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."

Comments

Yeah, that made sense

[The I Shing]

That was -- ahem -- an interesting read. I liked the part where I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.

Nevertheless, I'm always impressed by how flowery the language was in the old days, considering how time-consuming it was to actually pen something.

In our day and age, we have the ability to dash things off at fifty to a hundred words a minute (depending on typing ability), and we make nearly everything we compose direct to the point of sterility.

Re:Yeah, that made sense

[Ubergrendle]

I'd argue (as have others) that English has become the modern day Latin. Perpetuated by Empire (first British, then American), it has become the common language of commerce and science. English has the added advantage of a very clear gramatical structure (e.g. no masculine/feminine nouns) and is very well suited to the adoption of words from other languages.

It is a difficult language to learn at first, given the numerous exceptions in its vocabulary (e.g. 'knife', 'i after e except after c, except when...', 'a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y').

English today is not the language of Shakespeare or Donne or Tennyson, or even T.S.Elliot. It reflects our society, and the world we live in, which is very driven by the forces of science, progressive-ism, and capitalism. Accordingly, our use of English has become more and more direct, as we value accuracy and elegance more than anything else.

It can still be beautiful. Take for example this poem by Leonard Cohen:

With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.

Simple, direct, elegant...easibly read and understood. But very modern in its approach. I love it.

Re:I can't figure out...

[Ieshan]

Yes, but you'd expect that whatever Chaucer made up for "treatise", be it "tretys" or "trytis", he'd use the same thing throughout the text.

Rough spelling?

[vorwerk]

It's middle English, not "rough spelling". Chaucer was one of the forefathers of the English language, and considered by many scholars to be one of the first major poets to write not in French or Latin (as was popular in the day), but in the language of the common people -- English.

If it weren't for Chaucer, many argue that the English language we know today never would have received the same amount of attention as it (eventually) did among the noble English class.