M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Technology and the Historian
By Davis Bitton

For many centuries historians had worked in basically the same manner.  First, they would gather material. Some didn’t gather very much, doing little more than rewriting previous histories.  Second, they would write their own work in longhand. 

Seldom do we know to what degree these historians revised; adding or subtracting, before making a fair copy.  Finally, unless the resulting history simply remained in the family for private use, it was “published” in some form.  Copyists transcribed the original work, and then copies of copies were made.

The invention and expansion of the printing press from the fifteenth century on greatly facilitated the publication of works.  But one still pictures the historian laboriously gathering material and then, quill pen in hand, writing out the new work.

Then, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, came the typewriter.

After several earlier attempts by others proved too cumbersome, Remington and Sons, the gunsmiths, began to produce and market a machine.  In 1878, the first shift-key typewriter appeared, with a lower-case and capital letter on each key.  We are told that Mark Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to a publisher.

Latter-day Saints were not slow in taking advantage of this improvement.  For ten or twenty years official letters might be either handwritten or typed, with carbon copies or “letter books” remaining in the originating office.  But gradually typewritten letters became standard.

I remember reading through Abraham H. Cannon’s journals.  At a certain point, he began to type them.  If everyone had his beautiful, legible handwriting, we might be just as happy to forget the typewriter.  But Cannon’s eye for detail remained the same throughout, and his meticulous care in recording activities continued through his later typewritten volumes.

In delving through archives, in reading old documents from the past, historians therefore have the experience of reading handwriting and also, after a certain date, typewriting.

Working historians often used the typewriter for taking notes.  Trained by a crackerjack typing teacher in high school, Dorothy Furstner, I subsequently typed my own letters, many of my notes, and eventually my entire doctoral dissertation.  Those who lacked the ability to type fast with accuracy were handicapped.  For many reasons, it makes good sense for a young person to master the keyboard at a young age.

You may be interested to know that Leonard J. Arrington, respected and highly prolific historian of Mormonism and the West, had his own style of typing.  With my office next to his, I would see him, or hear him, at work, typing at about half my speed, using the old hunt-and-peck method.  He may not have been fast, but he was relentless, churning out page after page after page.  Leonard resisted later improvements, even the electric typewriter, preferring his trusted Olympia manual.

Sound

The invention and marketing of the phonograph included the ability to capture sound on recordings.  While working on the biography of George Q. Cannon, I came across an entry in his journal that told of the entire First Presidency attending a recording session so that their testimony could be preserved and heard later in their own voices.  At the Church Museum of History and Art, in the permanent exhibit on presidents of the Church, you can still hear some of these early recorded utterances — really quite miraculous, when you stop to think about it.

The invention of the tape recorder, which became widely available after World War II led to the phenomenal expansion of “oral history.”  Allen Nevins, at Columbia University, is usually credited with establishing the first such program, an organized effort to obtain the spoken testimony of important participants in the New Deal.

Before long, other programs focusing on other parts of the past were initiated.  By now hundreds of oral history programs exist throughout the country and elsewhere in the world.  On a more modest scale, for purposes of family history, many people have had the experience of recording reminiscences from parents or grandparents.

Without discussing oral history in depth, let me mention two problems.  First, oral history interviews are not always done very competently.  If the interviewer has no experience and no instruction, he or she is likely to interrupt or to ask questions that fail to encourage full, reflective answers.  Any recorded interview is better than none, I suppose, but those using the interview in subsequent years will mourn for what might have been.

Second, it is easier to record an interview than to transcribe it, resubmit it to the interviewee, make editorial corrections, and type a final copy.  That is the sequence recommended in the best programs.  I have seen many cassette or reel-to-reel tapes of interviews that were never transcribed.  I worry about those.  If they are not “played” every year or two, will they deteriorate and become inaudible?  In the absence of a typed transcription, how many people will take the time and energy to listen to them?

