4 ms·
Until there was cheaper paper, old books made of papyrus or goat skin would be scraped or bleached and recycled. A Single page of goatskin might be months farme
by peter303 11y ago
Until there was cheaper paper, old books made of papyrus or goat skin would be scraped or bleached and recycled. A Single page of goatskin might be months farmer wage. Especially if the book was from a no longer popular language or subject.
- tertius 11y agoSo they recorded the moonlanding on goatskin? All jokes aside, I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
- matheweis 11y ago>> A Single page of goatskin might be months farmer wage. > I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched. Not at all, in the 1970's those tapes easily cost a month's of an average workers wages. It would make perfect sense to re-use them to save a bit of money, especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about to erase the master copies.
- tertius 11y ago> especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about to erase the master copies. I agree with this. Negligence of this level, though, is indescribable.
- mturmon 11y agoTrue. There's even a word for it, "palimpsest".
- pstuart 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest Just learned by reading Gore Vidal's autobiography of the same name.