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E. ONE-OFF SPIN-OFFS
Gordon Lindstrand, Randall McLeod, and R. Carter Hailey are not the only individuals to have followed Hinman's lead. Over the years other scholars and bibliographers have tried to improve upon, replace, or supplement his invention. This section documents these efforts, which largely resulted in one-offs—that is, experimental devices that were never developed beyond the prototype and for the most part were never used on projects beyond those associated with their own inventors. I have not listed efforts to use the computer for collation purposes. Such attempts began very early (in 1962 Vinton Dearing introduced a program that ran on the IBM 7090) and continue to the present (as mentioned in note 3). Various applications (Peter Shillingsburg's CASE program, for example) have achieved some currency, but no effective system has yet been produced to compare efficiently a large number of original images (as the Hinman does) instead of comparing texts that must first be converted to digital text files. Readers who wish to know more about computer-assisted collation should consult Shillingsburg's Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age (3rd ed., 1996). The arrangement of this section
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E1. The Poor Man's Mark IV
In 1966, Vinton Dearing introduced the first second-generation mechanical collator (Dearing, "Poor Man's"). The "Poor Man's Mark IV" [plate 5] was created as a less expensive alternative to the Hinman. From 1953 to 1957, the price of a Hinman rose from $1500 to $5000. The very last machines sold for $8000 to $10,000. These were not inconsequential sums of money for scholars working in the humanities. Most Hinmans were bought with grants from public and private sources. If a researcher did not have access to such funds, chances were unlikely he or she could afford one. Dearing estimated his machine cost $100 in materials. There were no labor costs because he envisioned it as a do-it-yourself project, his intent being not to go into business but to show other researchers how to build a machine. This was not anew idea. Early in his work Charlton Hinman considered making mechanical drawings available for non-commercial projects. Any bibliographer or editor with access to a "standard machine shop," so the idea went, could build his or her own device ("Variant Readings" 281). The Hinman, however, was simply too complicated to construct for all but the most mechanically adept bibliographers, witness the professionally produced set of specifications required to build one. And even if one were able, the collator would still have been a significant investment. In 1953, Hinman estimated the cost of materials at $1000 (281).
Dearing's inspiration was Hinman's prototype (A1), which was a much simpler and less expensive device to construct than its later incarnation (Dearing, Methods 20). Like the Hinman prototype, the Mark IV was designed to work with microfilm reproductions rather than the original documents. Dearing positioned two microfilm projectors side by side inside a box. The images were projected through an occulting disc onto a mirror in the far end of the box. The mirror then reflected the images back onto a ground glass screen above the projectors. The projectors, microfilm, mirror, and screen, along with the light and noise, were all contained within the box. This setup gave the Mark IV an advantage or two over Hinman's prototype. First, it could be used in a lighted rather than a darkened room. Second, any noise generated by the projectors or the motor turning the disc was somewhat insulated from the outside by the walls of the box. The disadvantage was that one had to rely on microfilm reproductions, and so one also had to deal with all the problems inherent in working from copies, not to mention the cost and trouble of making the microfilm. Dearing and a few of his fellow editors at the University of California used his device for work on their edition of Dryden, but it did not catch on elsewhere.
Dearing also proposed another means of collation, one that was completely non-mechanical. This technique, dubbed the "poor, poor man's collator," was really just a variation on the old Wimblelon method with help from a photocopy machine. In the old-fashioned, unassisted manner, one opens two copies of the same book and proceeds to read from each. Using the "poor, poor" method, one first photocopies the pages in question and then, in Dearing's words, rolls a "Xerox copy of the pages . . . over the fingers so as to bring line after line to the top edge of the visible surface and just under the corresponding line in another copy (if one eye is closed, both lines will appear to be equidistant and so will be easier to read simultaneously, which is the whole purpose of the method)." Dearing earlier proposed a wooden frame with a system of rotating, "closely set rods" to accomplish the same thing but
161with practice evidently found his fingers and thumbs more portable and less cumbersome (Methods 15).
