\/p>\n<p>In this photo, Shakespeare scholar Gabriel Egan compares two variant printed editions of a modern novel. The device is an excellent example of mechanical-optical technology being used to assist in the iterative tasks of scholarship &#8212; iterations we now perform with computers. It is also the only technology I know of that lets you see depth in a page, something you cannot do with hypertexts or e-readers. Maybe we should stop writing code for fancy web-pages and start working with wood and mirrors?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished a terrific conference at Loyola organized by Suzanne Gosset on &#8220;The Future of Shakespeare&#8217;s Text(s).&#8221;\u00a0This photo shows a device, used by one of the conference organizers Peter Shillingsburg, to perform manual collation of printed editions of texts. There is a long tradition of using optical collators to find and identify differences in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[33,34],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theory","tag-editing","tag-pre-digital-technologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}