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My Name is Legion: Copying the Books of Grantville

Written by Iver P. Cooper

No down-time visitor can fail to be amazed by the libraries of Grantville. In 1633, Maestro Giacomo Carissimi, writes that the high school has "a library that seems to come out of long-forgotten myths. A fabulous place for the number and for the stunning quality of many of the books." (Toro, "Euterpe, Episode 3," Grantville Gazette, Volume 5). That library, by the way, was open twenty four hours a day, a testament to the level of interest in its holdings. (1632, Chap. 24).

Even the book collections of individual up-timers should impress. At least one large personal library is mentioned in canon; the "Congden library": "The room was practically a library in its own right. Outside of a narrow bed, every wall except one was covered with shelving. Cheap shelving, naturally—Freddie wouldn't have allowed anything else. But the books resting on those shelves weren't particularly cheap. No fancy first editions, of course, and only a few of them were hardcovers. But every shelf was packed with paperbacks of all kinds, ranging from children's books George must have gotten as a little boy all the way through dog-eared copies of a history of the American civil war by someone named Foote and a thick volume on the principles of astronomy." (1633, Chap. 17) Another noteworthy collection is the set of military history and wargaming literature assembled by the "Four Musketeers" (Eddie Cantrell and company) (Weber, "In the Navy," Ring of Fire). George Blanton has his son Dave's survival books (Jones, "Anna's Story," Grantville Gazette, Volume 1).

While the printing press greatly increased the affordability of books, and the number of copies in circulation, that didn't mean that large private libraries were commonplace in the early seventeenth century. Book ownership varied greatly, of course, depending on wealth, occupation, religion and location. Generalization is dangerous, but I would guess that about half of the European down-timers own no books at all. (A substantial percentage of artisans and even merchants lack a library.) Most of the rest own just two or three books, one being the Bible. Less than one in ten will have more than five or ten books (Hall; McCraig, Maxted).

Naturally, the down-timers are interested in history. William Wettin has "checked out—usually several times over—every single book relevant to early American history and political theory there is. And British." (1633, Chap. 12) King Charles knows about Cromwell; Richelieu, about Turenne and Mazarini.

Science, too. Doctor Gribbleflotz learned how to construct a wet cell battery from an unidentified up-time science book. (Probably a children's book, since it has "large printing and colorful pictures".) (Offord, "Dr. Phil Zinkens A Bundle," Grantville Gazette, Volume 7) In 1633, John George of Saxony is trying to capitalize on the revelation of the secret of porcelain manufacture in some Grantville text. (Pedersen, "A Question of Faith," Grantville Gazette, Volume 8.)

But the down-timers aren't just reading the encyclopedias, the histories and the science books. Clearly, the "Ram" has read "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol ("Helmut, speaking for Boskone"). Wallenstein likes mysteries.

The down-timers who have money will commission copies of books of interest to them, to the extent their budget allows. By Spring, 1633, Cardinal Richelieu has already acquired books from Grantville, and "had printed copies made and more securely bound. . . ." He explains to Mazarini, "Hand-copying would have engaged every stationer and monk in Paris for weeks and the originals were too fragile to pass around. So I ordered them typeset and the illustrations carefully cut by the best engravers I could find."

Not everyone can send agents to Grantville. But down-time printers are going to be looking for books which might have a large enough audience to be money-makers if published. And up-timers have had works printed for reasons of their own. Canon reveals some of what has been copied and printed . . .

an abbreviated German translation of Robert's Rules of Order (1634: The Ram Rebellion Chap 32).

three Agatha Christie mysteries (Robison, "Mightier Than the Sword," Grantville Gazette, Volume 6)

the Shorter Catechism in English (DeMarce, "Pastor Kastenmayer's Revenge," Grantville Gazette, Volume 3)

Paine's Common Sense (1634: The Ram Rebellion)

The Book of Mormon (1634: The Ram Rebellion)

Narrow Gauge at War (Lutz and Zeek, "Elizabeth," Grantville Gazette, Volume 8)

RN- and MD-level training materials (Ewing, "An Invisible War," Grantville Gazette, Volume 2).

