Probably 90% of people who make New Year’s resolutions include “get more organized.” This may be the first January in quite some time that I didn’t try to “fix” some mess in my office and studio by rearranging things. Probably because I did a complete overhaul last September when I bought another set of paper drawers. But increasingly it’s information overload, not stuff, that’s a problem for me. Apparently this it’s a new problem, as reported by There I Fixed It, in a post called “Historical Thursday: Agostino Ramelli’s Bookwheel.” They say
The 16th century saw a similar wealth of knowledge increase. With the recent(ish) invention of the printing press, individuals now had access to a much wider variety of books and a fraction of the price. For the first time ever, it was viable for a person to have a library in their own home.
But imagine yourself back then attempting a research project. You want to learn about a topic from multiple sources and cross-reference each one. A desk with a scattered pile of books in no logical order with all sorts of bookmarks and notes trying to make sense of it all. Agostino Ramelli, an Italian engineer born in 1531 proposed a complex but intriguing solution to this problem; the bookwheel.
Based on the design of a waterwheel, the bookwheel would hold over a dozen separate titles, all sitting open at the same angle. Using either hand or foot controls, the reader could easily sort through the books he collected at ease without the fear of losing track of his place.
Read it all here. First seen on boing boing.
