Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity (50 page)

14.
G. C. Mares,
The History of the Typewriter: Successor to the Pen
(Arcadia, Calif.: Post-Era Books, 1985 [1909]), 28–32; A. Baggenstos,
Von der Bilderschrift zur Schreib-maschine
(Zurich: n.p., 1977), 37–39.

15.
Cited in Current,
Typewriter
, 11; Cynthia Monaco, “The Difficult Birth of the Typewriter,”
American Heritage of Invention and Technology
, vol. 4, no. 21 (Spring/Summer 1988), 12.

16.
Mares,
Typewriter
, 140–44; Current,
Typewriter
, 42–43.

17.
Current,
Typewriter
, 37–38.

18.
Monaco, “Difficult Birth,” 17–18.

19.
On the effects of organizational growth and education on office information technology, see the brilliant work of Delmas, “Révolution Industrielle,” 205–32.

20.
Chas. Howard Montague, cited in Bates Torrey,
Practical Typewriting: By the All-Finger Method
,… (New York:
Fowler & Wells, 1889), [4].

21.
Christopher Keep, “The Cultural Work of the Type-Writer Girl,”
Victorian Studies
, vol. 40, no. 3 (Spring 1997), 405; Current,
Typewriter
, 120; Jack Quinan,
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 48–49, 53.

22.
Israel,
Machine Shop
, 134–35, 163–65; Basil Kahan,
Ottmar Mergenthaler: The Man and His Machine
(New Castle,
Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), 179–81, 282–84; Ava Baron, “Contested Terrain Revisited: Technology and Gender Definitions of Work in the Printing Industry, 1850–1920,” in Barbara Drygulski Wright et al., eds.,
Women, Work, and Technology: Transformations
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987), 58–83.

23.
The History of Touch Typing
(New York: Wyckoff, Seamans, and Benedict, n.d.), 6–7.

24.
Ibid., 9–11.

25.
Ibid., 13–15.

26.
Ibid., 17–21; Torrey,
Practical Typewriting
, 3–20.

27.
Current,
Typewriter
, 55–58.

28.
Mares,
Typewriter
, 145–51; Paul Lippman,
American Typewriters: A Collector’s Encyclopedia
(Hoboken, N.J.: Original & Copy, 1992), 33–40.

29.
See “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,”
American Economic Review
, vol. 75, no. 2 (May 1985), 332–37.

30.
August Dvorak et al.,
Typewriting Behavior: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning Typewriting
(New York: American Book Company, 1936), 267–75; Delphine Gardey, “The Standardization of a Technical Practice: Typing (1883–1930),”
History and Technology
, vol. 15 (1999), 326.

31.
Dvorak et al.,
Typewriting Behavior
, esp. 81–101, 284–301.

32.
Ibid., 208–16.

33.
Ibid., 217–28; William E. Cooper, “Introduction,” in
William E. Cooper, ed.,
Cognitive Aspects of Skilled Typewriting
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983), 6.

34.
Cooper, “Introduction,” 7; Dvorak et al.,
Typewriting Behavior
, 237.

35.
Gardey, “Standardization,” 323–39; Cooper, “Introduction,” 8.

36.
Lippman,
American Typewriters
, 41–43.

37.
Allan G. Bromley, “Analog Computing Devices,” in William Aspray, ed.,
Computing Before Computers
(Ames:
Iowa State University Press, 1990), 156–85.

38.
Jay Hersh, “The Tyranny of the Keyboard,” in
http://www.tifaq.org/articles
; “DEC Terminals,” in
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford
.

39.
See Edward Tenner,
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
(New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 222–29.

40.
Joy M. Ebben, “It’s Not Just with Keyboards,”
Occupational Health & Safety
, vol. 70, no. 4 (April 2001), 65ff.; Pamela Mendels, “Protecting Little Hands,”
New York Times
, January 9, 2000.

41.
Donald A. Norman and Diane Fisher, “Why Alphabetic Keyboards Are Not Easy to Use: Keyboard Layout Doesn’t Much Matter,”
Human Factors
, vol. 24, no. 5 (October 1982), 509–19; Donald R. Gentner and Donald A. Norman, “The Typist’s Touch,”
Psychology Today
, vol. 18, no. 3 (March 1984),
66–72; S. J. Liebowitz and
Stephen E. Margolis, “The Fable of the Keys,”
Journal of Law and Economics
, vol. 33, no. 1 (April 1990), 1–26.