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E2. Another Poor Man's Collating Machine
Richard Levin proposed a photocopy-assisted method in 1966. His idea was simply to photocopy the pages in question and overlay them on a light table or, in the absence of a table, merely hold them up to the light. As he admitted, this procedure was so simple he could hardly have been the first to think of it. And, he further suggested, it was easier on "one's purse, eyesight, and patience" than the Hinman (Levin 25-26). Levin did mention one drawback, however. If one page has a character placed where the other has a blank space, or if on one page there is a character that completely covers a character on the other (like for example a comma over a period), these variations will not show up. To avoid this problem, he recommended going through the process a second time, only with the pages in the reverse position.
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E3. The Poor Man's Mark VII
In 1967, Gerald A. Smith, a former graduate student of Hinman's, proposed the next mechanical device—the "Poor Man's Mark VII," another machine in the poverty-stricken tradition (Smith 1967) [plate 6]. He utilized two Dagmar Super microfilm readers placed on their backs so that the mirrors faced oneanother. A screen was erected where the images were superimposed. Each reader contained its own shutter, operated either by a motor or a hand crank to create the alternate flashing effect. An advantage of this adaptation was that it required a minimum of assembly from non-ready made components. One merely turned the microfilm readers on their backs and erected a screen. The only materials that had to be fashioned from scratch were the alternating shutters. Another advantage of this device was that the viewers, because they were designed to zoom in and out, could in theory be adjusted to compensate for images photographed at different magnifications. In practice Smith indicated this was somewhat difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the feature was a novel proposal for a common collation problem. The disadvantage with Smith's collator was that it worked only with copies. Smith also indicated that exact register was often difficult, even with the help of the zoom feature. At the time of his description, the machine was still in development.
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54. A Portable, Cheaper Collator
In 1968, Johan Gerritsen announced a technique that utilized one portable tabletop projector, one negative microfilm of the book to be collated, and one original copy of the book. Gerritsen arranged the projector so as to cast the negative microfilm image on to the actual book itself. When the white or negative image was brought into exact superimposition with the black print of the page, variants were revealed by white spots where there was an impression of type in the filmed copy, dark spots in the opposite instance, or a combination of the two. As Gerritsen wrote, "If one can beg, borrow, or steal one physical copy, the method enables one to collect microfiches from all over the world and do one's collating at home. If one cannot, once one is the proud possessor of a single film, one can travel to the copies" (Gerritsen 29-30). Gerritsen stated that he had never tried this method with photographs in place of the original but imagined it would have worked well enough to have at least identified which formes needed closer examination.
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E5. The Televised Collator
In 1972, John Horden described an application using two small industrial television cameras synchronized to feed to a single television monitor (Horden).
162The cameras broadcast images of two books from the same edition, and an automatic changeover switch alternated the images on the screen. At high speed any differences between the two texts appeared as a blur. Slowed down, the operator could more closely examine any discrepancies. The potential advantages of this system were significant. First, the actual collation process could be recorded on tape, allowing the act of collation itself to be preserved and stored for review at a later date, thereby avoiding the trouble and wear of consulting the original texts. The recorded collation could also be sent for examination to researchers at other locations. Second, the cameras could each conceivably be set up at separate libraries, alleviating the need and avoiding the risk of bringing the books together from distant locations. Horden also claimed this method was cheaper than other techniques (by which he presumably meant the Hinman, for at this time all the other methods, though ineffective except for the Lindstrand, were far cheaper than their more famous predecessor) as well as easier to operate and less tiring to use. Like most of the other methods and machines, the television collator was never used for projects other than those associated with its own development. Robin Alston, who worked with Horden at the time, states that the collator was "never more than an idea," though he was convinced "that it could be made to work" (Alston).
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E6. The British Library's Homemade Hybrid
This machine was built sometime in the mid to late 1970s. Library staff members first tried to buy a Lindstrand Comparator and when that effort proved unsuccessful (Lindstrand had either gone out of business or proven himself unreliable) decided to build a machine of their own which combined features of the Lindstrand and the Hinman. They gathered specifications for the Lindstrand-like features from known users of the Comparator. They presumably based the Hinman features on their own machine (A7). William Proctor Williams was one of the individuals asked for advice on the Lindstrand (E-mail). He collated extensively with this hybrid machine in 1983 and found it a satisfactory, if uncomfortable, device. Its optics were on par with the Lindstrand. The blinking effect of the Hinman was created by a central rotating plate that alternately obstructed the right and left image. The collator moved with the rest of the British Library from Bloomsbury to Euston Road in 1998, and shortly thereafter technicians disabled the power cords because they felt the machine's electrical system was unsafe. Since that time Williams has tried to repair it twice. As of 2002, it was located in the Humanities 2 (Rare Books) reading room behind the Enquiries Desk. The stereoscopic effect of the Lindstrand can still be achieved, but without electrical power the blinking effect of the Hinman is not possible (Williams, E-mail and "Smith").
