The initial version of the Schriftenkartei had 527 typefaces (and thus cards), but with the release of subsequent typefaces it eventually grew to 638 typeface cards accounting for up to about 200 families.

-via postcard from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der gra­phischen Verbände des deutschen Bundesgebietes e.V., Bundesverband Buchdruck (Working Group of the German Graphic Associations, Federal Book-Printing Division)

I've seen this quote earlier today, but interesting seeing another source quote it.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776

In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.

Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.

It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.

Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.

Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?

https://www.3x5life.com/collections/frontpage/products/3x5-life-system-with-mini-course

Cost of items purchased separately on Amazon: - Index cards (total of 6*31+13+12+52=263, so round up to 300 at $0.02 each) = $6.99 - storage box $16.49 - dividers $5.79 - phone sleeve: $2.32 - stainless steel stand: $2.33

Buying these in bulk for additional profit margin/branding could certainly lower the cost.

Their retail is $97.79 versus commercially at $33.92. Their actual cost at bulk is probably significantly less and likely closer to $15 all in for the system, so this is a nice little profit.

reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12rfku6/how_has_the_zettelkasten_system_changed_the_way/

Historically there is the popular idea of a waste book, which originally comes from double entry accounting, in which one might keep quick scribbled notes and ephemera. Upon reaching a quiet space for work and reflection one would then transcribe all the most important ideas into a more permanent place in their commonplace book or zettelkasten. I suspect this historical practice is part of where Ahrens came up with the often used terms "fleeting notes" and "permanent notes" which serve the same purpose.

I follow this practice and either have a small pocket notebook (usually a small Field Notes) or an index card at hand for writing things down throughout the day. Then every evening or every few days at worst, I transcribe/rewrite the idea.

As examples, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Waste Books were ultimately published and were highly influential. Isaac Newton developed his version of the Calculus in his waste book.

Watts, Charles J. The Cost of Production. Muskegon, MI: The Shaw-Walker Company, 1902. http://archive.org/details/costproduction01wattgoog.

Short book on managing manufacturing costs. Not too much of an advertisement for Shaw-Walker manufactured goods (files, file management, filing cabinets, etc.). Only 64 pages are the primary content and the balance (about half) are advertisements.

Given the publication date of 1902, this would have preceded the publication of System Magazine which began in 1903. This may have then been a prototype version of an early business magazine, but with a single author, no real editorial, and only one article.

Presumably it may also have served the marketing interests of Shaw-Walker as a marketing piece as well.

Tangentially, I'm a bit intrigued by the "Mr. Morse" mentioned on page 109 who is being touted as an in-house consultant for Shaw-Walker.... Is this the same Frank Morse who broke off to form the Browne-Morse Co.? (very likely)

see: see also: https://hypothes.is/a/Sp8s4sprEe24jitvkjkxzA for a snippet on Frank Morse.

reply to u/dotphrasealpha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11z08fq/what_type_of_note_did_niklas_luhmann_average_6/

The true insight you're looking for here is: Forget the numbers and just aim for quality followed very closely by consistency!

Of course most will ignore my insight and experience and be more interested in the numbers, so let's query a the 30+ notes I've got on this topic in my own zettelkasten to answer the distal question.

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 Luhmann produced approximately 90,000 slips which averages out to:

• 45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days
• 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true, this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays)

• 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 days
• 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated and often quoted 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes.

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Keep in mind that Luhmann worked at this roughly full time for decades, so don't try to measure yourself against him. (He also published in a different era and broadly without the hurdle of peer review.) Again: Aim for quality over quantity! If it helps, S.D. Goitein created a zettelkasten of 27,000 notes which he used to publish almost a third more papers and books than Luhmann. Wittgenstein left far fewer notes and only published one book during his lifetime, but published a lot posthumously and was massively influential. Similarly Roland Barthes had only about 12,500 slips and loads of influential work.

I keep notes on various historical practitioners' notes/day output over several decades using these sorts of practices. Most are in the 1-2 notes per day range. A sampling of them can be found here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day.

Anecdotally, I've found that most of the more serious people here and on the zettelkasten.de forum are in the 4-10 slips per week range.

<whisper>quality...</whisper>

Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten consists of a total of 27 sections/drawers each containing from 2,500 to 3,500 slips.

• ZK1 comprises 7 sections with about 23,000 notes written from about 1952 to 1961
• ZKII comprises 20 sections with approximately 67,000 slips written between 1961 to early 1997.

Sections 15, 16, 17 were part of the beechwood zettelkasten and along with sections 18, 19, and 20 which were stored outside of the main boxes in individual slipcases contain the bibliographic portions of ZKII

Part of section 17 contains some of the index as well as an index of people for ZKII in addition to some other special portions along with the index of keywords, bibliographical slips, and an overview of topics from ZKI.

