Thread by @Sonja_Drimmer

People typically associate apps with smartphones (in definition apps are just programs designed to execute tasks that don't run the computer itself). But apps are common in premodern books.

A 🧵 on app technology in this book from 16th-century England!/1

The book is known commonly as Frank Adams's Writing Tables, as can be seen on the title page here. This copy is in the Houghton Library, and it's especially famous for two things: its erasable pages and the survival of its original stylus. /2

The book has been fully digitized, and you can find it here. /3
iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view…

And the erasable tables are the subject of an excellent article published in 2004, which you can find here. jstor.org/stable/3844198 /4

More on those erasable tables in a bit. Those may have been a unique (or desirable, at least) selling point of this book. But it's not the only attraction. As you can see from the table of contents this handy thing compiles what we can think of as 11 apps. /5

Interestingly enough, the table of contents differs from the actual contents of this copy, as you can see here. One question I asked when I was researching this book was: were the contents fungible, printed separately & sold in pieces? That is, were these apps customizable? /6

To get into bibliographical weeds, one way I was able to answer this Q was through collation, which I've pictured here. The collation tells us that most components were not created separately because several different items ("apps") are contained within the same gathering. /7

Between that and evidence from other copies, it seems clear that Adams was responsible for rearranging the contents over many editions, but that he kept the table of contents the same. /8

So what about these apps? And why call them that? I'll start with my favorite, which is a currency table, woodcut images of coins from different regions throughout Europe. Click the ALT description to read the preface to this part of the book! /9

Another app in the book is a navigation app. This one outlines the distance, in miles, from numerous towns in England to London, grouped as itineraries with different origin points. Note the claim to improvement in the heading here: LARGER AND BETTER MANNER! /10

But, with or without customization, any mass-produced commodity works to produce its audience, generating a shared identity. This is particularly evident in the book, which appears to have been made chiefly for merchants. And that shared identity isn't neutral. /11

See, for ex, this page from the app that contains a description & history of England & Wales. The geographical descriptions that one encounters heave with pride for England, and despair at the loss of greatness, particularly w respect to trade policy. /12

The "our" here is an important possessive, aligning the reader w the author & a broader English nation defined by its valuable commodities. This voice establishes a "we" & exploits its own anonymity as the source of its uncontestable authority. /13

Literally in the middle of these printed formulas for a merchant's savoir faire, is a space for their own hand. Designed for practicality, for jotting down notes, are the erasable tables, and w a metalpoint stylus tucked into the binding. /14

Here's another view of the erasable table, made from thick paper coated in gesso and glue. And here is also a view of the binding with the compartment for the stylus. You can just make out the head of the stylus poking out of its compartment in between the now broken clasps. /15

I mentioned that this book has 11 "apps," but its contents feature 12 items. That's bc an app executes a task *not* related to a computer's function. One of the "programs" in this book IS related to its function: the instructions for erasing the tables shown here. /16

There's much more to say about this book full of 16th-century "apps"! As a book historian I think of any book, whether print or manuscript, as rich with potential for so many different lines of inquiry. Here are some of the questions I might start out asking about this book. /fin