What does a printed period look like under a microscope? In 1665, English scientist Robert Hooke answered that question in his book Micrographia (Bookshop\|Amazon), a bestseller that showed the unseen world. Hooke had trained as an artist, and his magnified drawing turned a period into a big, hairy, scary blob, thanks to ink soaking into paper fibers. He compared it to a dirty smear from a burnt stick, or, as he put it, “a great splatch of London dirt.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Robert Hooke’s Magnified Look at a Printed Period: “A Great Splatch of London Dirt””
Listening to A Way with Words, this show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
In 1665, the English scientist Robert Hook published a book called Micrographia, and it quickly became a bestseller because it was the first book that shows what a microscope can reveal.
And it turns out that Hook had trained as an artist, so he made these amazing detailed drawings of what you could see with these new fangled devices.
But what’s really cool is that he didn’t start with a picture of magnified plant cells or a snowflake or anything like that.
Instead, he chose to magnify a mark of punctuation, specifically a period printed on a page.
And if you look at that drawing, the period looks like this big, hairy, scary blob.
It’s kind of funny.
Yeah.
It’s the ink, I guess, that is soaking up into fabric of the page.
Right?
To the little…
Right?
So it’s not clear at a distance, but…’
When you magnify it, you see all of its deformities.
Yeah.
It looks really weird.
Almost like a virus or something, you know, that we think of today.
And he compared it to a dirty smear made with the end of a burnt stick dragged across a floor or, as he put it, a great splotch of London dirt.
Oh, wow.
Splotch.
Great word.
Yeah.
Anyway, I learned all this from a new book that takes a similarly close look at punctuation, you know, where these marks come from, what they’ve meant over time, and how they shape the way we communicate.
So we’re gonna talk about that book some more later in the show.
We’ll also talk to you if you call or text toll free (877-929-9673 or send us an email with your thoughts about language or or the books you’re reading, words@waywordradio.org.
