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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."
Yet another technical manual I can't make much sense of....
8-)
Somehow I suspect the 1-800 tech support line at the end of the manual isn't ringing any more. Lifetime support my ass...
There will a short exam to test your knowledge at 3.
Looks exactly like my experiences of using OCR software.
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
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.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The Book of Armaments?
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
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
Bye reeding thus lycense agerment, thee promeses...
Shame he's dead. He'd make a good Slashdot editor.
(yes, yes, I know, Olde Englishe ande alle thate...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
the intricate workings of the Astrolube--the predecessor to the sextant
He wrote a sex manual for his 10 year old kid?
This guy is a pervert!
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.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
More or less a manual on how to technically run an army. C. 500BC
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chauncer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar,
Actually, the spelling in the manual is correct for the period, unlike slashdot articles, where one cannot even expect proper nouns like Chaucer to be spelt correctly. :P
Although the spelling and grammar are rather old fashioned, no doubt spammers will take inspiration from the text for the latest attempts to get around filters.
I can see it coming to an inbox near you soon:
"Is thyne mans penys lyttel? Than thou hast by myne oyntments"
John.
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.
That's Kama Sutra, you dork. You've misunderstood the meaning of the word 'karma'. Oh wait... this is Slashdot.
[
I would have preferred a simple overview of how to operate the astrolabe. Unfortunately Chaucer had to take the tack of having each piece tell a tale about how it fits into the whole. That wouldn't be so bad, but sometimes the tales are analogies that are somewhat hard to relate to the instrument at hand.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Support could be summed up by a four-letter acronym:
RYFP - Reade Ye Focking Parchment!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
all your constants are belong to us
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
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).
I attempted to find examples, but all I found was google spam. Remember when Google was useful?
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....
And I thought 12 hours of programming was the only thing that could turn your eyes to goo.
Might as well make the font orange and the background neon yellow and really mess people up.
Spellings weren't really standardized until fairly recently (less than 150 years ago). Latin and Greek texts may have more standardized spellings but that is due to linguistic constraints. Besides original latin texts didn't have any spaces between words and that things like a v standing in for both a u and v.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
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.
middle english. it wouldn't even make sense if it was old english. wes thu hal, folde. fira modor, beo thu blowende.. etc, etc, etc
"The absurd is clear reasoning recognizing its limits"
-Albert Camus
He must be a true geek: He would rather write an intricate manual rather than just show his son face-to-face how to use the damned thing. I can relate :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Somewhere at the bottom it says something about "firste posthethe" and an arcane mention of something called "yegoate.intercour.se" Predating slashdot standards yet again, Chauncer gave this to his son then 4 hours later gave it to him again.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
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.
There was no standardized spelling in Middle English. Different spellings of the same word in the same text are actually very common in writings of this era. Part of it has to do with spacing - a word would be spelled differently so that it would fit into a line better. Pronunciation and vocabulary were not fully standardized in this era either, causing a lot of problems.
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.
I think in those times the relationship
with time was much different. Much less hectic.
The rhythms of work and life were much more
subjected to things like daylight, seasons and
stuff like that.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
It's not so much that it contains 'rough spelling and grammar' as it was 'written in Middle English'. Middle English is that period in the English language from after Romanticisation (following the Norman invasion in 1066) to roughly a century before Shakespeare.
It's also worth mentioning at this point that the concepts of correct spelling and correct grammar are essentially 20th century concepts within the English language. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the first in the language, was not published until 1755. Webster's Dictionary, the first such book in America, did not appear until 1828. Prior to the advent of Dictionaries, spellings were not considered absolute. In Shakespeare's time, it was not uncommon to spell your name differently on different occasions. Not only are spelling and grammar newcomers to our language, the concept of 'correct grammar' is a bit of a dated one. Linguists have come to realize that usage patterns vary from dialect to dialect and context to context. How we speak whe we are discussing Psychology tends to be very different from say, discussing Philosophy. Instead of saying 'incorrect grammar', it is better to speak of 'poor style'.
it wasn't all refined and perfect and unambiguous like it is now. ;-)
--- Ban humanity.
...the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar...
And how this is different from any of the recent manuals I've read, again?
At least with Chaucer's manual, eventually, you WOULD understand what the fsck you were doing, which is more than can be said for some tech writings.
-Styopa
Ah yes...the time when /. editors reigned supreme.
Father! (Score:IV, Runelike)
by Lowysbot (0000087)
on Wednesday January 28, 1392
Overthwart this forseide longe lyne ther crossith him another lyne of the same lengthe from eest to west? WTF?
Siggurus infantium!
re: Father! (Score:II, Plagued)
by ACerteyneMortale (0000004)
on Wednesday January 28, 1392
RTAM!
(Rede thy accursd manuale!
