Thyne Oldest Known Tech Manual 452
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."
Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
8-)
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:3, Informative)
After making allowances for the language translation needed, or for those that have read other stuff from Chaucer, it doesn't look too bad to understand at all.
I like it that this has been put on the web and even made it to
(Btw, someone skipped on proofreading the web transcription. A significant line or so went missing even in the very first paragraph
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
or perhaps:
of course, the real hardcore would just simply run:
man astrolabe
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
I hadde the beste teke supporte calle in the last of dayes. A ladde declared hes Astrolabie thus broken, and coudde notte tell of the altitude.
"Didst thou putten thyn thombe in the ring" I didst ask.
"I gaze upon no such ring" he replieth.
"What of this thinge by thy right hond." I enquireith.
"Ah! Doest thou mean the holder onto which I hath placed my cuppe of beer?"
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
It is unfinished, too. Missing is:
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:5, Informative)
There's a big mistake here that needs correction: Chaucer's spelling and grammar are not "rough". He was, and is, considered one of the greatest writers ever to use the English language. The problem is that English has changed a bit in 600 years. And a writer couldn't look up "correct" spelling: dictionaries hadn't been invented yet.
In a strict sense, Chaucer's language is not Modern English but a different language called Middle English [unc.edu]. They're as different as Classical Latin and Church Latin. (Huh?) OK, they're as different as Cantonese and Mandarin. (WTF are those?) Sigh. It's even more different thatn C++ and Java!
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Even the oldest tech manual isn't readable.. (Score:3, Interesting)
While a modern English speaker can figure out Chaucer, Cantonese and Mandarin are almost completely different. Cantonese speakers cannot overhear a Mandarin conversation and figure it out. Chinese writing, on the other hand, is another story. Since it uses symbols, anyone who knows the symbols can read it regardless of which of the hundreds of spoken Chinese dialects they know. In fact, you don't even have to know any spoken Chinese to read it if you know
Thyne Oldest Perl Manual ! (Score:5, Funny)
Even in the 14th century, There Was More Than One Way To Do It !
Thomas Miconi
Huh (Score:5, Funny)
Oy! (Score:5, Funny)
There will a short exam to test your knowledge at 3.
Re:Oy! (Score:2)
OCR (Score:5, Funny)
Karma Sutra (Score:5, Funny)
KAMA Sutra (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:KAMA Sutra (Score:5, Funny)
That's Kama Sutra, you dork. You've misunderstood the meaning of the word 'karma'. Oh wait... this is Slashdot.
I suppose Karma Sutra is the technical manual for karma-whoring on Slashdot.
Re:Karma Sutra (Score:2)
Re:Karma Sutra (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Kama Sutra.
Kama == Love (also the god of love, similar to Cupid)
Karma == Action and of course all the other things it means to us now.
It is indeed a technical manual on the art of love. I'm not sure it was the oldest of its type. However, this astrolabe manual describes the use of a technological device. I think this more closely relates to the connotation of a computer manual or man page than any "pillow book," but that is a matter of opinion.
Re:Karma Sutra (Score:5, Funny)
Chapter 1: Insert tab A into slot B.
Re:Karma Sutra (Score:2)
I mean, just off the top of my head, Dioscorides 'De Materia Medica', a botany codex (highly technical applications of plants and where to find them), was written before Kama Sutra. As was the Kahun Papyrus, (1850 BC). The oldest extant medical text is from 2100 BC, and details 15 perscriptions.
In any event, Kama sutra is more of a social commentary.
Re:Karma Sutra (Score:5, Informative)
From the bottom of the FA.
Does it predate: (Score:5, Funny)
The Book of Armaments? [imdb.com]
Rough spelling and grammar? (Score:5, Informative)
I can't figure out... (Score:2)
I've seen original latin and greek and I've never come across different spellings of the same word (unless it's an obvious mistake or a part-of-speech suffix or something) within one text.
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:4, Informative)
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)
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:I can't figure out... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah yes...the time when /. editors reigned supreme.
The Standardization of English (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rough spelling and grammar? (Score:2)
As soon as I saw the "Chauncer" spelling I hit google, but I couldn't find an authoritative-sounding explanation of the spelling difference (both appear to be used, maybe both are correct since we're spanning english dialects here).
hehe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hehe (Score:5, Funny)
Wow... (Score:2)
Spalling ande suche (Score:5, Funny)
Shame he's dead. He'd make a good Slashdot editor.
(yes, yes, I know, Olde Englishe ande alle thate...)
Pervert! (Score:5, Funny)
He wrote a sex manual for his 10 year old kid?
This guy is a pervert!
Re:Pervert! (Score:2)
Yeah, that made sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
time was less scarce ?? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah, that made sense (Score:3, Funny)
No we don't.