The primary wooden boxes frequently pictured as "Luhmann's zettelkasten" is comprised of six wooden four-drawer card index filing cabinets which were supplemented by three individual slipcases.

One would suspect the individual slipcases were like the one pictured on his desk here: Luhmann zuhause am Zettelkasten (vermutlich Ende der 1970er/Anfang 1980er Jahre)<br /> Copyright Michael Wiegert-Wegener<br /> via Niklas Luhmann Online: die Erschließung seines Nachlasses - Geistes- & Sozialwissenschaften

The Luhmann archive has a photo of the beechwood portion with 24 drawers and one of the additional slipboxes on top of it:

(via https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten)

Most of the photos from the museum exhibition and elsewhere only focus on or include the main wooden portion of six cabinets with the 24 drawers.

See also: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 this production of approximately 90,000 slips averages out to

45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays) 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes. <br /> See: https://hypothes.is/a/iwrV8hkwEe2vMSdjnwKHXw

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Beyond having people make direct copies of cards by hand or using carbon paper, The Calculagraph Company manufactured a copying machine for duplicating data.

There is an accompanying picture (which I haven't copied here). Advertisement from 1906 System Magazine:

The Calculagraph<br /> Makes individual records of actual<br /> working time on separate cards<br /> which may be used interchangeably<br /> for Cost Accounting, for Pay-rolls and<br /> for a number of other purposes with-<br /> out copying or transcribing a single<br /> figure, by simply assorting the cards<br /> and adding the records directly from<br /> their faces.<br /> A card containing all the work<br /> records of one man for a week may<br /> be useful for pay-roll purposes, but it<br /> is utterly worthless for learning the<br /> cost of products, until all the items<br /> have been copied or transcribed for<br /> classification.<br /> The Calculagraph requires a large<br /> number of cards in a factory employ-<br /> ing several hundred persons, but it<br /> Saves Clerical Labor. (In one<br /> factory it saves $150.00 per week).<br /> Cards Are Cheaper Than Labor<br /> The Calculagraph Makes No<br /> Clerical Errors.<br /> Let us send you our printed matter.<br /> CALCULAGRAPH COMPANY<br /> 1414 JEWELERS BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY

Interesting statement about how much memory matters, though it's missing some gravitas somehow.

Is there more in the original source?

The "strict conditions" and "every cent" sound a bit oppressive as called out here, though most funders would/should do this sort of thing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BZWJDHN/

Example of a modern day waste book for keeping track of one's accounting.

dimensions 3.5 x 5"

https://archive.org/details/practicalbookkee00ellirich/page/6/mode/2up

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/stockwestfale</span> in Requesting antinet hivemind assistance: ANALOG ACCOUNTING/BUDGETING/BOOKKEEPING : antinet (<time class='dt-published'>01/08/2023 12:04:20</time>)</cite></small>

[2] Isak, Christopher (2021-12-16). "Kakeibo: A Guide to Money Management". TechAcute. TechAcute. Retrieved 2021-12-25.

There are some interesting parallels with kakeibo and note taking methods. Some have used envelopes to save away their notes in a similar sort of structure.

Link to https://hyp.is/RVP-plQaEe2t_7Pt7pyTgA/www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary<br /> Historian Keith Thomas used envelopes for storing/maintaining his notes

reply to u/Echo_Delta17 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103r4j0/requesting_antinet_hivemind_assistance_analog/

You should read Paper Machines closer as the accounting uses of Library Bureau products are what made it fantastically profitable in the early 1900s. Ann Blair has some useful references in Too Much to Know. Broadly there is lots of heavy influence of accounting principles in history as applied to note taking evolution, and particularly that of double entry bookkeeping. The idea of waste books plays particularly heavy here.

I've previously posted some early 1900s photos from Yawman & Erbe of uses of index card filing systems for CRM and other business related purposes: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/

Melvil Dewey/Library Bureau ultimately partnered up with Herman Hollerith in a predecessor of what became IBM to supply early versions of punch cards for government contracts. (See Krajewski for this.)

Feel free to troll some of my other notes for some related references across time: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=accounting

Curious what you're looking to discover here? A hard target library search for references should get you swimming in details pretty quickly here. I'd love to see what you come up with.

"Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet." Chesterfield, Letter lxxxi.

