Small-print edition!
October 15, 2014
Small-print edition!
https://jimsworldandwelcometoit.com/2014/10/15/small-print-edition/
From our friends at Shorpy.com comes this fascinating image of a young woman working in the big city in 1956. Notice the book under her manuscript and the hand-held magnifier next to it.
https://pdawiki.com/forum/data/attachment/album/201604/20/184614i045la96p4rn05zr.jpg
NYC Career Girl, 1956
I suspect the book in the photo above is a variant of the Compact Oxford English dictionary. The one I have is from the 1970s and the pages are set up a little differently. The magnifier that came with my COED is the same as in the Shorpy.com photo.
Because the full OED is 20 volumes, the compact editions are composed of multiple pages reduced so that several pages fit onto a single page, if you follow me. That makes the looking glass essential to reading the entries. Even with the pages crammed in so tiny, my COED is still a bulky two volumes.
https://pdawiki.com/forum/data/attachment/album/201604/20/184615x7548o827ot9odnz.jpeg
OED
Here’s a photo from the Web showing a modern-day COED. The looking glass or magnifier provided with the books nowadays seems to be a nifty round one with no handle.
https://pdawiki.com/forum/data/attachment/album/201604/20/184559c53umytkzumprtcr.jpg
Compact OED
An amazing resource for us word nerds.
My favorite dictionary for just reading—and you know you’ve got it bad when you collect and, yes, read old dictionaries—is my hardback facsimile of Noah Webster’s first American dictionary, as published in 1828. It’s fun to see how our language has changed since Webster’s day.
https://pdawiki.com/forum/data/attachment/album/201604/20/184558zipbboib9lb9lb7p.jpg
American Dictionary of the English Language
密集恐惧症不忍直视。 太小了。只适合收藏。。。 我只好奇,这么小的字,当时是如何印刷的? 足见科技的进步给人类文明带来的便捷和效率。
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