Re:Yeah, that made sense (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Look, if I give it to the Wife of Bath (Score:2)
of course not, silly! (Score:2)
Sun Tzu's Art of War (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sun Tzu's Art of War (Score:3, Informative)
Old English, for sure, but English. It's "Chaucer" too, not Chauncer, and I presume this is the same guy who wrote the Canterbury Tales [librarius.com] including Thomas farts thunderously in the friar's hand [librarius.com]
spelling? (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:spelling? (Score:2)
Re:spelling? (Score:2)
You mean Middle English. Old English had stopped being spoken about 200 years before Chaucer, and it would be a lot harder to read.
Re:spelling? (Score:3)
Make that 300 years. Old English is generally defined as 600-1100 AD. Chaucer's writings are circa 1380-1400.
You're right about the "harder to read", but only to a certain extent. Northern texts of the same era as Chaucer, such as the works of the Pearl poet (no, not that Perl!), are also pretty hard to read.
Chaucer's English is fairly familiar to us because it's the London dialect that went on to form the basis of modern English. I
Inspiration for spammers... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it coming to an inbox near you soon:
"Is thyne mans penys lyttel? Than thou hast by myne oyntments"
John.
Re:Inspiration for spammers... (Score:2)
I find the manual to be confusing... (Score:4, Funny)
Even in the 14th Century.... (Score:5, Funny)
RYFP - Reade Ye Focking Parchment!
Re:Even in the 14th Century.... (Score:5, Informative)
That should be "RTFP". The letter you've written as "Y" is a thorn (þ or &254; in iso-8859-1) and stands for "th". That letter is not present in Modern English, so it should be written out as "th". Unfortunately, slashdot won't pass through these character entities for rendering, so you'll have to imagine what it looks like, but its vague similarity to "Y", especially in older writing, along with the custom of substituting "Y" for thorn in early press printing (no thorns in the type collection), has perpetuated this confusion. The word you intended to use, "þe", is "the", and is pronounced that way. "Ye" is the plural of "you", not a definite article.
Easy to read :) (Score:2)
Familiar.... (Score:2)
That, and every document I read that's written by the engineers at work (other than myself, of course
I don't understand it. (Score:5, Funny)
I attempted to find examples, but all I found was google spam [google.com]. Remember when Google was useful?
Re:I don't understand it. (Score:2)
I loved reading the VCR manual for those pictures alone.
Okay, okay, get me an Asprin now please. (Score:2, Funny)
Might as well make the font orange and the background neon yellow and really mess people up.
Bad spelling isn't (Score:2)
Chauncer?! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Chauncer?! (Score:3, Informative)
Or any of a handful of ancient Greek authors; they'd have predated Chaucer by, oh, nearly two millenia.
More specifically (clickety-click, all-praise-unto-Google) how about the Antikythra instrument [mac.com], a well-known Ancient Greek calculating engine, complete with inscribed instructions? Estimated to be made in 80 BC or so, 1400 years or so before Caucer. A friggen' computer with a manual fer chrissakes.
Outsourced? (Score:2)
Historical Geek (Score:5, Funny)
the fine print (Score:3, Funny)
Googlewhacked (Score:2)
Feh. That's the 14th C. Wrong. (Score:2)
De Honnecourt did technical drawings and gave instructions on the use and repair of various machines in the 13th Century (1225 to 1255 or so). See Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine."
I guess you could equivocate in that Honnecourt's notebooks were not *published*, just passed around from interested party to interested party.
Noah (Score:2)
I still crack up listening to Bill Cosby's "Noah".
Kyke Ase! (Score:2)
Nonsense. There's one older. (Score:2)
chaucer's target audience?? (Score:2)
"But son, a woman has no beard!"
Spelling and Grammar (Score:3, Interesting)
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's hard to read... (Score:5, Funny)
it wasn't all refined and perfect and unambiguous like it is now. ;-)
I don't see the difference? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Slashdot, 1392 (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Old? That's not even pre-Christian! (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't the Bible and Instruction manual? (Score:3, Insightful)
To see some Astrolabe examples... (Score:4, Informative)
Astrolabe User Guide (Score:4, Funny)
"Congratulations on choosing Astrolabe(TM), the most advanced device of its kind in the worlde..... blah blah blah.
Astrolabe Inc. 1391"
Rough spelling? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
preservation (Score:4, Funny)
Much older manuals survive (Score:5, Interesting)
No linux mentioned anywhere, I'm afraid.
Can you read it? (Score:4, Funny)
Has nobody read to the end? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bad Translation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not translated (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's not translated (Score:3, Informative)
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.
It's not translated (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:It's not translated (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stupid (Score:2)
Old English, Middle English and Modern English are terms used by modern scholars to segment a continuum of language change which begins sometime after the 5th-century Germanic settlements in Britain. 'Old English' (or 'Anglo-Saxon', as it is sometimes called) is generally taken to cover the period c600-1100 AD. The earliest surviving text is the Northumbrian ver [georgetown.edu]
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
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....
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Re:Rough? (Score:2)