42.
Scot Ober, “Review of Research on the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard,”
Delta Pi Epsilon Journal
, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 1992), 167–82; Scot Ober, “Relative Efficiencies of the Standard and Dvorak Simplified Keyboards,”
Delta Pi Epsilon Journal
, vol. 35, no. 1
(Winter 1993), 1–13, and references cited in each article; Peter J. Howe, “Different Strokes Catch On,”
Boston Globe
, January 15, 1996; Jennifer B. Lee, “Keyboards Stuck in the Age of NumLock; Defunct Keys and Odd Commands Still Bedevil Today’s PC User,”
New York Times
, August 12, 1999.

43.
Neal Taslitz, telephone interview, August 17, 2002.

44.
John Markoff, “Microsoft Sees New Software Based
on Pens,”
New York Times
, November 9, 2000; “Newtonian Marketing Lessons,”
Advertising Age
, August 15, 1994, 20.

45.
Frank R. Wilson,
The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), 309–10; Lisa Guernsey, “For Those Who Would Click and Cheat,”
New York Times
, April 26, 2001.

46.
Monaco, “Difficult Birth,” 15.

47.
Lucy C. Bull, “Being a Typewriter,”
Atlantic Monthly
, vol. 76, no. 458 (December 1895), 822–31.

1.
Vincent Canby, “Nobody’s Spared in Dame Edna’s One-Man Show,”
New York Times
, October 24, 1992; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Behind the Superman, an All-Too-Human Thinker,”
New York Times
, November 23, 1998; Marc Winoto, “Ways of Walking,”
New Scientist
, vol. 164, no. 2218 (December 25, 1999), 87.

2.
“The Adventure of
the Golden Pince-nez,” in
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes
, ed. William S. Baring-Gould, 2 vols. (New York: Potter, 1967), vol. 2, 356, 364; Frank DeCaro, “Dame Edna Speaks Her Mind, and Yours,”
New York Times
, October 3, 1999.

3.
Hugh R. Taylor, “Racial Variations in Vision,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
, vol. 133, no. 1 (January 1981), 62–80; Seang-Mei Saw et al., “Epidemiology of Myopia,”
Epidemiologic Reviews
, vol. 18, no. 2 (1996), 176–77; Richard A. Post, “Population Differences in Visual Acuity,”
Social Biology
, vol. 29, no. 3–4 (Fall—Winter 1982), 319–43; Jane E. Brody, “In Debate on Myopia’s Origins the Winner Is: Both Sides?”
New York Times
, June 1, 1994.

4.
Douglas Fox, “Blinded by Bread,”
New Scientist
, vol. 174, no. 2337 (April 6, 2002), 9; Loren Cordain et al., “An Evolutionary
Analysis of the Aetiology and Pathogenesis of Juvenile-Onset Myopia,”
Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica
, vol. 80, no. 2 (April 2002), 125–35.

5.
Anneliese A. Pontius, “In Similarity Judgments Hunter-Gatherers Prefer Shapes over Spatial Relations in Contrast to Literate Groups,”
Perceptual and Motor Skills
, vol. 81, no. 3, pt. 1 (December 1995), 1027–41.

6.
Jah M. Enoch, “The Enigma of Early
Lens Use,”
Technology and Culture
, vol. 39, no. 2 (April 1998), 278–91.

7.
“Lenses and Eyeglasses,”
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
, vol. 7, 538; Nicholas Horsfall, “Rome Without Spectacles,”
Greece & Rome
, vol. 42, no. 1 (April 1998), 49–56.

8.
Dora Jane Hamblin, “What a Spectacle! Eyeglasses, and How They Evolved,”
Smithsonian
, vol. 13, no. 12 (March 1983), 102–3; Vincent Ilardi, “Renaissance
Florence:
The Optical Capital of the World,”
Journal of European Economic History
, vol. 22, no. 3 (Winter 1993), 508–10.

9.
Ilardi, “Renaissance Florence,” 512–36.

10.
Dennis Simms, electronic mail, August 25, 2002; Vincent Ilardi, telephone interview, August 24, 2002. See D. J. Bryden and D. L. Simms, “Spectacles Improved to Perfection and Approved by the Royal Society,”
Annals of Science
(U.K.),
vol. 50, no. 1 (1993), 1–32.

11.
Henri Jean Martin,
The History and Power of Writing
, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 32; John Dreyfus, “The Invention of Spectacles and the Advent of Printing,”
The Library
, 6th ser., vol. 10, no. 2 (June 1988), 94–106; Lynn White, Jr., “Technology Assessment from the Stance of a Medieval Historian,”
American Historical Review
, vol. 79, no. 1 (February 1974), 1–13.

