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Save money and. I.

1:08

Email and older and this

1:10

is clear and vivid conversations

1:12

about connecting and communicating. Punctuation:

1:19

Initially came out of a

1:21

way to to speak. The

1:23

Greeks had all of these

1:25

different for mobile rhetorical ways

1:27

of speaking and. They. Had

1:29

a bunch of kind of specific

1:31

pauses or pauses of specific lengths

1:34

called the comma, the Cooler, and

1:36

the period Us and. What

1:38

would happen? as a reader will be given

1:41

a text which had no spaces, have no

1:43

paragraphs, had no punctuation, a very little. To.

1:45

Guide them and one of the

1:48

librarians at Alexandria, Geico, Aristophanes. He

1:50

said okay, this is just too

1:52

hard. When I a reader, I'm

1:55

reading one of these text. I'm

1:57

going to use little dots. If

2:00

I come across a very short pause, a comma, I'm going

2:02

to put a dot right in the middle of the line.

2:05

If I come across a medium pause, or a colon,

2:07

I'm going to put a dot at the bottom of

2:09

the line. And if I come across a long pause,

2:12

or a periodos, I'm going to put a point at the

2:14

top of the line. And that

2:16

was literally the first punctuation, so, point, or

2:18

punctus meaning point. These little

2:21

points, these little dots added by the

2:23

reader, not by the writer. That's where

2:25

punctuation started. That's

2:27

Keith Houston. And that's

2:29

just one of the stories he has about

2:31

the strange beginnings of those little helpers we

2:33

use trying to make things clear when we

2:36

write to one another. But

2:38

it's not just commas, colons, and

2:40

periods. It's also symbols I

2:42

didn't even know we had names for. Things

2:45

like Pilcrows, Octothorps, and

2:47

Interrobangs, a whole menagerie

2:49

of them. Keith

2:51

has written the book and has a website

2:54

devoted to this arcane knowledge, and

2:56

he does it all in his spare time. You

2:59

know, I'm particularly interested in how,

3:02

what you work on, in a

3:04

way, in your spare time. I mean,

3:06

you've become an expert at

3:08

something that doesn't have that much to do

3:10

with your regular job during the day. What's

3:12

your job during the day? I

3:14

would have said that I'm a software

3:16

engineer, but I've got to a

3:19

point where mostly I draw diagrams and other

3:21

people do the actual software engineering. So

3:24

mostly somebody draws pictures of boxes and

3:26

lines to connect them. So

3:28

how did you get from that into studying

3:31

so minutely punctuation

3:34

marks and symbols that

3:36

we're using? Because

3:38

it's an essential part of our communication,

3:40

our written communication now. And it

3:43

seems at the other end of the spectrum

3:45

from coding and that kind of thing. I

3:47

think there is a direct link

3:49

between language and

3:52

programming. When you're programming, you have to

3:54

be very precise with punctuation,

3:57

especially. Lots of programming languages.

4:00

use semicolons, for

4:02

example, to end a statement rather

4:05

than full stops or

4:07

periods and they mean something else and hyphens

4:09

mean something else and so on and so

4:11

on. But it wasn't that

4:13

it was I

4:15

read a book by a typographer,

4:18

a type designer and

4:21

sculptor called Eric Gill, who

4:24

was a dramatically reprehensible

4:26

human being but

4:28

was a very skilled type designer

4:30

and sculptor. He was quite celebrated

4:32

in the I'd say the early

4:34

part of the 20th century, especially

4:37

in Britain. And

4:39

he wrote a book on

4:42

typography and in it

4:45

he did a curious thing. He

4:47

would write in paragraphs and

4:50

every paragraph was started by a little

4:52

symbol that looked like a P only,

4:54

the letter P only reversed and

4:57

he would also have these little P

4:59

symbols throughout the paragraphs between certain sentences.

5:02

And so I decided to look up what this

5:04

meant and it turned

5:07

out to be a mark called the Pilcro

5:10

and the name Pilcro came from

5:12

the Old English Pilcraft

5:15

and that in turn was descended

5:18

from the Greek paragraph and in

5:20

between I think there was the French Pellegrath.

5:23

So this the name of this one particular

5:25

mark ended up being

5:27

about 2000 years old and its usage

5:29

went back about 2000 years or

5:31

slightly more and there was so much in

5:34

this one mark used by

5:36

this awful and

5:39

great person. I thought there must

5:41

be a story here, there must be a way of pulling

5:43

all of this together and it led on to other marks

5:45

and other marks and I guess that's where the book came

5:47

from in the end. Why was the

5:49

Pilcro thought to be necessary in the

5:52

first place 2000 years

5:54

ago? The interesting thing

5:57

is that the ancient Greeks didn't

6:00

really used punctuation for quite a long time.

