Originally published at: A search engine for weird old books | Boing Boing
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Reboing!
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This search engine reminds me of my crazy great grandfather who would only answer questions from children in the library. Me and all the relations would take turns asking questions and he would go poke around and come back with a book then move on to the next ?/book.
Love this search engine. This image came from searching “carriage;” from a book mostly about paint and coatings for outdoor use. “Spoke” also referred to cars and wagons.
I dig it. Great tool to have fun with!!
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This is very cool. I searched for “pimples” and got a lengthy tome: Encylopedia of Pure Materia Medica - Positive Effect Of Drugs upon the Healthy Human Organism 1878.
Positive?! As far as I can tell it’s a priceless compendium of observed behavior from human ingestion over time with hundreds of substances, including many that are extremely toxic
Ex. Nitric Acid
:
“Mind - Emotional:”
“…He becomes violent about trifles all day…then he has to laugh at himself…”
I love it!
I have a practice that can be described as a rewilding, now that I’ve heard the term. I have a couple volumes of the Antiquarian Sticker Book (which are full of old illustrations now in public domain), and every morning I go to the next page in one and grab a sticker to put in my diary before writing my daily entry.
It makes a great writing prompt simply by puzzling over what the image evokes in my thoughts, but I also do reverse image searches to find out where the image comes from, what it depicts, who the artist is, etc.
I don’t always find info on every pic, but I’ve learned a ton of things about a huge variety of animals, plants, and other life forms (I forget how many “kingdoms” we’re up to these days - something else to look up!), as well as artists & authors, art movements, unusual artifacts (the latest was the Hand of Sabazios), history, architecture, and more. Every day I learn something new and unexpected.
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I remember this being mentioned before, maybe even on this fine site. I actually read parts of How to Hunt and Fish (1882). There is a section about dog training. Some of it may be good advice, but I do not countenance taking a whip to your dog:
If he springs any birds without taking any notice of them, he should be dragged to the spot from which they rose, and ‘Soho!’ being cried, one or two sharp strokes of the whip should be inflicted
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