Duplicating the Books of Grantville

What would be involved in making one copy of every distinct title in Grantville? We will start by determining the "copying power" of the would-be copyists, which is a function of

1) the speed with which the book can be copied (in words or pages an hour)

2) how much time can the copyist devote (in hours/year) and maintain that speed

3) the number of copyists employed.

We will then compare it with the “wordage” of those distinct titles. To estimate that, we need to know:

4) how many books are there in Grantville? (counting the public library, the three school libraries, the books owned by the various businesses and churches, and the personal libraries of the residents)

5) how many of those books are distinct titles

6) what is the average length of the books (in words)

Copying Methods

We need to distinguish how quickly a single copyist can make the first copy (transcription speed), versus making each of a large number of additional copies (publication speed). A computer-cum-laser printer has the same transcription speed as an electric typewriter, but a higher publication speed. Manual typesetting is slow, even compared to handcopying, but once the type is set, you can rapidly print a large number of copies. So conventional printing has a very slow transcription speed, but a high publication speed. For speed comparisons, see table 1 below.

The fundamental equation is

Effective Copying Speed = Individual Copying Speed X Number of Copyists

In other words, brute force (increasing the number of copyists) can compensate for a low individual copying (transcription or publication) speed. Contrariwise, if a copying method has a limited number of copyists or copying equipment (e.g., typing is limited by the number of typists and typewriters), it may not be as effective as an intrinsically slower method.

There are two ways in which machines can improve the duplication process:

–directly, by increasing transcription speed (typing vs. hand copying); and

–indirectly, in that if they are used to make multiple copies (whether that be by mimeograph, letterpress, photo-offset, dot matrix, laser, or inkjet printing), then the cost of copying the original work can be spread over more purchasers, which means that you can afford to hire more copyists and split the work so it goes faster. Indeed, the ability to generate multiple copies cheaply may determine whether the work is copied in the first place.

If a particular book is in high demand, then it is likely that it will be copied by a method with a high publication speed, even if that method is costly or has a slow transcription speed.

Machines can be divided into three categories: the up-time typewriters, computer systems, mimeographs, etc. which made it through the RoF; the down-time, possibly geared down, equivalents; and machines which already existed in the early seventeenth century (printing presses, pantographs).

Particularly for the first category, we have the following issues:

1) Does it make economic sense for the owner to devote his/her equipment to this use? (for example, the owners of the Pentium IIIs might think they can get a higher price/rental for them for use for say, running an airplane simulator, or for engineering design, or for massive database management, than so their printers can be used to make copies of books. This is a comparative advantage argument.)

2) Regardless of economic sense, will the owner allow it? (I am not sure that my son would give up his computer, and thus his ability to play computer games, even if he would be given a lot of money. Since he would want to spend the money on computer games.)

3) How soon will the up-time machines run out of supplies, or break down? Can we duplicate the supplies and spare parts?

4) Will we be rate-limited by the number of trained operators or machines available?

Cost, of course, is important. If you aren't copying the work yourself, then you must hire a copyist, whether that be a scribe or a typist. In theory, it shouldn't cost more to hire ten typists than one, since the work should be completed ten times more quickly, but because there is a limited pool of typists, you could end up paying a premium for speed.

Machines increase transcription or publication speed, but they too have a price. If you have to buy a mimeograph or a typewriter in order to use it, then you have to be able to justify the capital cost. Cost is less of a factor if you can rent the equipment. (Gorg's "Sewing Circle" says that by October 1631, all the sewing machines in Grantville had been rented out. That's a good precedent.) Note that in the early days of typewriting, if you hired a typist, he or she supplied the typewriter. (That is still true, of course, for students hiring freelance typists to type their dissertations.) If a machine is used to duplicate more than one book, its purchase price can be spread over all the books.

