How American Librarians Helped Defeat the Nazis

How American Librarians Helped Defeat the Nazis

Recruited to the war effort thanks to their deft research skills and technological know-how, librarians used microforms to gather and share intelligence with Allied forces.

By: Katie McBride Moench, Accessed on November 29, 2023, JSTOR Daily

https://daily.jstor.org/how-american-librarians-helped-defeat-the-nazis/

In war, as in everything, information is power. And for the United States and its allies in World War II, an epic battle from an analog age, that meant obtaining and transmitting by hand useful intel—like the development of destructive new weapons—before the Nazis could prevent their enemies from getting it.

Enter the librarians, tapped by US government officials to help in this effort. These librarians adopted technology from other fields to photograph an array of documents, including those that were rare and/or archival, and found means of sending them across continents. They used both microfilm and microphotography—technologies that came to play a key role in the wars of the twentieth century.

Antique book patterns

A collection of antique book patterns from front or end papers. Spanning from 1890-1930. 

Ordered by theme.

by Bergen Public Library

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/albums/72157633827993925

Where do fonts come from? This one business, mostly

https://thehustle.co/where-do-fonts-come-from/ 

Ten years ago, Cindy Thomason was walking down the stairs at home when she heard her phone ring. 

On the other end was an executive from Warner Bros. Entertainment, calling to let her know that a font she designed would be featured in the upcoming blockbuster adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

“I had to sit down,” Thomason says. “I’m just somebody who decided to design a font on a whim.”

A nurse in suburban Virginia, Thomason began tinkering with fonts in her free time using a software package she bought for $100. She’d listed the font, which she named Grandhappy, on an online marketplace called MyFonts. 

That’s where producers from Warner Bros. found it, and bought it to use as Jay Gatsby’s handwriting in the 2013 film.

It should have been a dream come true, a big break for a hobbyist font designer. But Thomason’s cut for her design’s feature-film cameo was a whopping $12 — not even enough to recoup what she paid for her design software. 

How Carl Linnaeus Set Out to Label All of Life 

He sorted and systematized and coined names for more than twelve thousand species. What do you call someone like that?

by Kathryn Schultz August 14, 2023 The New Yorker

https://themorningnews.org/p/how-to-fold-three-great-paper-airplanes 

John Collins, who set the Guinness World Record for farthest flight by a paper aircraft in 2012, demonstrates how to fold three planes: a Suzanne (named after his wife), a tube, and a stunt plane called the boomerang.

 Paper Airplane Designs 

A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions, video tutorials and printable folding plans. Find the best paper airplanes that fly the furthest and stay aloft the longest. Learn how to make paper airplanes that will impress your friends.

https://www.foldnfly.com/#/1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2

, video tutorials and printable folding plans. Find the best paper airplanes that fly the furthest and stay aloft the longest. Learn how to make paper airplanes that will impress your friends.

 

A Living History of The Humble Paper Airplane

For centuries, paper airplanes have unlocked the science of flight—now they could inspire drone technology.

SARAH WELLS AND JENNIFER LEMANPUBLISHED: AUG 9, 2023 Popular Mechanics

Shinji Suzuki met Takuo Toda in 1999, atop Mt. Yonami in the southern city of Jinseki-Kogen, Japan. Toda, the chairman of the Japan Origami Airplane Association, was there to launch a large paper plane from a tower he had built on the mountaintop for just that purpose.

Toda persuaded the local city council to build the 85-foot-tall tower—with 360-degree views of Mount Daisen, Mount Dogo, and the Hiba Mountains—as a monument to paper airplane hobbyists. The first floor of the tower includes a showcase of precisely folded paper plane models, while the top floor opens into a veritable launch pad. When Suzuki first met Toda, he was launching the almost-seven-foot-long paper plane—modeled after the space shuttle Discovery—off that very flight deck. “He told me that he would like to launch this paper plane from the space station,” Suzuki, now an emeritus professor in aviation at the University of Tokyo, says. “Everybody laughed at him.”

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a44112898/history-of-paper-airplanes/

Reading Well by Simon Sarris (July 17 2023)

The Map is Mostly Water

https://map.simonsarris.com/p/reading-well

Reading is alluring. It has a nameless quality beyond satisfying desires for information and pleasure. Despite more colorful and interactive media, reading text somehow remains more refined, more seductive. There is a visceral feeling to good reading. Partly this is because reading is nearly solitary.


At the beginning you are alone with just the characters. By the end, you are alone with just the author. To hear him well demands no other distractions. When one reads, or at least when I read, it is always very slowly and in a voice. Perhaps you have already imagined a voice you are reading this in. Say hello for me.


Reading is letting someone else model the world for you. This is an act of intimacy. When the author is morose, you become morose. When he is mirthful, eventually you may share in it. And after finishing a very good book one is driven a little mad, forced to return from a world that no one nearby has witnessed.

How secret languages thrive behind bars

On a now-private Facebook page, a prison guard in Texas casually joked last month about wanting to “gas” prisoners (throw urine or feces at them). Others in Georgia and Missouri posted about putting inmates in “the box” or “the hole” (slang for sending them to disciplinary confinement).

The incident, which was revealed by local journalists, led to prison officials promising disciplinary measures, up to termination, for the guards. But it also provided a rare window into the language that grows behind prisons walls, as well as the prison culture of casual violence — one reason that this vernacular exists.

Prison language, or language created by inmates while incarcerated, has a long and vivid history, and is likely as old as the modern prison itself. It can alternately can be described as prison slang (informal talk), cant (a secret language), or argot (jargon of a certain group).

Simple, perfect: The 50 best book covers of 2022, a snapshot of book design excellence across 27 countries.

“Simple, perfect”: The 50 best book covers of 2022, according to AIGA From popular releases by A24 and Standards Manual to paperback poetry, AIGA offers a snapshot of book design excellence across 27 countries.

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/aiga-50-books-50-covers-graphic-design-060723

Inside the Quest for Documents That Could Resolve a Cold War Mystery (From Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, by Nicholson Baker, published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020)

Inside the Quest for Documents That Could Resolve a Cold War Mystery Nicholson Baker the American Use of Biological Weapons

Why Do the Rich Have So Much Power? Americans may be equal, but some are more equal than others. By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist July 1, 2020