Electricity as Power (1880) [pdf]
science.sciencemag.org
science.sciencemag.org
It's slightly depressing how far we've come and how willfully stupid some people are (anything from denying global warming to hippies and 5G), although I wouldn't disagree if you were to argue that the only thing that really matters is medicine and food at the end of day.
Am I crazy, or is there a technique to the ease of reading we've forgotten?
Contrast to modern articles where journalists are told "You have 1 hour to write 500 words. Go!"
The tradeoff is this little box I am typing into and the ability to read what you wrote three hours later from anywhere in the world. We don't have to coordinate all those people. Or pay them. But the output is unlikely to be as good as what a team can do.
> The factual accuracy of parts of this article may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.
I also got a chuckle that the text becomes condensed near the end of the article. What could be the reason for that?
It's also kind of ironic that the more people become involved in the refinement of documents like this the less and less obvious their contributions become. For example, old official hand-written documents were delegated to scribes. Then authors in this era sent their work out to type-setters who used hand crafted tools created by another layer of artisans. Then to printing presses full of machines which were designed by artisans, built by artisans, and operated by artisans. Now in modern times the layers are as deep as the technology sector, with thousands of people having contributed to digital publishing equipment and thousands of programmers writing and re-writing better and better software to create a better and better product.
It's interesting seeing generations of compounded human knowledge side by side with earlier generations.