The Mystery of the Phantom Page Turner | Hacker News Reader

The Mystery of the Phantom Page Turner

collectorsweekly.com

52 pointsbenbreen10 comments

Most people apparently don't get the "uncut pages" joke in the Great Gatsby.

But I'd never heard of a page turner (except when describing a book itself). It's hard to imagine how it could be useful!

That's because people don't understand how books are made.

They were printed on a long paper then folded onto itself which creates the pages and then stitched in the middle, the folds are then are cut on the sides to free the pages.

Books today are usually precut and then glued, I did however encounter a few books with the odd uncut page usually texts books.

Other than that page turners were and are used for high value books and in some cases sacred books to avoid damage (or if touching the book is taboo) Jewish synagogues for example use a "pointer" to read from the scroll it self because those scrolls are usually to valuable to touch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad

>Books today are usually precut and then glued,

Actually, most books are still printed from folded sheets. The folds are shaved off the signatures in the bindery (3 sides for a sewn binding, 4 sides for a glue bind).

> They were printed on a long paper then folded onto itself which creates the pages and then stitched in the middle, the folds are then are cut on the sides to free the pages.

Ah, the memories... I recall some of the vintage math textbooks from my high school's library (one of the older teachers had died and willed his personal library to the school, about 12k books). I must have been the first one to actually read some algebra texts because about half of their pages was improperly separated.

I do understand how books are made -- that's why I know what a book knife is for. That's the essence of the gatsby joke!

But you are right -- I completely overlooked the ceremonial and curatorial uses of page turners! I was thinking of them as a mass-market device.

Howard Hughes probably used one..

When I was in college I found a number of books on the shelves which had uncut pages; I used to just use my student ID to open them up. It'd have been great to have had a paper knife to do the job.

Funny how folks forgot so quickly what uncut books were like, when we still have them on our bookshelves today!

Yeah, our extortionately expensive physics text books at university came completely uncut, as they were printed as cheaply as possible - didn't have a paper knife, so ended up doing it by hand - ragged and torn pages everywhere!

Ivory and otter foot, together at last.

I had never heard of a page turner before in my life and know nothing of antiques in general. Yet, my first guess looking at the picture and before reading the article was that it must have been some kind of dull knife for opening uncut book pages.

Now you're telling me antique dealers couldn't figure this out before that guy came in? I call bullshit.

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