Mie tayle is too loge for God's sig.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Get REAL! There are some excellent pre-Christian writings that qualify as "technical manuals". Take Julius Caesar's treatise on building bridges: he describes it well enough that you could read his text and build one. Going back even further: Egyptian wine-making recipes from 4000 years ago qualify.
Bear in mind that when you are reading Greek and Latin you are reading it in a Greek/Latin alphabet.
Bear in mind that when you are reading English you are reading it in a Greek/Latin alphabet.
Since you grew up thinking of the way you read and write as "correct" it doesn't really strike your attention that the fit is rather poor and that there is no proper English alphabet. This makes a difference.
Also bear in mind that the Greek and Latin texts you read have the benefit of fairly stable language development behind them, spanning millenia, whereas English had only existed for a couple of centuries or so by force fitting language, at the point of a sword, into another. This not only screws up the rules but screws up how one thinks about whether their are rules or not.
When this piece was written the Language was still being made up. In fact, Mr. Chaucer helped make it up. What you see is not simply bad and inconsistent spelling but technical experimentation.
Hacking.
KFG
Take a look through Liviticus....
Just browse to www.puzzlering.net/astrolabe.html
For anyone too lazy to read, here's how it begins:
"Congratulations on choosing Astrolabe(TM), the most advanced device of its kind in the worlde..... blah blah blah.
Astrolabe Inc. 1391"
As others have pointed out, there was no standardisation of English spelling in the fourteenth century. On top of that, I don't think you realise that these books were copied out by hand. On very expensive parchment. By people who didn't have any concept of "correct" spelling anyway.
On your computer, if you make a typo you can delete it and try again, and when you've finished writing it you can run a spellcheck. Even if you're writing a sci-fi novel with We'ird'naMes in it, you can do a search/replace to make sure you've got those consistent.
On parchment, if you spell something wrong, you leave it spelt wrong. If you accidentally write the wrong word, chances are you leave that, too. You literally cannot afford to make a "perfect" copy.
Plus, in this case, you're a hack writing something for his nephew in his spare time. You aren't going to waste time proofreading if that's not a part of your culture.
I'm not certain, but I have a nagging suspicion that the oldest known tech manual actually belongs to another instrument entirely, in the origins of the modern computer. Counting boards, or abacuses (abaci?) have been used for a loooong time.
A quicky google on the history of the abacus yielded the following spiffy (or not) abacus history information, including a mention of the "ancient Chinese abacus imagined from a description given in a book titled Mathematical Treatises by Ancients written by Hsu Yo towards the end of the Later Han Dynasty, about 1700 years ago"
On the plus side (couldn't resist) I'm pretty sure that Chaucer would have written the first English (Englyshe?) tech manual, since he was, after all, a bit of a pioneer in English literature of all kinds...
Any generalization is a stupid one.
Check out the first five books of the Old testament (especially Exodus) for detailed descriptions of how to construct a shrine (the Mikdash) from materials that fit together beautifully and are easily assembled and disasembled.
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.
Actually, this was pretty typical of medieval spelling.. Things weren't spelled consistently, and the same author would often vary his spelling to not have to repeat himself.
Remember, this was way before dictionaries, and the idea that there would be one 'correct' spelling, making all others 'wrong' hadn't yet quite entered.
It was later, during the reformation, the Bible was translated, and often ended up serving as the 'offical' way of writing and spelling.
As far as I know, anyway.. IANAEM (An English Major)
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.
The concept of "bad speller" wasn't yet relevant. Standardized spelling didn't come until later.
'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
The original manuscript was found in perfect condition, due to the fact that his son never broke the shrinkwrap on the manual.
I have here on my desk at work (don't ask why) texts of mostly Roman-period artillery manuals (some in Greek, some in Latin), mostly cribbed from earlier, now-lost materials dating back to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Much older than the one referenced, and just as 'technical', to the point where they've been used to reconstruct some of the artillery engines described (stone and bolt throwers powered by twisted ropes and/or metal springs).
No linux mentioned anywhere, I'm afraid.
Well, according to our good friends at dictionary.com:
Old English
n.
The English language from the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 12th century. Also called Anglo-Saxon.
From OED: According to the nomenclature now generally adopted in this country, the Old English period ends about 1100-1150...
So the Anglo-Saxon language *is* Old English. And since Chaucer is late 14th century, I think he qualifies as Middle English. Thanks for playing though...
From the text: "And God woot that in alle these langages and in many moo han these conclusions ben suffisantly lerned and taught, and yit by diverse reules; right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome."
Even in the 14th century, There Was More Than One Way To Do It !
Thomas Miconi
There existed no English dictionary at the time, and most formal documents (and nearly all scholarly texts) were written in Latin or Greek. In the second paragraph Chaucer states that the reason he was writing in English was that his young son for whom he's allegedly writing this didn't know Latin yet. Paragraphs two and three are basically a long justification (excuse?) for writing this whole thing in English, because literate people of the time were all expected to know Latin and Greek. One of the reasons many of Chaucer's works survived and are read to this day (e.g. Canterbury Tales) is that he was willing to write in English- unusual for the time.