Punch Cards

I remember one exciting innovation in note-taking and manipulation of data.  At least so I and some others thought.  I refer to punched cards.  You had taken a note from a primary source, copied a document or a portion of it.  How would you file it?  What about a document that had relevance for several different topics? For this eventuality, those who first used punched cards thought they had the answer.

Little holes all around the edge of the note card were assigned meanings.  I am interested in Joseph Smith. I insert the long needle, like a knitting needle, in the appropriate aperture.  Result: hundreds of cards, far too many to be useful.  But let us say I am interested in Joseph Smith and Zion’s Camp.  I insert two needles and bring out a manageable number of note cards.  Many examples come to mind.

It seemed like an improvement.  The content note itself had to be recorded only once, not recopied for different topics within the file system and not cross-referenced.

I tried this system for a few years, but, truth to tell, it was cumbersome.  When I now come across some of my earlier notes with those little holes around the edge, I smile.  We’ve come a long way, baby.

Computers

It is hard for some of us to realize that young people under a certain age do not remember the pre-computer world.  I refer, of course, to the personal computer, the PC, that has become widely available.  As we all know, computer technology has affected almost everything.  Retail and wholesale business, banking, policing, investment strategies, farming, the military, tax accounting, medicine — these are but a few of the areas of life now strongly affected by computers.

Thinking of university departments, we are not surprised to find computers used extensively in accounting, economics, engineering, the physical sciences, the social sciences.  But what of the humanities?   Philosophers and English professors, one might think, still read books, reflect on them, and help their students to appreciate and understand.  But even such traditional disciplines have not remained immune. Computers are used for ordering books, keeping up with bibliography, content analysis, and on and on. 

As for historians, we too have moved beyond the quill pen, the fountain pen, the manual typewriter, and the electric typewriter.  No historian practicing today, I think, practices the craft without the computer.

Computers are incredibly helpful in the gathering of data.  Using a PC, one can survey the contents of libraries throughout the country.  Getting actual content on the screen is another matter, but to a degree that too is possible.  If I have a worry about this, it is the uncertainty about accuracy of transcription. 

And those who write about Mormon history, or any history, purely on the basis of what they find on the Internet seem to lack grounding.  Will they miss the exquisite pleasure of actually handling and smelling old documents?  But let’s face it, it would show little intelligence in today’s world to ignore the many advantages the computer offers in the gathering of secondary and primary historical sources.

The second usage of the computer for historians is in keeping and organizing material.  How primitive now seem those punched cards of a past generation!   My late friend and colleague Dean L. May produced a marvelous book on three western towns entitled Three Frontiers.  Behind it, as I happen to know, was a huge quantity of material Dean had organized on his preferred Mackintosh computer.

Email

Which brings us, finally, to the use of email.  In a previous column entitled “Where Have All the Letters Gone?” I registered some disappointment at the decline of actual letters going through the mail in the traditional manner.  Admitting that I use email myself, relishing its rapidity, I imagined email missives being read and then being deleted and lost forever. 

Several readers encouraged me to think more positively.  Here is what Pene Beavan Horton had to say:

May I express an optimistic viewpoint? I love instant communication. All people need to do is to make sure they have a secure system and then spend a little extra time making their e-mails interesting. As a creative writer, I find that e-mailing is a delightfully fast way to communicate with family and friends around the world. If I say so myself, our e-mails are worth reading! and many of them worth keeping. . . .

My children and grandchildren and I keep up a constant flow of emails full of funny, interesting details and concerns and news of whatever we are all doing. I love letters, all types, and agree that they make wonderful treasures for future generations, especially if we put them in a time capsule to hand down to our children and grandchildren.

We can keep the emails and burn them to a disk for future family to enjoy, or print them out if we have enough ink.

She is right, of course.  For close connection to family and friends in the here and now, email is hard to beat. It is entirely up to us whether we preserve all or some of these communications for the next generation.  But then, as we all realize, that has always been true.

Even if they were so disposed, historians, including family historians, cannot afford to ignore advances in technology.

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