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Thyne Oldest Known Tech Manual
johnshirley writes "How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant. Read Chaucer's 'A Treatise on the Astrolabe here."
Unless I'm mistaken, the spelling and grammar is correct. The chronology here places this writing in Late Middle English, which had very different spelling and grammar rules than modern English.
Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around. - Stephen King
Actually, it's Middle English. Old English is the language spoken prior to the Norman conquest, and thus prior to incorporation of many French words to the language. Middle English occupies an interesting position in the evolution of the language, before the Germanic and French rooted words were merged into a consistent pronunciation scheme (refered to as The Great Vowel Shift).
The Karma sutra was written by Vatsyayana sometime between the 1st and 6th century AD. If that's not a technical manual, I don't know what is. Oh wait.. this is Slashdot.
Kama Sutra.
Kama == Love (also the god of love, similar to Cupid)
Karma == Action and of course all the other things it means to us now.
It is indeed a technical manual on the art of love. I'm not sure it was the oldest of its type. However, this astrolabe manual describes the use of a technological device. I think this more closely relates to the connotation of a computer manual or man page than any "pillow book," but that is a matter of opinion.
That's not Old English. This:
HWAET, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
eodcyninga rym gefrunon,
hu da aeelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaena reatum,
monegum maegum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syddanaerest weard
feasceaft funden; he aes frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weordmyndum ah,
od aet him aeghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; aet waes god cyning!
Daem eafera waes aefter cenned
geong in geardum, one God sende
folce to frofre; fyrendearfe ongeat,
e hie aer drugon aldorlease
lange hwile; him aes Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,
Beowulf waes breme --- blaed wide sprang---
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftumon faeder bearme,
(From Beowulf...) is Old English. You might consider going back to school....
Chauncer? CHAUNCER?! Does the author of this story mean Geoffrey Chaucer? I don't know a Geoffrey Chauncer, but in the same period, Chaucer did write a treatise on the Astrolabe for his son.
And beyond the poor editing, how is this news? The treatise is included in all of the most widely used compilations of his complete works. See The Riverside Chaucer if you don't want to take my word for it.
Finally, not to be redundant, but while this is arguably the oldest tech manual in english, it is certainly not the oldest technical manual period. For something older, just for example, see Vitruvius' book on architecture. There's an older tech manual for you.
Gosh. You people really need a humanities / social sciences editor here.
The text is in Old English and is presented without any transalation.
Nope, Chaucer isn't Old English (a language more closely related to Fresian), its actually Middle English. Once you get used to it, it isn't too difficult to understand. If you want to see some Old English, have a look at an untranslated version of Beowulf (the Epic, not the cluster).
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The text is the oldest known "technical manual" in the English language.
From the bottom of the FA.
That should be "RTFP". The letter you've written as "Y" is a thorn (þ or &254; in iso-8859-1) and stands for "th". That letter is not present in Modern English, so it should be written out as "th". Unfortunately, slashdot won't pass through these character entities for rendering, so you'll have to imagine what it looks like, but its vague similarity to "Y", especially in older writing, along with the custom of substituting "Y" for thorn in early press printing (no thorns in the type collection), has perpetuated this confusion. The word you intended to use, "þe", is "the", and is pronounced that way. "Ye" is the plural of "you", not a definite article.
Just browse to www.puzzlering.net/astrolabe.html
There's a big mistake here that needs correction: Chaucer's spelling and grammar are not "rough". He was, and is, considered one of the greatest writers ever to use the English language. The problem is that English has changed a bit in 600 years. And a writer couldn't look up "correct" spelling: dictionaries hadn't been invented yet.
In a strict sense, Chaucer's language is not Modern English but a different language called Middle English. They're as different as Classical Latin and Church Latin. (Huh?) OK, they're as different as Cantonese and Mandarin. (WTF are those?) Sigh. It's even more different thatn C++ and Java!