See also: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Works_of_the_Rev._Jonathan_Swift,_Volume_5.djvu/261 as a source

Swift, Jonathan. The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift. Edited by Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols. Vol. 5. 19 vols. London: H. Baldwin and Son, 1801.

reply to u/sscheper<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/

These were commonly used for what we now call CRM as well as for accounting, general filing, and all sorts of business and back office use cases in the early 20th century which are now handled by computers. A dozen or so companies made large wooden and metal index card filing cabinets and sold them by the truckload to businesses of every sort.

A lot of the digiterati are just repeating and attempting to reinvent these sorts of ideas using Obsidian, Notion, etc.

An explicit reference in 1931 in a section on note taking to cross links between entries in accounting ledgers. This linking process is a a precursor to larger database processes seen in digital computing.

Were there other earlier references that are this explicit within either note making or accounting contexts? Surely... (See also: Beatrice Webb's scientific note taking)

Just the word "digital" computing defines that there must have been an "analog' computing which preceded it. However we think of digital computing in much broader terms than we may have of the analog process.

Human thinking is heavily influenced by associative links, so it's only natural that we should want to link our notes together on paper as we've done for tens of thousands of years (at least.)

With the standardization of index cards for the filing boxes of his own manufacture, Dewey earned himself the further development of the routing techniques without earning anything with it. In order to prevent economic ruin, the Library Bureau switched its own bookkeeping from the traditional accounting system to the faster and more cost-effective system of the "card index" in 1888. The "technology transfer between library and office" (Krajewski), namely bookkeeping in card boxes, is a hit: banks and insurance companies, steel and railway companies take over the card system and thus also the card boxes from Dewey's company.

This is a fascinating way of making one's product indispensable. Talk about self-dogfooding!

Sounds similar to the way that some chat messaging productivity apps were born (Slack was this way?). The company needed a better way to communicate internally and so built it's own chat system which they sold to others.

A bold statement!!!

Was this Heye's innovation? How much and to what extent beyond earlier ties of note taking and accounting?

note the evolution here based on competition from practices in another field (accounting)

What was his experience within accounting and these traditions?

A call back to the influences of accounting and waste books on the evolution of note taking.

Historically, following a tradition from accounting ledgers, people kept small, convenient pocket notebooks called "waste books" for quickly capturing notes and ideas in daily life. Later, they'd either expand on them or copy them out in better detail and usually in a nicer hand with sources/citations, and indexing/cross referencing in their permanent commonplaces. When you're done with it, you'd simply dispose of or throw away the waste book.

As for arrangement or organization, it's been common for people to use something roughly similar to John Locke's indexing method from 1706 for arranging and finding material. Others use a card index file and index cards to be able to rearrange pieces or to more easily index and cross reference portions.

I often recommend https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book as a pretty solid resource with some history, books, articles, and lots of examples (both digital and analog/paper-based) one might look at to find what they think would be best for themselves.

Zedelmaier argues that scholarly methods of informa- tion management inspired bureaucratic information management; see Zedelmaier (2004), 203.

Go digging around here for links to the history of index cards, zettelkasten, and business/accounting.

Compare this with the waste book tradition in accounting.

In descending order of citations following the traditional Bible and church fathers florilegia included sententiae from classical writers including Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, Lucan, and Seneca.

cross reference: 105. Munk Olsen (1980), 153–54.

What time period and corpus of work does this accounting include?

Brandon,

Obsidian Annotator (https://github.com/elias-sundqvist/obsidian-annotator), which I'm presuming you're using, looks like it's working from within Obsidian instead of a web page and is very clever looking, but without some significant work, I don't think it's going to provide you with the results you're looking for. It sounds like you want an all-public chain of work and Obsidian Annotator currently defaults to an all-private chain.

From my brief perusal of what's going on, the plugin appears to be tied to a single Hypothes.is account (likely the developer's) which defaults all annotations to private (only you) and as a result, even if you had the permalink to the annotations you'd not be able to see them presented on the web as they're all private and you wouldn't have access to the account. You could try filing some issues on the related Github repository to see if the developer might add the ability to make public annotations using your own personal account, which I'm sure would require your personal API key for Hypothes.is to be put into the settings page for the plugin in Obsidian. Another issue I see is that it's taking Hypothesis tags and turning them into Obsidian tags, which is generally fine, but the developer isn't accounting for multi-word tags which is creating unintended tag errors along the way that will need to be manually fixed.

If you're open to an alternate method of annotating and doing so in public, I can recommend a workflow that will allow you to do what it sounds like you're attempting. It starts with annotating .pdf files (either on the web, or as local files in your browser) in public using your own Hypothes.is account. (Most of this also works with private annotations, but if you want them to appear on public versions of web-hosted .pdf files with the same fingerprints, you'll want them to be public so others can see/interact with them.) Next set up the Hypothesidian script described here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225. There are some useful hints further down the thread on that page, so read the whole thing. The Github repository for it is here: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater/discussions/191 if you need it. I've documented a few modifications I've made to the built-in template to suit my particular needs and which might serve as a template if you find it useful: https://boffosocko.com/2021/07/08/hypothes-is-obsidian-hypothesidian-for-easier-note-taking-and-formatting/.