Hand-Copying

I am going to start my analysis with hand copying. Some visitors to Grantville will not be able to afford buying or renting a typewriter or computer system, or hiring a typist, and will be interested in books which haven't yet been (and perhaps never will be) reprinted. And even a few years after RoF, there will be far more people in seventeenth-century Germany who can write than who can type at a typewriter. There is also only a limited supply of typewriters, etc., and those who can't wait for the equipment to become available may find it necessary to copy the books with quill and ink.

The good news is that hand-copying doesn't require anything more than pen, ink and paper, and basic reading and writing skills. The bad news, of course, is that hand-copying is slow.

The alleged handwriting speed record, set in 1853, was 30 wpm. (Topik, 212).

Allcock found an average handwriting speed of 16.9 words per minute in high school students, year 11. A 2001 literature review reported these findings: "average writing speed of young workers who left school at 16 was around 20-21 wpm", a Scottish Examination Board considers 16 wpm to be the minimum writing speed for candidates, writing speeds of 10-20 wpm are "normal at age 15"; and "the average speed . . . for a secondary modern pupil is about 10-12 wpm." (Bishop) It also reported new results; an average speed of 13 wpm for ninth graders.

Hilz (p. 379) says the handwriting speed of 1000 professionals (presumably normal or above-normal adults) was, on average, 15 words per minute. Another recent study says text can be copied at 22 wpm (WikiWPM).

If we assume 40 hours of copying per week, 50 weeks a year, that would be 2000 hours a year, per copyist. At 17 wpm, that is 2,040,000 words per year, per copyist. Compare this to an interesting real-world test of sustained handwriting speed. A news article (BBC) said that a Moldovan girl hand-copied Harry and the Half-Blood Prince (607 pages, official word count 168,923) in just over a month because she couldn't afford to have a copy shipped from the UK. So one person should be able to copy about two million words/year.

Shorthand

Shorthand is likely to be used only for personal notes, or as an intermediate copy for those who are reprinting a book outside of Grantville.

Pantograph

The pantograph is a mechanical device used for duplicating the movements of a hand when writing, so as to generate one or more copies. In 1630, Christoph Scheiner (its alleged inventor) used a pantograph to duplicate drawings. This was a two-arm pantograph, with a pointer on one arm and a pen on the other. The pointer is moved to trace over the drawing, and the pen reproduces it on paper. In the 1632 Universe, Scheiner is sent in 1634 to Grantville, to be the resident astronomer, so it is safe to assume that if pantographs are of any value in the copying project, he will say something about it.

Another kind of pantograph has a pen on each arm, so the scribe is making two hand copies of the book simultaneously. Thomas Jefferson used one to produce file copies of the letters he wrote. This could be a good deal for a scholar of limited means; with no additional labor, two copies are produced instead of one, and the extra copy can be sold.

In theory, it is possible to increase the number of arms, and thus the number of copies made simultaneously. (The term "polygraph" originally referred to a pantograph with additional arms.) The catch, of course, is that more effort is required to move the control pen, because of the mechanical resistance of the more complex and more massive mechanism. Still, giant pantographs, armed with ten fountain pens, were used by late nineteenth century paymasters (Schwarz 228).

An interesting strategy is to forgo the pens, and use a pointer on one arm and a stylus on the other. The stylus could inscribe a copperplate, which can then be used as a template for printing. Pantographs were used at the end of the eighteenth century to make portrait prints (Lewis-Clark.org).

Pantographs increase publication speed, but not transcription speed. If anything, transcription will be a bit slower than normal hand writing, because of the effort needed to move all the hardware. Moreover, despite Jefferson's enthusiasm, pantographs were commercially unsuccessful because of their "constant need for repair and adjustment" (officemuseum.com).

The Lecture Trick

Medieval students obtained copies of their textbooks by having it read aloud by a lecturer, and copying down what was said. The same technique could be used to make multiple copies of any Grantville book. Dictating speed is not likely to be a limiting factor; the lecturer will have to speak slowly so the copyists can keep up.

