4 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2026
    1. https://axminsterheritage.org/industry-commerce/

      J H Shand Ltd.<br /> From 1940 until the late 1980s J H Shand Ltd employed highly-skilled engineers and technicians, designing and manufacturing steel type used in office equipment and industrial marking systems; and the manufacture of tools and equipment for use by other manufacturing companies. The company’s original role was to supply individual letter type blocks to manufacturers of manual typewriters which they could build into their machines. As electric typewriters took over, the company specialised in the manufacture of plastic ‘daisy wheels’. As well as producing raised characters for use in typewriters etc , the company made embossing type to produce raised letters or numbers when pressed into metal or plastic. This technique was used to make credit cards, many millions of which have been issued. Another side to the business made larger equipment including precision machine tools.

  2. Jan 2026
  3. Oct 2025
  4. Apr 2023
    1. Brainstorming: Cover for the Second Edition

      Somehow I've always been disappointed with the two dimensional aspects of the pseudo-diagrams on prior books and articles in the space. If you go with something conceptual, perhaps try to capture a multidimensional systems/network feel? It's difficult to capture the ideas of serendipity and combinatorial complexity at play, but I'd love to see those somehow as the "sexier" ideas over the drab ideas people have when they think of their mundane conceptualizations of "just" notes.

      Another idea may be to not go in the direction of the dot/line network map or "electronics circuit board route", but go back to the older ideas of clockworks, pneumatics, and steampunk...

      By way of analogy, there's something sort of fun and suggestive about a person operating a Jacquard Loom to take threads (ideas) and fashioning something beautiful (https://photos.com/featured/jacquard-loom-with-swags-of-punched-print-collector.html) or maybe think, "How would John Underkoffler imagine such a machine?"

      Now that I'm thinking about it I want a bookwheel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookwheel) next to my zettelkasten wheel!