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E7. The Houston Editing Desk and the Editing Frame
In 1978, Irving Rothman introduced a device that occupied a middle ground between the replacement or alternative collators and the old-fashioned methods of collation by "eye-and-hand" (Rothman 130). Rothman felt that despite the successes of the Hinman and a few of its descendants, collation by sight was still by far the most common method of comparing texts. The chief impediment to mechanical collation, according to Rothman, was simply that there were very few places where one could find multiple copies of any text from the same edition. Most editors were therefore forced to work primarily from copies, and Rothman felt that when copies were involved sight collation was more effective. He built two devices designed to work in concert that accommodated and facilitated the old-fashioned method rather than replaced it. He named these devices the Houston Editing Desk (HED) and the Editing
163Frame (EDFRAME) [plate 7]. The HED was a portable, multi-layered Plexiglas box that allowed the bibliographer to organize more effectively the work of textual collation and editing. The HED was fitted with various compartments for the storage of copies as well as paper, pens, rulers, erasers, and other paraphernalia. The EDFRAME was a frame constructed to the precise dimensions of the type page in question, including head and direction lines. The text under investigation was placed on the top of the HED and then the EDFRAME over the text. A transparent rule was fitted to the width of the frame to assist in line-by-line referral. If an editor was performing collation within the same edition, two frames of the same dimension, each with its own independent rule, were used. If one was performing collation across editions, the frames could be manufactured to different sizes, say the left frame for a large folio page and the right for a smaller one, or even for different formats. Rothman also suggested various means by which the desk and frame could be customized to meet the needs of a particular project. Rothman's devices grew out of his research as a textual editor on The Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe Edition, currently being published by the AMS Press, Inc. Though he patented these two devices for commercial production, he never sold them or built any beyond the ones used in his own research.
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E8. Rotating Vertical Collation Aids, or Twirler
Developed by William Proctor Williams around 1998, this device [plate 8]was built specifically for "vertical" or cross-edition collation. Williams has kindly provided the following information on the origin and operation of his device:
While working on the New Variorum Shakespeare edition of Titus AndronicusI have devised a collating tool that, although it does not do away with the old Wimbledon method of collation, does improve its efficiency. Tit Q1 (1594, the copy-text) exists in only one copy. Of Q2 (1600) there are only two copies; Q3 (1611) exists in 17 copies. These were all collated (Q3 regularly using optical collation) several years ago. However, now I was faced with the daunting task of the vertical collation all those editions from F1 (1623) on. I had seen illuminations and woodcuts of various sorts of book wheels and dimly wondered how they would work. Slowly this drifted around in my mind until one day in a DIY shop (I believe it was Home Depot, but any such shop can supply these things) I saw those pre-cut round wooden items sold as small table tops . . . and the light dawned. I first built one and then a second one (one for each side of the centrally located computer).
Now when collating by the Wimbledon method using two Twirlers. . . I have 8 copies in front of me, plus the copy-text on paper and the historical collation on the computer screen, instead of just one or two other texts. I use the larger size of rectangular post-its as line holders. Although the collation takes slightly longer per line this way, when I am finished I have done 8 texts not just one. I have also found in practice that the accuracy of all the collations is improved because of the ability to spin back and forth between copies on the Twirlers and, since all previously completed copies are kept on shelves to the side of the worktable, it has also been the case that some errors and omissions from previous collations are also corrected in this manner.
(Williams, Letter)So essentially what Williams has constructed are two revolving book stands, each capable of holding multiple texts. With his computer between the stands, he can look across several editions of the same text, checking and recording differences between them, spinning each twirler as he moves from edition to edition.
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