Unfortunately, all participants must be able to read and write English, which isn't a common skill in the Germanies. And the copies probably won't be identical.

Up-Time Typewriter Inventory

I wasn't able to find any published data on how many people, or households, still owned manual or electric typewriters in 2000 (or any other year). Consequently, I conducted two admittedly unscientific surveys.

Surveying my wife's email correspondents, I got responses from 57 households, mostly in the DC/Baltimore area. There were 30 households with typewriters, owning, collectively, 17 electrics and 25 manuals (total 42). There were a total of 164 people in the 57 households polled. Of those, 88 have access to at least one typewriter within their household. That's 0.1 electrics and 0.15 manuals per person, or 0.3 electrics and 0.44 manuals per household.

On Baen's Bar, I received responses for 24 households, 16 of which have typewriters. They collectively owned 13 electrics and 19 manuals (0.54 electrics and 0.8 manuals per household).

If my email survey results were typical of Grantville, then we could expect its 3500 people to own 350 electric and 525 manual typewriters. And of course the Bar survey would paint an even rosier picture.

Canon makes it clear that some manual typewriters passed through the RoF. Musch, "On Ye Saints," says, "Willard returned to hunting and pecking on the old manual typewriter that he had gotten back when he was in high school." (1634: The Ram Rebellion). And Clavell, "Magdeburg Marines: The Few and the Proud," includes this passage: "You know, I remember seeing two manual typewriters in my dad's junk. I bet we can use them in Magdeburg." (Grantville Gazette, Volume 4). Both manual and electric typewriters are mentioned in 1634: The Galileo Affair.

Some of the up-time typewriters will be used personally by their owners (possibly to take the load off their computers). Others will be sold to buyers outside Grantville. Only the remaining machines will be available for sale or lease to those seeking to duplicate Grantville's books.

One of the interesting results of my surveys was that many households own surplus typewriters (i.e., more than one). According to my email survey, the 42 households had 12. So, if everyone in the typewriter-owning households didn't mind sharing one typewriter, Grantville should have 256 typewriters which might be sold without too much inconvenience to the owner.

Down-Time Typewriter Production

In 1634: The Galileo Affair, Chapter 5 contains a passage, set in September 1633, heralding the post-RoF re-invention of the typewriter: "Now there remained only the final edit before any of their dwindling supply of electric typewriter ribbon was committed to the project. And there was another of the many little ironies created by the Ring of Fire. The up-timers considered typewriters "antiques" and made jokes about using them. But down-time artisans would pay a small fortune to get their hands on one—manual typewriters even more than electric—so they could disassemble them and begin designing what would soon become the cutting edge of a new world's literary technology. Indeed, the first seventeenth-century typewriter had just appeared on the market. It was a great, monstrous clumsy thing, which almost needed to be operated by fists instead of fingers. It was also selling like the proverbial hotcakes."

We don't know how many typewriters were produced each month, and the price at which they were sold. These two factors will dictate the impact of down-time typewriters on the duplication of the Grantville Corpus.

The Course in Modern Production Methods (1919), p. 120, says, "Each [typewriter] machine contains about 2500 individual pieces, each of which passes through from 6 to 30 machining and other manufacturing operations. Many trades and handicrafts are required for their production." An antique typewriter expert told me a manual typewriter has 2,000-3,000 parts.

In order to judge the rate at which typewriters might be manufactured, it is helpful to compare them with clocks and sewing machines. However, a typewriter is a lot more complicated than either. A clock is certainly one of the more complex devices which were made by the down-timers on the eve of RoF. Judging from nineteenth-century examples, the down-time clocks had at most a few hundred parts. An 1830s Jerome clock contains "fewer than 100 parts, of which about 10 were moderately complex gear wheels and escapements (stamped) and the rest were mostly bolts, nuts, pins, axles, bushings, washers, and flat stamped casing parts." (Ayres 3). A nineteenth-century tower clock movement has 100 to 500 parts, with the average being 250 (Frank). Frank says that his average time for restoring a movement is 30 minutes per part. Presumably, it would take several hours to make each component from scratch.