6:03

The Greeks would sometimes write in

6:05

a way which was called bestrophodon, which meant ox

6:07

turning. So they'd write from left to right on

6:09

one line and then on the next line they

6:11

would switch to go from right to left and

6:14

so on. And so the writing kind of snaked

6:16

back and forth across the page. And

6:20

eventually they agreed that left to right on

6:22

the whole was a good idea. Oh, I

6:25

mean, it's unbelievable. Here it is. The

6:28

alphabet is opening the door to being

6:30

able to communicate when somebody's not

6:32

right in front of you. And

6:35

we leave it as a puzzle for them to

6:37

figure out. What about the

6:39

spaces between the words? How

6:41

long did it take for them to decide that

6:43

it would be a good idea to make the

6:46

words legible enough by

6:48

using spaces between them? So

6:51

the Romans, I think, when was that? I

6:53

want to say it's around about the second

6:56

century. They had a kind

6:58

of experiment where they would use what

7:00

were called interpunct. So these were little

7:02

dots or marks between words. You quite

7:05

often see them on inscriptions. I

7:07

was in a little museum in a town

7:10

in France called Narbonne, which was once a

7:12

very big Roman colony. And there were lots

7:14

of inscriptions there that had these little chiseled

7:16

out triangles between the words. And so the

7:19

Romans did realise that it was too hard

7:21

to read words if there were no spaces,

7:23

but they didn't always use them. And

7:26

what seems to have happened is that

7:28

monks in the British Isles,

7:31

so Britain and

7:33

Ireland, they would write in Latin,

7:35

but it wasn't their first language. It was a

7:37

scholarly language. It's something they had to learn in

7:39

order to copy books. And

7:43

either consciously or subconsciously, they

7:46

found it easier to leave little gaps between

7:48

certain words as they copied them from one

7:50

text to another. And so the

7:52

word space seems to have been this kind of

7:54

spontaneous phenomenon

7:56

to make it easier to understand texts, which previously, I think,

7:58

were a bit more of a had no spaces,

8:01

especially Latin texts, which previously had no spaces

8:03

at all. So it just, it

8:06

was a really direct way of making

8:08

it easier to read. It

8:11

sounded, as you were telling me that, that

8:13

it made it easier to write

8:15

rather than easier to read. They'd

8:18

see a word that they had to copy and

8:20

they'd leave a space for

8:22

that word. And it almost

8:25

sounds like it could have happened unintentionally, that

8:27

the attention to the reader

8:30

came last. So I think you're

8:33

right. As the monks

8:35

copied, they could only hold a certain number of

8:37

words in their head. And of course, that's the

8:39

unit of sense that they have in their head.

8:41

It's a word. So they read some number of

8:43

words, they parse them out very carefully because there

8:46

are no spaces in the text they're reading, and

8:48

they start to copy them onto the text that

8:50

they're writing. And they

8:52

leave a little gap between that group of

8:55

words and the next group of words. And

8:57

that then eventually evolves into, actually, it's easier

8:59

to have

9:01

the words punctuated by these spaces.

9:04

But the funny thing is, you actually, you mentioned an

9:06

interesting thing there. You said that the reader was

9:09

almost the last, was

9:11

almost sort of the last person to be given

9:13

these affordances. Punctuation initially

9:17

came out of a way

9:20

to speak. So

9:23

the Greeks had all of these

9:25

different formal

9:27

rhetorical ways of speaking.

9:30

And they had a bunch

9:32

of kind of specific pauses or pauses of

9:34

specific lengths called the comma, the

9:37

colon and the periodos. And

9:40

what would happen is a reader would be

9:43

given a text which had no spaces, had

9:45

no paragraphs, had no punctuation, had very little

9:47

to guide them. And so they would

9:50

often read aloud in order

9:52

to help parse this. They would mumble the words as

9:54

they read through it. And

9:56

one of the librarians at Alexandria,

9:58

so the the great Greek

10:01

library in Alexandria in

10:03

Egypt, a guy called Aristophanes,

10:06

he said, okay, this is just too hard. When

10:10

I, a reader, am reading one of these

10:12

texts that I find very difficult, I'm

10:15

going to use little dots. If

10:17

I come across a very short pause, a comma, I'm going

10:19

to put a dot right in the middle of the line.

