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18th century books looked like smartphones

Liked this picture of an 18th century book Conjectures on Original Composition by Edward Young:

A narrow 18th century book

From Collision Detection

It shows how resilient we are as readers – we can deal with any ‘difficult’ measure. Another possible similarity between now and then is the sheer mass of the stuff we’re publishing; a fact plenty will bemoan, but I rather like this democratic, unpretentious fecundity (he said, pretentiously…) Also chimes with something I wrote many moons ago.