You can then use the functionality of Hypothesidian to pull in the annotations you want (by day, by document, only your annotations, all the annotations on a document, etc.) For .pdf files, you may require Jon Udell's facet tool https://jonudell.info/h/facet/ to search your personal account for the name of the file or one of the tags you used. When you find it, you can click on it and it will open a new browser window that contains the appropriate urn file "key" you'll need to put into Hypothesidian to grab the annotations from a particular .pdf file. It will be in the general form: urn:x-pdf:1234abcd5678efgh9101112ijkl13. I haven't found an easier means of pulling out the URN/fingerprint of pdf files, though others may have ideas.

When you pull in your annotations you can also get/find permalinks to the annotations on the web if you like. I usually hide mine in the footnotes of pages with the labels "annotation in situ" and "syndication links", a habit I've picked up from the IndieWeb community (https://indieweb.org/posts-elsewhere). You can see a sample of how this might be done at https://notes.boffosocko.com/where-are-the-empty-spaces-on-the-internet where I've been doing some small scale Hypothes.is/Obsidian/Web experiments. (I'm currently using Blot.im to get [[wikilinks]] to resolve.)

Another strong option you're probably looking for is to use "via" links (https://web.hypothes.is/blog/meetvia/) on the URLs for your pdf files so that people can automatically see the annotation layer. (This may require whitelisting on Hypothes.is' end depending on where the files are hosted; alternately https://docdrop.org/ may be useful here.) Then if you've annotated those publicly, they'll also be able to see them that way too.

Another side benefit of this method is that it doesn't require the Data View plugin for Obsidian to render your annotations within Obsidian which also means you'll have cleaner looking pages of annotations in your web published versions. (ie. none of the %% code blocks which don't render properly on the web)

As I notice you're using some scanned .pdf files which often don't have proper OCR and can make creating annotations with appropriate Hypothes.is anchors, you might also appreciate the functionality of docdrop for this as well.

Given your reliance on documents and the fact that you've annotated some in what looks like Adobe Acrobat or a similar .pdf program, you might additionally enjoy using Zotero with Obsidian, Zotfile, and mdnotes as outlined here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536. It's relatively slick, but requires additional set up, reliance on more moving pieces, and isn't as nice an overall user interface in comparison to Hypothes.is. It also misses all of the potential useful social annotation you might get with Hypothes.is.

Hopefully this is all reasonably clear and helpful. I'd be interested in hearing about options from others who are using Hypothes.is in conjunction with Obsidian or other related note taking tools and publishing them to the web after-the-fact.

Best, Chris Aldrich

Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.

Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:

“Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).

(See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)

The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.

The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.

Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.

Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

(Not sure if I had this in my notes already from other reading, but adding again just in case.)

Most recently, the emergence of the fact has been attributed to methods of commercial recordkeeping (and double-entry bookkeeping in particular).

Reference to read/look into with respect to accounting and note taking.

Paul Chavigny, Organisation du travail intellectuel: Recettes pratiques a` l’usage des e ́tudiants de toutes les faculte ́s et de tous les travailleurs (Paris, 1920)

Chavigny was an advocate for the index card in note taking in imitation of "accountants of the modern school". We know that the rise of the index card was hastened by the innovation of Melvil Dewey's company using index cards as part of their internal accounting system, which they actively exported to other companies as a product.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adversaria

Note the use of adversaria also as a book of accounts. This is intriguing and gives a historical linguistic link to the idea of waste books being used in the commonplace tradition. When was this secondary use of adversaria used?

From book keeping to bookkeeping

Interesting to note that the German has two different physical words for these concepts which are more similar in English: keeping books (librarianship) to bookkeeping (accounting)

I'm noticing no mention here of double entry book keeping or the accountant's idea of waste books.

There's also no mention of orality or memory methods either.

Here's translated quote from the 1700's in which Georg Christoph Lichtenberg directly links the idea of double-entry bookkeeping to the idea of a commonplace book (or waste book or in his tongue Sudelbücher).

Not to dissimilar to my recent observation:

Backlinks in digital gardens, commonplace books, or wikis are just an abstract extension of the accounting concept of double-entry bookkeeping.

I've heard references of people using these in combination with or also for commonplace books.

This is a relatively good explanation of Benford's law.

I've come across the theory in advanced math, but I'm forgetting where I saw the proof. p-adic analysis perhaps? Look this up.