10:22

If I come across a medium pause or a colon,

10:24

I'm going to put a dot at the bottom of

10:27

the line. And if I come across a long pause

10:29

or a periodos, I'm going to put a point at the

10:32

top of the line. And that was

10:34

literally the first punctuation. So punct or

10:36

punctus meaning point, these little

10:38

points, these little dots added by the reader,

10:40

not by the writer as

10:43

they read it. So the punctuation was the

10:46

reader trying to, was trying to find their way. It was like

10:48

a map. Okay, now I need to stop. Now I need to

10:50

stop for a bit longer. And that's

10:52

where punctuation started. So

10:54

punctuation has an aid in reading

10:56

came from the reader, not the

10:59

writer. And that's

11:01

the funny thing. So now we think of

11:03

punctuation as being a tool of the writer.

11:06

It's something the writer uses to give meaning to

11:09

their words. But initially it

11:11

was very much the reader. And

11:13

in fact, I think readers in some ways had

11:17

quite a big impact on how we lay

11:19

out text and how we punctuate them. So

11:22

we talked about the pill crew. It

11:25

came from a really simple mark, which was

11:27

often like a little underline, a very short

11:29

stroke at the start of a line that

11:31

says, there's something interesting on this line for

11:33

me, the reader, and I think there's something

11:35

interesting here. And it

11:37

gradually evolved into this more

11:40

distinctive mark, this paragraph mark. And

11:43

even when books were becoming more common,

11:47

especially religious books, readers

11:49

would often add footnotes. They would put a little

11:51

symbol in the text and they would write a

11:53

note in the margin. And they would then use

11:55

another, the same symbol to link

11:57

their note to the part of the text. text

12:00

they're commenting on. And so our

12:03

practice of footnotes, which again is something that

12:05

the writer uses to add an aside, was

12:07

initially something that the reader used to add

12:09

an aside, to add their understanding to this

12:11

text and eventually people started copying the notes

12:13

along with the text and they all become

12:15

part of the same thing. But you're absolutely

12:17

right, the reader had a really strong influence

12:20

on how we punctuate and

12:22

how we lay out text. You

12:33

know what's funny to me is these

12:36

marks, these symbols are

12:38

very common in our reading

12:40

experience but they have names

12:43

that are so unfamiliar like

12:46

the Pilcroll that we've been talking about

12:48

and the Octothorp. Now we

12:50

know we see that all the time,

12:52

the hashtag or the what looks like

12:54

a tic-tac-toe game or the

12:57

pound sign on the telephone. How

13:00

did it get the name Octothorp? That's

13:02

a really good question. The

13:05

Octothorp has got quite an old

13:07

history and you call it the pound sign. That

13:10

is probably

13:12

the most correct name for

13:14

it or the most accurate name for it. It

13:16

seems to have come from the Roman

13:19

term Libra Pondo which meant a

13:21

pound in weight and

13:23

often this would be abbreviated to L-B

13:26

for Libra.

13:28

So your

13:31

average Latin writer, especially during the

13:33

medieval period, would often put a

13:35

little line across

13:37

the top of abbreviations. In

13:40

order to make it easier for the reader

13:42

to see this abbreviation, they would write L and

13:44

then B and then put a little line across

13:46

the top. As

13:48

people started to write this more and more

13:51

quickly, this LB bar, LB bar, LB bar,

13:53

it evolved into the Octothorp, the

13:56

hashtag. It

13:59

was still used to mean this is a pound in weight. But

14:03

it wasn't used all that

14:06

much, I think. And

14:08

we get to a point where in

14:10

the 1950s or 60s, I think it

14:12

is, that the

14:15

AT&T were

14:17

designing a new type of telephone, a type

14:19

of telephone with buttons as opposed to a

14:21

dial. And they had this idea

14:23

that, okay, each button will

14:25

play a different sound, a different tone,

14:28

so hence touch-tone sounds. The

14:31

user, the caller, and

14:33

again, technology was marching on, and there were

14:35

more and more automated exchanges, perhaps even with

14:38

computers behind the scenes. They realised that the

14:40

telephone could be a kind of user interface

14:43

for this system behind the scenes. If I press

14:45

a button on my phone and it makes a

14:47

tone, a noise, the computer can detect that and

14:49

maybe do something, maybe it could read me my

14:52

bank balance, or maybe it could put me through

14:54

to one person or another. And

14:56

so they designed a keypad, and

14:59

they wanted a couple of extra buttons to

15:02

enhance its ability to be used as this kind

15:04

of user interface. And so

15:06

the two buttons they chose were, if

15:08

I remember rightly, the diamond, like a

15:11

little diamond shape, and the pound sign.