12.
Heinz Herbert Mann,
Augenglas und Perspektive: Studien zur Ikonographie zweier Bildmotive
(Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1992), 43–57.

13.
Ibid., 30–32, 35–39; Jean-Claude Margolin, “Des Lunettes et des Hommes ou la Satire des Mal-voyants au XVIe Siècle,”
Annales E.S.C
., vol. 30, no. 2–3 (March—June 1975), figs. V—IX.

14.
Margolin, “Des Lunettes et des Hommes,”
375–93.

15.
German text: “Was heissen Fackeln / Liecht oder Brilln / Wann die Leute nich sehen wölln.” Claude K. Deischer and Joseph L. Rabinowitz, “The Owl of Hein-rich Khunrath: Its Origin and Significance,”
Chymia
, vol. 3 (1950), 243–50; Mann,
Augenglas
, 92–94, 99–100.

16.
Jill Bepler, “Cultural Life at the Wolfenbüttel Court, 1635–1666,”
A Treasure House of Books: The Library of Duke August
of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
(Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1998), 140–46.

17.
Michael Scholz-Hänsel,
El Greco, Der Großinquisitor: Neues Licht auf die Schwarze Legende
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991), 47–60.

18.
Ibid., 67–72.

19.
Richard Corson,
Fashions in Eyeglasses
(Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour, 1967), 63.

20.
Ibid., 69–74.

21.
Ibid., 69–70; Rita Reif, “Fashions
in Glasses, Sights for Sore Eyes,”
New York Times
, December 21, 1997; “On the Nose: Spectacles and Other Optical Fashions,” exhibition text, New-York Historical Society (I am grateful to Margaret K. Hofer of the Society for providing a copy); Billie J. A. Follensbee, “Rubens Peale’s Spectacles: An Optical Illusion?”
History of Opththalmology
, vol. 41, no. 5 (March—April 1997), 417–24.

22.
James
R. Gregg,
The Story of Optometry
(New York: Ronald Press, 1965), 130–31; “Durchs Glas den Rehbock Geniessen,”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, March 12, 2001; Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA)—Europadienst, release March 8, 2001.

23.
Gregg,
Story of Optometry
, 132–33, 179–201; Hermann von Helmholtz,
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects
(New York: Appleton, 1873), 197–226.

24.
“Education,”
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
, 14th ed.; David Vincent,
The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe
(Cambridge, Eng.: Polity, 2000), 1–26.

25.
Roy Porter, “Reading Is Bad for Your Health,”
History Today
, vol. 48, no. 3 (March 1998), 11–16.

26.
Suzanne Hahn, “Die Schulhygiene zwischen naturwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis, sozialer Verantwortung und ‘vaterländischem Dienst’: Das Beispiel der Myopie
in
der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,”
Medizinhistorisches Journal
, vol. 29, no. 1 (1994), 23–38; Emil Ludwig,
Gifts of Life: A Retrospect
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1931), 3–19.

27.
Hermann Cohn,
The Hygiene of the Eyes in Schools
, trans. W. P. Turnbull (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1886), 54–83; James C. Albisetti,
Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany
(Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1983), 123–24.

28.
Albisetti,
Secondary School Reform
, 130–39; Roy Porter,
Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine
(London: Routledge, 1993), 585–600.

29.
Hermann Cohn,
Lehrbuch der Hygiene des Auges
(Vienna: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1892), 252–68.

30.
Hahn, “Schulhygiene,” 33–38.

31.
Ernest Hart, “Spectacled Schoolboys,”
Atlantic Monthly
, vol. 72, no. 433 (November 1893), 681–84.

32.
Oxford English Dictionary
, 2nd ed., s.v. “four”;
Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang
, s.v. “four-eyes” and “four-eyed.”

33.
“Spectacles,”
Saturday Review
, vol. 50, no. 1295 (August 21, 1880), 234; John F. Kasson,
Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America
(New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), 30–31.

34.
“Spectacles,” 235;
L. D. Bronson,
Early American Specs: An Exciting Collectible
(Glendale, Calif.: Occidental Publishing, 1974), 34; Corson,
Fashion in Spectacles
, 215; Lyned Isaac, “Speculating Through Spectacles: A Material Culture Study of Eyeglasses in Late Nineteenth Century Australia” (M.A. thesis, Department of History, Monash University, 1993), 40–59, 69–72. I am grateful to the School of Historical Studies,
Monash University, for providing a copy of this excellent thesis.

35.
Corson,
Fashions in Eyeglasses
, 106; “Gli Occhiali di Corbu,”
Abitare
, no. 307 (May 1992), 244–46.