In 1680s Geneva, "there were more than one hundred masters and about three hundred workers who produced more than 5,000 timepieces a year." (Cipolla, 65) That implies that each shop (a master and three workers) produced about twelve a year. If their work week was fifty hours, then over eight hundred hours went into making each timepiece, an average of over three hours per part. If a typewriter has ten times the number of parts as a clock, and thus takes ten times as long to manufacture, then that suggests that a similar shop would take almost a year to make a single typewriter. Of course, if enough clockmakers start making typewriters, the total production could be significant.

According to canon, sewing machines were first manufactured in the 1632 Universe in October, 1631 (Gorg Huff, 'The Sewing Circle," Grantville Gazette, Volume 1). An 1860 sewing machine had 100-150 parts (Ayres 3); one from 1875, about 150. (Groover 36). Trent, in "The Sewing Circle," says that the HSMC machine uses about 100. Karl Schmidt, in the same story, predicts that sewing machines will be manufactured at a rate of more than one a week. Let's say, one every three workdays. Then a typewriter might take 13-30 times as long; that is, one could be made in 40-90 workdays.

With time, some of the parts will be machine-made rather than hand-made. That is, HSMC made what Gorg calls "production machines," by which he means machines which can be used to make some of the parts and thereby speed up production. That technique would probably work better with typewriters than with sewing machines. The reason is that the key lever and type bar mechanisms are essentially identical for each key. The principal difference is that there is likely to be one rod in the key lever mechanism which varies in length depending on the placement of the key. On a Monarch manual typewriter, I counted 42 typing keys. If each key lever-type bar mechanism was 50 parts, and the total parts were 2500, then machine production of the key lever-type bar mechanism would reduce the required handwork by 80%.

Electric typewriters have fewer parts. The original IBM Selectric was a bit over 1,000 parts, the 1990 version under 200 (Utterback 142).

Typing Speed

How much of a difference would typing (whether at a computer keyboard or a typewriter) make? Less than you might expect. Yes, an up-time legal secretary might type 80-100 wpm on an electric. And the manual QWERTY typewriter speed record (Margaret Owen, 1918) was 170 wpm (Schwarz, 464 n.46). But there are going to be very few expert typists in Grantville and they aren't likely to be persuaded to type books. The normal up-timer is going to be slower.

One study (Ostrach) found that among 4,000 people who claimed they knew how to type (and were seeking a clerical job), the mean raw speed (unadjusted for errors) was 40 wpm (median 38). A clerk/typist might need to type 35-40 wpm, a secretary 50-60, and a word processor or legal secretary 70 or more (Loveday; federaljobs.net).

Finding and Training Typists

Judging from the Grid, there are perhaps thirty up-timers who have worked as secretaries and therefore presumably have high level (50+ wpm) typing skills. There are probably some hundreds more who type their own documents on the computer, at speeds probably in the 20-40 wpm range.

Even if an up-timer knows how to type, recruiting him or her to do so isn't going to be easy. Chances are they have other knowledge which is even more salable—even if they were secretaries prior to the RoF.

So we have to acquire the typewriters and set up a training program. There probably wasn't much training of down-time typists until the Croat Raid established Grantville's "survivability," and the formation of the Confederation of Europe meant we suddenly needed a lot of bureaucrats. At the North Marion Technical Center, the "Keyboarding I" class is one semester, one period. That probably is equivalent to sixteen hours in the classroom, and an equal amount of homework.

With five teachers and a hundred teaching machines, we could probably produce a crop of a hundred new typists every six weeks or so. It wouldn't be too many months before the bottleneck was the number of typewriters, not that of typists.

I am going to assume that the average typing speed of those recruited for book duplication is initially 34 wpm (conveniently twice my assumed hand copying speed). Eventually, I expect this to rise to about 50 wpm, once the pool of down-time typists is large enough so we can pick and choose. The really fast typists will probably be executive secretaries or typing teachers, and not involved directly in the duplication project.