15:13

And someone eventually said, we can't use the diamond,

15:16

let's just use a standard symbol that everyone recognises.

15:18

So they chose the asterisk, the little star, and

15:21

the pound sign. And

15:23

so they have this new system, and there

15:26

was a need to educate their salespeople and all

15:28

of the people who had to deal with this

15:30

system as to what it did and what it

15:32

worked. And the story goes that

15:35

someone at this point at AT&T,

15:37

or Bell Labs, which was their

15:39

research division, came up with the

15:42

name Octothorp. No

15:44

one really knows why. There are two competing

15:46

stories, and I think they're probably both

15:48

wrong. One of

15:50

them says that it looks like a village

15:52

surrounded by eight fields. And

15:55

in Old English, Thorpe means village or

15:57

town. So Octothorp, eight fields around the

15:59

world. Thorpe, a village. The

16:02

other one says that, and now let

16:04

me see if I get this right, there

16:06

was a Native American athlete called

16:08

Jim Thorpe who had

16:10

done quite well in one particular Olympic

16:12

Games. And I think the suggestion was

16:14

that one of the people who had

16:16

selected the Octothorpe for use on the

16:18

keypad wanted to honour this guy.

16:21

And they thought, well, there are eight points in this

16:23

sign, his name's Thorpe, I'll call it the

16:25

Octothorpe. But I don't

16:27

think either one of those is

16:30

correct. There is a

16:32

third theory, which is perhaps most likely to

16:34

be correct, which is yet another person in

16:37

this whole group of AT&T employees who had

16:39

to care about this thing. The

16:42

story goes that he didn't much like dealing

16:44

with foreign people. And

16:47

he thought, I'm going to make up a word for this

16:49

symbol because it was called the

16:51

pound, but it needed something, I think the suggestion

16:53

was it needed something a bit more distinctive. He

16:56

thought, I'm going to pick a word for the

16:58

sound that's really hard for, let's say, German speakers

17:00

to pronounce. So he chose Octothorpe with the st

17:02

symbol. Again,

17:05

I don't know how accurate any of that

17:07

is, but I think that's just a very

17:09

long way of saying no one really knows

17:11

why it's called the Octothorpe. There are lots

17:14

of bad reasons. To me, this is a

17:16

wonderful example of how unreliable origin stories are.

17:20

Yeah, I think you're right. I think we

17:22

know a lot more about where the symbol came

17:24

from than we do about why it has this

17:26

name, but it has the name and it does

17:29

make for a good story or series of stories.

17:31

What about the at sign? I call it the

17:35

at sign. What's the formal name for

17:37

it? Again, an unfamiliar word. It

17:39

doesn't really have a good name. This is an

17:41

interesting one. No one has managed to invent a

17:44

good name for the at sign or at

17:46

symbol. So that's the one that looks like

17:48

a lower case A with a little tail

17:51

around it. You often find it in email

17:53

addresses. In fact,

17:56

that's the reason why I

17:58

think anyone cares about the at sign anymore. So

18:00

it was another medieval or

18:03

late medieval abbreviation. In this case,

18:06

it meant some number of items

18:08

at the rate of some cost. So

18:10

you might write five apples at one

18:12

pence or something like that. So it came from

18:15

this disusing commerce. And

18:20

again, it seemed to not die out, but

18:22

it wasn't used as much. And

18:25

when the Internet came

18:27

around or rather the ARPANET, which was

18:30

the forerunner to the Internet, one

18:32

particular software engineer, his name

18:35

was Ray Tomlinson. The software engineer

18:37

worked for Bolt, Berenek and Newman,

18:39

and he wanted to

18:41

find a way of identifying people who worked

18:44

on a particular computer. So when I send

18:46

an email to you, I send

18:48

it to the computer that you worked on. And there

18:50

are only, you know, you can count the number of

18:53

connected computers on both hands at this point. So

18:55

knowing the name of a person and knowing the computer

18:57

they worked on was enough to uniquely identify them in

18:59

the world of the Internet. And

19:01

he needed a symbol that appeared on his

19:04

keyboard, but it wasn't really used for anything else.

