h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gnomon, nobody likes a smart arse!

I prefer fonts with serifs... dunno why, just do.

Fonts with serifs are generally considered to be easier on the eye.

Some of the guidelines I have seen suggest that fonts with serifs are easier on the eye on the printed page, while those without are easier to read on screen.

Other considerations are how well different symbols can be distinguished.

For example, Arial is not good for numerals such as 6 and 9 as it is too 'closed in'.

And in many sans serif typefaces the lower case 'l' (as in 'leather') is visually similar to the capital 'I' (as in me!). And both can be virtually indistinguishable from the numeral '1'.

When I learned to type, typewriters didn't have a 1 (one) key. You just used a lower-case L.

And the exlamation mark was a ' and a .

Typewriters with no '1' key...

yes, but as these were the very early typewriters which used a complicated Heath Robinson style arrangement of levers and pulleys to chisel the letter into the stone blocks they were using, the removial of unnecessary complications can be forgiven.

Well, even if you didn't much like the programme, it did kick a bit of life back into this old d*g of a conversation.

Regarding font designers, the only one whose name I remember of the top of my head is Hermann Zapf, who designed the Zapf Chancery and Zapf Dingbats fonts on the Apple Laserwriter Plus, as well as presumably many more.

I must say, I did like the New Century Schoolbook font on the Laserwriter, it seemed very easy to quickly read through large amounts of text even at a failry small font size. I think I appreciated having 4 or 5 decent fonts much more in those days, that the huge range available with modern machines.


Incidentally, I understand from my OU viewing that on roller-coatsers, relative rider comfort comes from the designers paying serious attention to the 'jerk' and even the 'jounce' (factors rather like like acceleration, only more so).

I have slept upon the notion of 'winding up' meaning 'finishing up' and have decided it owes its origins to ancient fire 'engines'.

None were engines in our modern sense of self-propelled trucks, they were usually horse drawn or simply manhandled carts, carriages and wagons.

Large pumper units consisted of enormous boilers and on-board stationary steam engines mounted on heavy four-wheeled wagons requiring teams of four to eight horses. This huge and dangerous apparatus provided the motivation for a pumping system.

Smaller pumping units might be manually operated by a large two handled pump. But my point is that these were all supported by other types known as 'fire reels', possibly on smaller two wheeled carriages, which were essentially a large spool unto which an enormous length of hose was wound (up).

One can easily imagine firefighters tiredly 'winding up' their hoses after a fire.

Ironically, this idea opens the question of 'winding down' which implies an end in the sense of slowing down and tailing off. I'm inclined to believe winding down has its origins in clockwork mechanisms.

Thank you all for the possible musical source of 'keyed up'. It had never occurred to me before but makes much more sense than the surrealist idea of workers with huge winding keys fixed to their shoulder blades. Such devices would only prove cumbersome and counter-productive to any preparatory anticipations or keenness to get on where-as music is a well known motivational force to be reckoned with.


~jwf~

'Winding up' as in finishing off, or putting away after a job is done does seem to me possibly be something similar, but possibly spooling up ropes, canvasses/tarpaulins, etc after either a shipboard or land-based enterprise is finished, in a similar sense to 'wrapping up'.
Circus connection, anyone?

Possibly maypoles are another answer?

Alternatively, for winding up, maybe pulling a shift of people up a mineshaft, or hauling the last load of ore and securing all the ropes might have some connection?

Possibly, when a company or partnership, etc is wound-up (closed down), some legal documents used to be tied up with string?

>>"after a job is done does seem to me possibly be something similar, but possibly spooling" ??

Should have been
"after a job is done does seem to me possibly be something related to spooling"

winding up certainly does have the connotations of packing everything up carefully to me.
As for winding up in the sense of deliberately baiting someone (hmm, bait, winding: could it all be fishing related ) there is also another saying, often to be said after one has wound somebody up and they go off on one, which goes something along the lines of 'penny in slot and off he goes, everytime!' which would, rather obviously I feel, be derived from coin operated machines where one puts ones money in and receives the desired outcome (be that a chocolate bar or whatever). Usually to be used with specific certain reaction.