I tried just it through babelish, but that just made things worse.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
It appears that he wrote it for a friend's kid, who may have died before it was completed. Look beyond what Chaucer wrote, and imagine what might have happened. Possibly, the kid kept asking "Uncle Geoffrey" whenever he visited how his cool astrolabe thing worked, and Chaucer started writing this for him... and then he gets the news that little Lewis is dead.
That's pretty sad, not because he spent time writing this, but because he liked the kid enough to make the attempt, then had to deal with his death. This is more than a scientific document, it's a hint as to what life was like back then.
Get off my launchpad!
I'd have to write at least several pages to answer these issues I'm afraid, thus what follows is inherently lacking.
It is impossible to deal with Roman culture and not take into account Greek culture. The Latin alphabet is a concatenation of the Eutruscan and the Greek. However, some of the Eutruscan letters have have corespondence with the Greek.
Greek was developed from Phonecian starting sometime about 1000 BC. Phoenecian writing itself was in a prototypical form at the time (they hadn't even settled on which direction to write it yet, for instance) and the Greeks were psychologically free to adapt it as they pleased.
However, a point of interest, the Greek vowels corespond to the Semetic, the Latin vowels follow the Greek and the English follows the Latin.
But English has 20 vowels. Not five.
Spanish is a lovely language. Very Latinate, and it's actually difficult to misspell words in Spanish. The sounds simply corespond to the letters. You can make simple mistakes and typos easily enough but you really have to work at it to just plain get it wrong. The same is true of Latin and Greek. There's really no equivilant of spelling "fish" as "ghoti" in Spanish. In those instances where the pronuciation of a letter differs somewhat in a word from the standard alphabetic representation it uses an accent mark to note the correct pronuciation.
English, with its 20 vowel sounds as opposed to the 5 of Hebrew, has completely dropped the use of accent marks, and thus the use of vowels in the written word is often completely arbitrary, picking from perhaps as many as three "close fits." If one has not learned the "correct" vowel to use by rote and falls back on phonetics one is just as likely to pick any one of those three vowel letters as any of the others.
Greek and Latin evolved in a small world. Basically the Mediteranian basin. There was a good deal of trade and contact, but only with a limited number of fairly close neighbors. This resulted in well developed and very closely related languages that could easily share alphabets without any undue twisting of things.
In the case of the German language Luther had the advantage, although there were many distinct dialects of German, in that German was at least German.
English is a language of the globe. It always has been. It's completely polyglot. It's sounds and grammer are hammered together of bits and pieces from simply everywhere. It's Norse, German, French, Latin, Angle, etc. Its evolution follows the evolution of world voyaging and conquest. This makes it a wonderful language for prose.
It makes it unbearable (unbaribal/unbareubil) to spell with the Latin alphabet.
There have been a few phonetic alphabets proposed that would make the written English language nearly as phonetic as the Spanish. They've existed for over 100 years. Nobody cares.
Culture is very powerful.
And so we write our words as if they were Hebrew.
It's also interesting to note that modern English evolved in close relationship with the printing press and the fact that much of our spelling is a matter of convienience to the printer and has nothing to do with linguistics at all is not to be discounted.
Along that note I'll also point out that the Greek and Latin texts that have come down to us are not casual writing. Such as this spelling error laden post is. They are formal writings of professionals, and have had the benefit of careful proof reading and editing. Sometimes over the course of centuries before they became the version we know. Of course there are relatively few errors.
English writing in the time of Chaucer was a casual language, even though only a certain class of the educated would be expeted to read and write in it.
If one wished to write formally and "correctly" one wrote in Latin.
KFG
That bastard has been sending me spam! Take a look at this subject line!
"Fynde VYAGRA Cheep Ohnline and increese thine organ by moo proporciouns"
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Arguably, some writers would have learned to spell in school (if they were so lucky to attend). But what constituted "Standard English" would vary from town to town. Many people never travelled to other towns, so much of English spelling developed in pockets.
Until the rise of mercantilism in the 1500s and 1700s, variations in spelling and grammar were of minor importance. In time, the move from guilds to mercantalism required precision in business dealings, and the language had to be standardized. For example, English speakers dropped "they" as a singular, finding agreement in number more important than gender neutrality.
Much of "standard English" grammar is based on Latin rules of grammar. The reason we avoid splitting infinitives is that you can't split a Latin infinitive -- it's one word!
Well, that about sums up my English degree. :) I knew I'd use it again one day.
-- SYS 64738 --
No, that's Middle English, Late Middle English in fact. Ye True Olde English is not at all understandable today. It's more like a variant of German, Frisian is probably the closest modern analogue, but even that is heavily influenced by Modern German.
Here's an example of *OLD* English:
ealdres scyldig; ond nu other cwom
mihtig man scatha, wold hyre maeg wrecan
etc.