19:06

And the symbol had somehow made it

19:08

onto the typewriter keyboard and

19:10

then onto the teletype keyboard. And it was

19:13

in front of Ray Tomlinson as

19:15

he needed to make this decision. So

19:18

with the stroke of a key, he basically

19:20

anointed the symbol as being the thing that

19:22

we shall use to to

19:25

identify people on the Internet. That's

19:27

why that's why we see it everywhere. But

19:29

he didn't he didn't give it a good name. There was

19:31

no other good name for it. It's

19:34

funny, the evolution of these

19:37

symbols seems like the

19:39

Wild West did steps

19:41

forward, steps backward. Things

19:44

were the at sign was

19:46

kept on the typewriter for

19:49

no particular reason. And

19:51

yet early typewriters didn't

19:54

they? At one point, they lost

19:56

the exclamation point. Yeah,

19:58

you had to make your own. exclamation point

20:00

with a period in an apostrophe That's

20:03

true The other

20:05

first typewriters. I'm presuming because it was so

20:08

expensive to make them If

20:10

you could limit the number of keys, then you have a

20:12

cheaper typewriter So

20:15

the very first typewriters, I

20:17

think had only uppercase letters

20:20

as you say, they're missing some marks

20:22

of punctuation They didn't have a digit

20:25

zero or I think was

20:27

it one? because a zero looks a

20:29

lot like an O. I could just type an O and

20:32

that can be my zero and I

20:35

want to say that they didn't have a one

20:37

and they could use an uppercase I instead which

20:39

I suppose makes sense from a Roman numeral perspective

20:42

and But

20:44

but and so as they got more complex as they

20:47

got more complex and were used in more places And

20:49

we got better at making them they acquired more keys

20:52

but there was one key that I Remember

20:56

noticing on the very first Querty

20:58

keyboard so the first keyboard on the first or

21:00

the keyboard on the first commercially

21:03

successful typewriter And

21:05

it looked like an ellipsis that those three dots that means

21:07

I can you know, you know a pause except

21:10

it was vertical it was three vertical

21:12

dots and No

21:15

one seemed to know what it was for and I

21:17

found this amazing that the typewriter was so ubiquitous It

21:19

was so widespread. Here was this key and

21:22

no one seems to have a very good No

21:25

one seems to have a very good reason for what it is or

21:27

for it was there I'm

21:30

sort of internet friends with a guy called

21:33

Martian we Harry who has just published a

21:35

book called shift happens, which is about the

21:37

history of the keyboard I'm really looking forward

21:40

to reading his explanation because I know he

21:42

did I know he's investigated this particular symbol

21:45

This vertical ellipsis and I just I find it

21:47

amazing that Something so common

21:49

as a querty keyboard could have this mark

21:51

on it. We don't know what it is.

21:53

It's disappeared into the past Yeah,

21:56

it's gonna be it's gonna be fascinating to find out what

21:58

what he says about it When

22:05

we come back from our break, Keith

22:07

Houston tells me about the odd origin

22:09

of a wannabe punctuation mark, the

22:12

interrobang. Just

22:17

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24:22

you. This

24:24

is clear and vivid and now back

24:26

to my conversation with Keith Houston. What

24:31

about the symbol that has been

24:33

tried as something that would hopefully

24:36

catch on to indicate a question

24:38

and an exclamation at the same

24:41

time? And I wonder,

24:43

does it really need a separate symbol? I

24:45

wonder why so many times it's been tried

24:47

when it's not that hard to write an

24:49

exclamation point followed by a question mark or

24:51

vice versa. This is a mark

24:53

called the Interrobang. Another crazy word.

24:55

Where did this crazy word come from? So

24:58

both the mark and the

25:00

name were invented by an

25:02

advertising executive called Martin K.

25:04

Spector. He lived

25:07

and worked in Manhattan at the height

25:09

of the Mad Men era, early in

25:11

mid-60s. And

25:14

he had a particular interest in

25:16

typography and advertising because at

25:18

the time a lot of adverts relied on words.

25:21

And I guess how those words came across was

25:23

very important. So he

25:25

had some pages to fill in one particular

25:27

issue of this magazine. It

25:29

was four pages. And he was

25:31

having dinner with his wife. And over

25:33

dinner he decided, they decided that he

25:36

was going to invent a mark of

25:38

punctuation. So he said, we must go back

25:40

to the office immediately and work on

25:42

this. So they rushed back to the office. Apparently

25:46

they managed to get hold of some graphic designer and

25:48

they sat down and hashed out the appearance, what

25:51

this was going to be used for. So

25:54

a kind of rhetorical question or a surprise

25:56

question. And he made up a couple

25:58

of names. I think

26:00

one of them was Enfa Quest and one of

26:03

them was in Tarobang. He published it

26:05

at his magazine and he asked readers for more

26:07

names and he pretty much left

26:10

it at that. But then readers started to write in

26:12

to him saying it should be called The Wret. It

26:14

should be called, well let me think of some of

26:17

these other names. There

26:19

were so many names and so many of them

26:21

were really bad. This is terrible. I'm going to have to look some

26:24

up. And

26:26

this mark kind of took on a life

26:28

of its own. People started to use it.