Carbon Paper

Carbon paper can be used with both hand copying and typewriting. The supply of up-time carbon paper is probably quite limited, as it was rendered virtually obsolete by the photocopy machine. However, there are probably some forms with carbons, and these could be used as models for designing down-time equivalents.

In its heyday, specialty carbon paper could be interleaved with copy paper to make as many as 10-25 simultaneous copies (Schwarz 228, 463 n. 43; officemuseum.com). However, the copies are obviously inferior to the original and therefore will command a lower price in the marketplace.

Spirit Duplicators and Mimeographs

A spirit duplicator (ditto machine) used a two-sheet spirit master. Writing on the master caused a colored wax to be transferred from the second sheet to the back of the first sheet, producing a mirror image. The first sheet was then placed on a drum, waxed side out. A solvent (the "spirit," usually an isopropanol-methanol solution) extracted the pigment (usually aniline purple) from the wax so as to transfer the image to the paper run past the drum. A single spirit master could be used to make a few hundred copies. If you wanted more, then you typed another master. The hand-cranked Ditto D-10 (1954) was advertised as capable of making 120 copies/minute (officemuseum.com).

A mimeograph uses a single sheet stencil, made of waxed mulberry paper, and a cardboard backing. Writing on the stencil removed the wax. As with a spirit master, the mimeo stencil was placed on a drum. However the mimeograph drum is filled with a true, oil-based ink, which penetrates the paper wherever the wax is missing. With one mimeo stencil, a run of several thousand copies is possible. The A.B. Dick Model 75 Rotary Mimeograph (1904) produced 45-50 copies/minute; later models, 100 (Answers.com; officemuseum.com).

The masters for these processes can be prepared by hand, typewriting or impact printing. If a typewriter is used, the typewriter ribbon is removed or raised, so the type makes an inkless impression. In essence, it means that a single typewriter can be used, with a little additional work, to make hundreds of copies of the same typed page. The copies are not, mind you, of high quality, but they should be readable. Certainly, not significantly worse than a carbon copy.

The down-time adaptation of stencil technology was placed into canon by Virginia DeMarce's story "Mail Stop" (Grantville Gazette, Volume 9). In March 1633, Arno Vignelli, an Italian engineer, told a Bavarian official about what he saw at a museum in Grantville. One of its "curiosities" was a mimeograph. Vignelli thought he could make one. "With enough time and money and workmen. It would be difficult and very expensive to make, with much hand-fitting of metal parts, especially teeth, and the need for several springs, but it could be done." Vignelli also saw a hectograph. "Much simpler, but calling for more complicated inks."

Vignelli devised a "duplicating machine" which ran copy paper, a mimeograph stencil and a protective sheet between rollers and across an inked pad. Vignelli thought—but didn't promise—that 100–1,000 copies could be made from a waxed silk stencil, and 25–100 from a waxed paper one. By "several weeks" before his meeting in Bonn, his shop had ten completed machines, and another five almost finished. They aren't complicated devices.

By late April 1633, in Frankfurt am Main, "the gossip (among printers) was all about the new 'duplicating machines'" which Vignelli is selling. At least two local printers had bought them.

Ditto and mimeo copies have two disadvantages. First, they are of obviously inferior quality. Secondly, you don't have the option of simultaneously making a nice typed original and a stencil for mimeo production. Either you have a ribbon in the typewriter or you don't. Now, if you could wire two electric typewriters so typing on one caused the other to "echo," you could have your cake and eat it, too. . . . (This would be more difficult to do with two manual typewriters, since it takes a lot of force to get a good impression. )

Computer Systems: Text Input

In August 2000, 51% of households had at least one computer (Census Bureau P23-207). It's been estimated that there are 750 reasonably up to date computers and 150 "scrap" ones in Grantville (Bartholemy).

The typical computer-based copying system comprises either a keyboard or scanner to input the text, the printer to output it, and the computer to serve as the intermediary. It may be possible to create a homebrew system in which the keyboard sends data directly to a printer, but obviously that requires some electronic skills and parts.

