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The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

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Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#111

Post by jandrese »

sarreph wrote: post #81

It's interesting to see how — even in the 1880s — people were making the same mistakes as companies today: over-engineering to the point of unmanageable complexity ("complexity bad"[0]), and the less solve-all-possible-problems but simpler Linotype won out. [0] - https://grugbrain.dev/

I would say it was the opposite. The machine was overdesigned and underengineered. Someone needed to stop the guy and tell him that getting 18,000 precision parts working in unison is bad design and he needed several passes of engineering out as much complexity as possible to simplify the whole thing.

It was like trying to publish the first draft of your novel without ever having an editor go over it.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#112

Post by kazinator »

EagnaIonat wrote: post #56
kazinator wrote: post #8

> The easy moral of the story is that Twain was gullible and Paige a huxster. It absolutely isn't. Paige was actually the engineer/tinkerer earnestly developing this machine, which really worked. One of his main problems is that he always thought he needed to improve it more before it was ready. He didn't understand "release early and often": that time-to-market matters. > Twain felt that he had an insider’s perspect…

> It absolutely isn't. Paige was actually the engineer ... It glosses over it and Twains autobiography goes into more detail. What impressed Twain about it was the demonstration had an operator typing at high speed. When he got the device, he discovered the operator was typing the same phase over and over. They had memorised it so as to type faster. So one of the overlooked lessons is don't believe product demos.

Being able to type a repeated phrase fast is something; it's better than not being able to.

You want the typist to memorize some test sentences so that they are fast enough to demo what the machine can handle.

However, if the phrase was contrived to be sympathetic to the workings of the machine, that would have been a misleading demo.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#113

Post by EagnaIonat »

dmurray wrote: post #88
EagnaIonat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It absolutely isn't. Paige was actually the engineer ... It glosses over it and Twains autobiography goes into more detail. What impressed Twain about it was the demonstration had an operator typing at high speed. When he got the device, he discovered the operator was typing the same phase over and over. They had memorised it so as to type faster. So one of the overlooked lessons is don't believe product demos.

A trained operator could have got up to a very high speed anyway, though, as the age of typewriters would show. Even if Paige didn't know that. Having the machine able to keep up is more important than the speed of the typist.

You should read his autobiography

It was not possible to get a high speed as the machine often jammed. IIRC Mark Twain said the machine helped in improving his swearing.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#114

Post by [deleted] »

cubefox wrote: post #76
jrflowers wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this article about Mark Twain, a famous guy one hundred and fifty years ago, lost all of his money betting on the wrong thing is about chat bots. He lost his money before all that We will never know if Mark Twain would have or would not have lost his money betting on chat bots because he lost it all on a different machine that didn’t work

> Twain’s vision of hundreds of thousands of human-like language machines taking over the world would have to wait a century or two. (...) > I’d argue that there’s a clear line connecting the automation of typesetting and counting in the late 19th century to the rise of electrical computers a generation later, and then the early Internet and AI research a generation after that. (...) > I think there are three transfe…

[deleted]

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#115

Post by cardiffspaceman »

I used to fantasize about using computers to print stuff. I ended up at a little company that made desktop publishing software. While I was employed there, I went on vacation in Chicago and found myself in the basement of the former Donnelly printing plant where Sears-Robuck catalogs were printed. They had an exhibit of old printing presses, and at least one of them functioned. The docent told small groups how they worked. I told him my occupation, and he played off me as he lectured. He printed a souvenir for me, a little bit of paper with “Quality isn’t quick” written on it. Except there was an upside down ‘n’ where a ‘u’ belonged.

The organization used an antique letterpress to print up invitations for weddings and such.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#116

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #101
jacobolus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better. Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical…

Formal education is wider than just 15+ people classrooms. Apprenticeships don’t require removing people from the workforce, but they require feedback to function well not just watching a master craftsman.

[deleted]

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#119

Post by WalterBright »

ekelsen wrote: post #104
WalterBright wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printer setup is where all the cost is, the printing itself is practically free.

I think even the printing was still not _that_ fast. You needed to physically press down each page. Make sure the ink was right, replace the paper, make sure not to smudge anything, etc. I'd be surprised if they could average more than 2 pages / minute? Which for 1000 pages is still a full days work.

Compare 30 seconds to print a sheet to the cost of pulling hundreds of letters out of bins, tossing worn ones out, casting new replacements, lining them up, inserting spaces, and proofreading. I'd probably want to print 1000 sheets before setting up another page.

I was involved a bit in printing manuals in the 1980s. The cost of printing 100 copies vs 1000 copies was pretty much the same. The delta is the cost of the paper.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#120

Post by WalterBright »

jhbadger wrote: post #86
ymolodtsov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper was still expensive and there wasn't yet as much demand for books.

And Gutenberg still was shooting for the high-end of the market -- he had his printed Bibles touched up by artists (Illuminated capitals, some color added here and there), meaning his Bibles weren't much cheaper than hand-copied because he believed that nobody wanted just cheap, functional books.

Commoners weren't literate in those days, so I expect his literate customers would be wealthy and would be willing to pay for an illuminated book.

But as books proliferated, it suddenly became advantageous for commoners to learn to read (the Bible was the typical primer used), and a virtuous cycle began and revolutionized everything.

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