26:31

Not very widely. Because in

26:33

those days if you have a completely new

26:35

punctuation mark, how do you replicate

26:37

it? You need to find a graphic artist

26:39

or a typographer who is willing to help you

26:42

do this. It only

26:44

appeared in type properly when

26:46

one particular typeface included it. And

26:49

then the type foundry, the company that made

26:51

that typeface actually went bust quite shortly afterwards.

26:55

And yet somehow the Interrobang

26:57

ended up in

27:00

what is called Unicode. So once upon a

27:02

time the typewriter keyboard dictated

27:04

what you could type. Now

27:07

there is a body called

27:10

Unicode that publishes this standard that

27:12

lists every character that computers can

27:14

deal with. And there are I think

27:16

at this point more than 100,000 of them. The Interrobang is

27:22

India. The Interrobang exists. If you know how to

27:24

do it you can type one on your computer

27:26

keyboard. Very few people do because I don't think

27:28

many people know it exists or they very rarely

27:30

have cause to use it. But I find it

27:33

fascinating that there is this ocean of characters not

27:36

just from other scripts

27:38

or languages but in English that

27:41

exists just at your fingertips. And we don't

27:43

use them because we almost never need them.

27:46

So Keith, given

27:48

this exploration you've made

27:50

through the world of symbols, is

27:54

there a symbol you'd like to add? Do You

27:57

have one in mind that you think we desperately

27:59

need? That

28:01

is a very very good question

28:03

and. I. Can. I.

28:05

Can only give you a disappointing answer, which

28:08

is I don't think I could come up

28:10

with a symbol which is as interesting as

28:12

something like the in Peru Bank. This.

28:15

The somber taco question mark or the

28:17

pill crow this paragraph mark the that

28:19

once lived and then died because of

28:21

is basically elbows I when the printing

28:24

press came along. For

28:26

the manicure which means a little pointing

28:28

hand or the dagger which is a

28:31

dagger. Fritz. Is he can use

28:33

a tiny little? He can use a

28:35

tiny little Nice to indicates the the

28:37

location of a footnote or the opposite.

28:39

Thoughts these things are also. But

28:42

also interesting and evocative. I put such a rich history

28:44

the I don't think I could added a thing that

28:46

could better that. How

28:52

did you get from this? Interesting

28:55

exploration of punctuation and

28:57

symbols. To.

28:59

You current book. In. Latest

29:01

book. The empire

29:04

of the some. Which.

29:06

Is of rise in reign of the

29:08

Pocket Calculator. What peak your interest in

29:10

the Pocket calculator? I

29:13

think it was I'm not a

29:15

direct I'd journey, but I'd say

29:17

Rosa Boats and shady characters I

29:19

wrote about symbols and I think

29:21

kind. I

29:23

started to get interested in and

29:26

language. And. How

29:29

we developed different features of language, how

29:31

be communicated. I was tested, don't That

29:33

led to the second books which was

29:35

called the Books which was about the

29:37

history of books as a physical, as

29:40

a physical object and. The

29:42

really their their their information technologies, their

29:45

ways of taking information and recording them

29:47

and communicating them. And one of the

29:49

things that. One.

29:51

Of the things that I learned as I

29:54

read more and more about early writing was

29:56

how both was how writing came about in

29:58

the first place. So the earliest right the

30:00

figures generally agreed to be Cuneiform. Which.

30:03

Came about in Mesopotamia. So the

30:05

land between the reverse Tigris and

30:08

Euphrates of basically Iran, Iraq, and

30:10

I think maybe part of Jordan

30:12

and. What? Happened

30:14

was the people who lived there. For. Granted

30:16

building a more a more sophisticated society and

30:19

one of the things they did was the

30:21

used little clique tokens to coat. So

30:23

if I perform some labor for you

30:26

or if I sold some are some

30:28

projects to use. we met use these

30:30

little tokens is kind of receipts. In

30:34

order to to create a transaction that

30:36

a record of or a seat, I

30:38

might take all these tokens that represent

30:40

different quantities of things and stick them

30:42

in statically ball. It's

30:44

effects of it so that they don't get lost the

30:46

we've got up. We've got a physical record of this

30:48

transaction that we conducted. And

30:50

then. The people if they realized we

30:53

don't need that to to can we can just

30:55

press them into the surface of the clay and

30:57

that led to can be A for writing six.

30:59

Writing arose from I guess record keeping

31:02

or accounting and accent and. Arose

31:05

from of camper from.

