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Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#41

Post by thaumasiotes »

foldr wrote: post #39
thaumasiotes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first vowel and third consonant are different in both dialects. To my eye, each word has no more than two consonants in RP?

To your ear you mean? Yes, both dialects are non-rhotic. I mean the third orthographically.

No, I meant to my eye; I don't speak RP. But what training I have says to analyze e.g. "parker" as CVCV, p-ar-k-er.

I don't see more difficulty in saying "ar" is the first vowel in "parker" than in saying "th" is the second consonant in "wither"...

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#42

Post by toyg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #38
toyg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the government that destroyed all Windrush records, comes another shocking tale of incompetence with malicious undertones. Laws are written down to make them as permanently-accessible as possible, which acts as defense against capricious rulers. Anything that makes them less permanent is a small blow to the rights of everyday people.

Clearly we should start casting the laws into stainless steel plates.

That would be pretty cool... except it would require non-renewable sources and likely be more CO2-intensive and energy-intensive, so the window of opportunity for that switch has probably come and gone.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#43

Post by dnadler »

a3n wrote: post #35
Drakar1903 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to see both software architects and architecture architects run into same issues with legacy stuff.

Blocking a hall is like commenting out code.

Ha, more like putting it in a block like `if (debug == True) ...`

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37
nallerooth wrote: post #26

I wonder how much history would be lost to us if people didn't write stuff on walls. :D

I recall reading a hand-wringing article about a canyon with a lot of ancient Native American graffiti carved on the walls, and how it was in a state of crisis because modern American teenagers kept carving their own graffiti on the walls. I don't really see how we can defend the idea that the ancient graffiti is historically valuable and it's a good thing it was left there, but the modern graffiti is a menace that n…

I get the idea - the old stuff was impulsive nonsense too, of no more real value except as it illuminates how the human spirit never changes much.

But older-is-better/more important is a foundational principle of historical academics.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#46

Post by walrus01 »

mprev wrote: post #34

I wonder if the file format they use to store the digitised plans will still be readable 300 years from now.

Architectural plans in vector format are quite small in file size. I imagine it will be more of a ship of theseus type situation, where the files reside on one big NAS/SAN type system (which of course has backups) and are migrated while online to new bigger storage systems over time, repeat several many dozen times.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#47

Post by toyg »

foldr wrote: post #28
toyg wrote: post #8

I wonder if the “graffiti artist” Tom Porter and the recorded stonemason Thomas Parker, are actually the same person. A cockney accent interacting with an RP ear would make Porter and Parker quite similar. Name misspellings of labourers were likely very common before mass-education was introduced in late XIX century.

>A cockney accent interacting with an RP ear would make Porter and Parker quite similar Not really? The first vowel and third consonant are different in both dialects. (Note that while the 't' in Porter is subject to t-glottalization, the 'k' in Parker isn't.)

I'm sure that 1) modern inflections were exactly the same 170 years ago, and 2) builders of all ages are extremely precise and well-educated writers that would never mix up their letters.

I mean, even RP was barely formalized at that point...

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#48

Post by LegitShady »

coder1001 wrote: post #9

I guess these things get lost overtime if there is no system of documenting what happened and is happening with any building over a long period of time? A nice startup idea would be to create a system/website/app that documents what happens to any building over time including all maintenance and future plans! City councils have something like this but I imagine it is pretty simple and does not capture a lot.

This is an entire commercial space with existing players and complex regulation in business activities. These products already exist be it bim software like revit from Autodesk or gis from Esri like their permit license land software

Dont assume because you aren't familiar with the space that nobody is there and that you can convince anyone to buy your system over something supported by standard setters like Autodesk and Esri.

This is not an easy not to crack and a lot of people have tried already.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#49

Post by cm2187 »

nallerooth wrote: post #26

I wonder how much history would be lost to us if people didn't write stuff on walls. :D

I rather wonder how the historian will make something of the many billions of selfies, mindless tweets and click bait articles that our civilisation produces and that will likely be stored forever!

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#50

Post by wyattpeak »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #44
thaumasiotes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading a hand-wringing article about a canyon with a lot of ancient Native American graffiti carved on the walls, and how it was in a state of crisis because modern American teenagers kept carving their own graffiti on the walls. I don't really see how we can defend the idea that the ancient graffiti is historically valuable and it's a good thing it was left there, but the modern graffiti is a menace that n…

I get the idea - the old stuff was impulsive nonsense too, of no more real value except as it illuminates how the human spirit never changes much. But older-is-better/more important is a foundational principle of historical academics.

That's not really the idea - ancient graffiti is of vastly more value that the mere fact that someone wrote it. Ancient graffiti gives us insight into language and pronunciation (misspelling is very useful in reconstructing pronunciation), aspects of life considered taboo or otherwise unworthy of educated record (sex, usually), the lives of the comparatively poor and unimportant. It tells us about who was where, when, and doing what, in a way official records (if they exist) often don't.

Many of the things we've learned from graffiti can't be learned elsewhere. Things really would be lost to future historians if we managed to stamp out modern graffiti. Thankfully, we won't, so the question is moot.

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