Keyboarding text into a computer is no faster than typing it at a typewriter. The advantage is that the text can be stored electronically, and that it can be sent to a computer printer which can make multiple copies a lot faster than could be done with a typewriter alone (in other words, the transcription speeds are the same, but the computer system has a higher publication speed).

Book scanning is something of a nuisance. The original must be correctly positioned on the scanner window (books have a tendency to shift), and then you do a preview scan. If you are happy with the result, you do the real scan. You can scan 2–3 pages/minute (ppm)(own testing; Cohen; Project Gutenberg). Double that if you scan two pages simultaneously.

It can be tricky to get a book to lie flat enough so that you can scan the entire page of text, especially if it has a narrow "gutter." In fact, you might have to unbind the book (e.g., with a guillotine cutter) in order to make a successful scan.

In theory, unbinding also allows you to use a scanner with an automatic document feeder (if any are available in Grantville), and thereby increase scanning efficiency (to perhaps 25 ppm). The catch is that books often have pages which are too small, large, thick or thin to make the ADF happy, and it jams up. Another problem with thin paper is "bleed through." (Adams)

If the book page is scanned in, then you either need optical character recognition software to convert the image into text, or a graphics quality printer. Printing graphics may be slower than printing text. However, OCR processing will require another 12–60 seconds/page.

Some books, because of their fonts and layout, will be better suited to OCR than others, so it may pay to limit OCR to the works best suited for it. Sometimes, OCR is used just to generate a searchable database to supplement a scanned image (Cohen). OCR works best with unbound sheets, avoiding page curvature, gutter shadow, etc.

A final possibility is to use speech recognition software. Achievable dictation speeds are variously reported as 40–160 wpm (Johnson, Kramer, Devine, Griffith, Patterson)(punctuation and digits count as words). Errors are common and, when correction time is taken into account, typing is faster even for slow typists (Hah).

OCR and Speech recognition software were commercially available as of RoF, but we don't know whether they existed in Grantville. There was almost certainly OCR software bundled with the scanners, but those were most likely "limited" editions. We don't know if anyone upgraded. Speech recognition software might have been owned by someone with a disability hindering typing.

Computer Systems: Text Output

The principal kinds of computer printers which might be found in Grantville are daisy wheel printers, dot matrix printers, inkjet printers, and laser printers. In 1997, 85.5% of home computers were equipped with printers (Statistical Abstracts 2000, Table 912). (Those which nominally lacked a printer were probably sharing one with another computer.) Grantville probably has over 600 printers.

Daisy wheel printers use a spoked wheel; there is a raised letter at the end of each spoke. The printer controller spins the wheel to the appropriate position and then a pawl strikes the back of the selected spoke. Daisy wheel printers were superseded in the late eighties by dot matrix printers.

Daisy wheel printers can only produce character-based graphics (with an appropriate daisy wheel bearing the characters). The other three printer types can produce dot (pixel)-based graphics and hence are far more suitable for reproducing illustrations.

Dot matrix printers produce characters by using tiny electromagnets to drive pins against a ribbon, causing a dot to appear on the paper. Each character is the result of a particular pattern of dots. DMPs have a very long working life and, in addition, it should be possible to build at least draft-quality DMPs within a few years after RoF.

To take maximum advantage of our DMPs, we need tractor-fed paper. The supply in Grantville is probably pretty small, so the ability of down-time papermakers to duplicate it is going to have a significant effect on the long-term utility of DMPs. Tractor-fed paper has regularly spaced holes on both sides to receive the tractor pins, and ideally has seams for separating the pages and removing the holes when the run is complete.

Dot matrix printers were eclipsed by laser printers for general purpose printing, and the DMPs in Grantville are probably nestled away in attics and basements. They are going to come out of storage because, like the even older daisy wheel printers, and unlike laser or inkjet printers, they can be used to make stencils.

The laser printer is, essentially, a modified photocopy machine, with similar paper requirements. The principal advantage of ...