- Mar 2023
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TheSateliteCombinationCard IndexCabinetandTelephoneStand
A fascinating combination of office furniture types in 1906!
The Adjustable Table Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan manufactured a combination table for both telephones and index cards. It was designed as an accessory to be stood next to one's desk to accommodate a telephone at the beginning of the telephone era and also served as storage for one's card index.
Given the broad business-based use of the card index at the time and the newness of the telephone, this piece of furniture likely was not designed as an early proto-rolodex, though it certainly could have been (and very well may have likely been) used as such in practice.
I totally want one of these as a side table for my couch/reading chair for both storing index cards and as a temporary writing surface while reading!
This could also be an early precursor to Twitter!
Folks have certainly mentioned other incarnations: - annotations in books (person to self), - postcards (person to person), - the telegraph (person to person and possibly to others by personal communication or newspaper distribution)
but this is the first version of short note user interface for both creation, storage, and distribution by means of electrical transmission (via telephone) with a bigger network (still person to person, but with potential for easy/cheap distribution to more than a single person)
Tags
- Adjustable Table Company
- intellectual history
- user interface
- rolodexes
- technology
- postcards
- zettelkasten boxes
- Grand Rapids Michigan
- card index filing cabinets
- audience
- office furniture
- telegraph
- card index for business
- telephones
- annotations
- evolution of technology
- satelite stands
Annotators
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- Dec 2022
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zephoria.medium.com zephoria.medium.com
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- Nov 2021
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twitter.com twitter.com
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I spend most of my day in iOS Notes app.
Did I ever really find this man intelligent??? Things sincerely do make a lot more sense now. Such a specific lack of aspiration.
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- Jan 2021
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reallifemag.com reallifemag.com
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Twitter threads gave illness a name and a face, grounding the dread in particular bodies and disparate — if often overlapping — experiences. They placed these experiences in history, creating an archive of disease, fear, rage, and hope that will persist even as these feelings — and some of these people — have passed.
Archives are only worth their weight in water if interested parties can find what they're looking for. When artifacts aren't gathered and curated into public-facing unities or collections, then history elides them until further notice. These threads are still floating in the sprawl of the Twitterverse, placed into history and drowned out by an ocean of pure, frantic noise. What this piece makes evident to me is the need for restoration: that they need to be resurfaced, preserved, made visible again.
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