31:07

The. From now and. It's

31:10

so they I guess the is the

31:12

earliest writing is a kind of a

31:14

byproduct of of need to calculate. I

31:16

just became interested in up the so

31:19

how did We can t the Kenneth

31:21

we fought mathematical artefacts did or devices

31:23

to become up and use in order

31:25

to process numbers in the same way

31:27

that I guess books and writing were

31:30

used the to process or language. It's

31:32

interesting that you point out. That.

31:34

The original calculators were hands.

31:37

He. Said so that people use their

31:39

fingers to count first. By some

31:42

people use knuckles. On. This

31:45

is actually right. So I think we're

31:47

conditioned to think if I use my

31:49

hands Catholic consent of the five, If

31:51

I use both hands. A canoe. A

31:53

content of the ten, but very early

31:55

on. we were

31:58

doing more creative things some Some

32:00

cultures seem to have taken their hands and

32:02

their feet and they started adding other body

32:04

parts. There's one

32:06

particular set of people who lived in Papua New

32:09

Guinea who could count up to 33 if they

32:11

used their genitals as well. So they'd use their

32:13

hands and parts of their arms and

32:15

their chest and their sternum and so on. And

32:17

just add more and more body parts until they

32:19

got to 33. Did they

32:21

stop at the genitals? You could count higher

32:24

than that if you use your ear lobes.

32:26

Yeah, I'm afraid I didn't dig into it

32:28

in detail. I have to imagine that first.

32:30

After a certain point, they got distracted.

32:33

Most of us are accustomed to counting in

32:35

base 10. How did 12 get in there?

32:38

A lot of things we keep track of by

32:40

12s that we don't even pay

32:42

that much attention to. That's right. I think 12

32:46

might well come from the fact that you can divide 60 by

32:48

12. In fact, you can divide

32:50

60 by lots and lots of numbers. And

32:54

the Sumerians, you mentioned knuckles, the Sumerians, I

32:56

think the theory is they used knuckles and

32:58

fingers to count. So you've got five fingers

33:00

or five digits on one hand and

33:02

you've got 12 knuckles on the fingers of your other hand.

33:04

So if I point to one of those knuckles with

33:07

one of the digits on my other hand, I can count to 60.

33:10

And so the Sumerians counted to base 60. And

33:13

this seems to have just cascaded

33:15

on through history. So, you know, we have 60 seconds

33:17

at a minute. We have 60 minutes at an hour.

33:20

We have 360 degrees in a circle, that

33:23

being 6 times 60. And

33:25

yeah, as you say, 12 is

33:27

important as well. It's one of the numbers by

33:29

which you can divide 60. And

33:32

so it becomes quite common as well. 12 hours

33:35

in the morning, 12 hours in

33:37

the afternoon and so on. Unfortunately,

33:44

we're running out of time and there's

33:46

no symbol to indicate that verbally.

33:50

But we always end every show with seven quick

33:53

questions where we learn a little bit more about

33:55

you generally with

33:57

regard to communication. Question

33:59

number one. Of all the

34:01

things you could understand about

34:03

everything there is, what

34:06

do you wish you really understood? I

34:10

would like to see human nature, but I think

34:12

understanding that would be a double-edged sword. I think

34:14

it's better not to know everything. Ha ha,

34:17

it's the first time I heard that answer. Second

34:21

question, how do you

34:23

tell someone they have their facts wrong? I

34:26

have very little tact, so I think I would probably

34:28

just tell them that I think they're wrong. It's just

34:31

a really horrible way to go about things.

34:35

What's the strangest question anyone has ever

34:37

asked you? Oh,

34:39

wow, that is... I think

34:41

you've maybe just asked me the hardest question that anyone

34:43

has ever asked me. I have

34:47

got no idea. It's almost certainly

34:49

some very obscure thing about programming,

34:52

and my intellect has

34:54

been unequal to the task.

34:57

I'm afraid I don't think I can give you a very exciting answer to

34:59

that one. Okay, next

35:02

one, how do you stop a compulsive

35:04

talker? Personally,

35:07

I probably just

35:09

start compulsively talking myself, and

35:11

then eventually one of us will give up. Let's

35:15

say you're sitting at a dinner table next to someone

35:17

you've never met before. How

35:20

do you begin a really genuine

35:22

conversation? I

35:27

ask them how they are. I find

35:29

it quite easy to unburden myself to

35:31

strangers because perhaps I have some idea that I

35:33

might never see them again. I imagine

35:36

if I reverse the situation, they

35:39

might answer in the same

35:41

way. Okay, what gives you confidence?