"designers paying serious attention to the 'jerk' and even the 'jounce'"
Indeed, there's far too many jerks on rollercoasters these days.

"Winding up" conjures up the film industry to me. People packing up and pulling out plugs and winding up all the cables, over their elbows, as well as winding back the 20s style film cameras.

Could also be nautical.

I guess many people will have different associations as they probably heard the phrase before any explanation so came up with their own.

I meant to add, as well, that the mime for winding up that I have seen used is indeed that of a large clock key between the shoulder blades.

(whilst we are on clocks and clockwork, what about receiving a 'ticking off'? what sort of ticking does this refer to? I always thought it was the sort of telling off where the person goes through a list of the indiscretions one by one, thus mentally 'ticking off' the sins. but thats a retrofit solutions, not a real one!).

>> ..probably heard the phrase before any explanation so came up with their own. <<


Yes this the heart of the matter!
If one does not know what a brass monkey is...

I suggested 'wind ups' to begin a general discussion regarding the many hundreds of old phrases based on lost technologies such as candles, clockworks, harnesses and tackle, steam power, brass monkeys and donkey engines, blocks and chains, navigation by compass or stellar observations, gunpowder, axe handles, pikestaffs, spades...

Yes, let's take an expression like 'fly off the handle' which refers to anger and confusion and the potential chaos that might follow an axe or hammer head flying off its hand-carved wooden handle (as they were often wont to do at the most inappropriate times). If you have ever seen it happen then the words give a clear and significant image. And while such images are familiar to older generations they are lost to moderns whose tool heads are generally fixed permanently to some fibreglass shaft by space age adhesives.

Even something like 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease' means little to moderns who generally rely on others to maintain and service their carriages and never have to weigh the cost benefit of getting their hands dirty to resolve an annoying friction.

Flint and gunpowder give us things like, flash in the pan, keep your powder dry, shooting your wad and going off half cocked.

There's hundreds more.
And they all seem to eventually fade from popularity because the technology is no longer common and people no longer understand the meaning. I guess my point is that we have lost our 'feel' for these things as the mysteries of mechanical technologies become secret arts hidden beind electronic interfaces and space age materials that do not exist naturally in our environment.

If no one spins wool by hand anymore who can pull the wool over anyone eyes? Will anyone ever 'sleep like a log' or 'skip over the traces' again?

~jwf~

>> ..what sort of ticking does this refer to? <<

Again our modern lifestyles deprive us of understanding what was once a common knowledge when we were quite familiar with pests such as ticks and lice. These were once a common and disturbing factor in life.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite" as a way of wishing someone goodnight no longer has the clear and distinct meaning it once had. But you can imagine that when plagued by such infestations they could literally drive you mad. If you've ever experienced the annoyance of a sunburn or a rash from poison ivy you begin to understand the maddening frustration of having ticks and lice in your clothing and bedding. They present a painful and relentless annoyance and our natural response to such invasions is a most unreasonable and angry one perhaps best described as 'ticked off'.

Pissed off and 'browned off' are other degrees of anger (temporary madness) caused by foul smelling unpleasantries that 'get up our noses'. Urine and offal can still conspire to cause us grief but they are not so common or public as they once were before indoor plumbing and our modern sense of privacy.


~jwf~

You refer to what I call "dad" technology, jwf!

In the days of my dad, if the car broke down, you could legitimately lift the bonnet, get out a spanner, tighten this, check that connection, clean yonder, etc.

Nowadays, if a new car breaks down, it's unlikely that even the AA man can fix it as the engine has "no user serviceable parts".

So whilst all the new technologies can be operated by infants to the bafflement of their elders and betters, they have no inkling of how they actually work. Even computer & television repairmen these days can't do anything other than replace one PCB with another in the hope that the new one will function.



RF

But doesn't distance lend enchantment? Don't such tropes and phrases seem more colourful precisely because the technology to which they refer has faded from the everyday?

After all, modern technology has arguably affected the language just as much. But if I talk of 'moving up a gear', no one thinks it charming because the act to which it refers is too mundane, the connexion too transparent. Skip ahead fifty years, imagine a space beyond the death of the stick-shift car and the phrase may seem equally charming as some of those phrases you instance seem to us now.

Trope