35:45

Oh, it's

35:48

quite a simple person. I would say

35:50

praise. Okay,

35:56

last question, what

35:58

book changed your life? The

36:02

first one I think was The

36:05

Hobbit and I can't put my finger

36:07

on why, I just read it and I thought it was

36:09

a delightful book. I think it

36:12

really opened my eyes to the kind of

36:15

storytelling that was possible. And then

36:17

as I got a bit older, I think Moby

36:20

Dick, it is

36:22

just an astonishing book. The

36:24

achievement, the work,

36:28

the effort, the depth of

36:31

Moby Dick I think opened my

36:33

eyes as to what might be

36:35

possible more broadly, not just in

36:37

a sort of literary

36:40

storytelling way. But I don't know,

36:42

it made me think that books were powerful and important.

36:45

And in some ways, I think it made me want to

36:47

write myself. Well, I'm glad

36:49

you read Moby Dick because you

36:52

tell wonderful stories in your books.

36:55

So thank you very much for coming in and

36:57

talking about it with me. I really enjoyed this

36:59

conversation. I'm going to tell you are too kind.

37:01

It has been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. Thank

37:04

you, Keith. This

37:11

has been clear and vivid, at least I

37:13

hope so. My thanks

37:15

to the sponsor of this podcast and to

37:18

all of you who support our show on

37:20

Patreon. You keep clear

37:22

and vivid up and running. And

37:24

after we pay expenses, whatever is left

37:26

over goes to the oldest center for

37:28

communicating science at Stony Brook University. So

37:31

your support is contributing to the better

37:33

communication of science. We're very

37:35

grateful. Keith

37:38

Houston's day job is writing medical

37:40

imaging software. But his

37:42

passion is exploring some of the

37:44

untold stories of communication. Like

37:47

the book we talked about shady characters,

37:49

the secret life of punctuation symbols

37:52

and other typographical marks. Be

37:54

sure to check out his

37:57

website shady characters.co dot UK

37:59

for its wonderful typography, more on

38:01

the origin of the interrobang,

38:04

and stories from his latest book, The

38:07

Empire of the Sum, a history

38:09

of the short but hugely influential

38:11

life of the pocket calculator. This

38:15

episode was edited and produced by

38:17

our executive producer Graham Shed, with

38:20

help from our associate producer Jean

38:22

Chumet. Our publicist is

38:24

Sarah Hill, our researcher

38:26

is Elizabeth Ohini, and

38:28

the sound engineer is Erica Huang. The

38:31

music is courtesy of the Stefan-Kernig

38:33

Trio. Next

38:44

in our series of conversations, I talk

38:46

with Tali Sharat. She's

38:48

a neuroscientist who has co-authored a

38:50

new book called Look Again, the

38:53

power of noticing what was always there.

38:56

It's about habituation, getting used to things to

38:58

the point where they lose their luster. One

39:02

of her examples is a study she did a few

39:04

years ago for a tourism company that

39:06

wanted to find out what makes people happiest

39:09

on vacation. And

39:11

the first thing that we found is that the

39:13

happiest moment was 43 hours into

39:15

a vacation. From that point on, joy

39:17

started going down and dwindling. They're still

39:19

happy on day 876, right? They're

39:22

still happy, but they're not as happy as

39:24

43 hours in. And

39:27

when we asked them what was the happiest bit

39:29

of the whole vacation, there was one word that

39:31

they used more than any other words, and it

39:33

was the word first. The first

39:35

view of the ocean, the first cocktail,

39:37

the first Sun Castle that I built.

39:41

You know, the second view of the ocean

39:43

was quite good, but it wasn't as good

39:45

as the first. And the second cocktail, the

39:47

first cocktail, the fifth cocktail was pretty good,

39:49

but it wasn't as good as the first

39:51

cocktail. And the reason is that things that

39:53

are novel are more exciting, right? But that

39:55

suggests that, you know, perhaps one thing to

39:57

do is take more vacations, but shorter ones.

40:00

So you get more of those 43 hours in, right? You

40:03

get more of those firsts. Tali

40:05

Sharot and why you should look again

40:08

next time on Clear and Vivid. For

40:11

more details about Clear and Vivid and to

40:13

sign up for my newsletter, please

40:16

visit alanalda.com. And

40:18

you can also find us on Facebook

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and Instagram at Clear and Vivid. Thanks

40:23

for listening. Angie's

40:38

List is now Angie, and we've heard a

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lot of theories about why. I thought it

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paper. No, it was so you

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could say it faster. No, it's to be

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more iconic. Must be a tech thing.

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But those aren't quite right. It's because

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