An amusing launch of a very small book about a very large one

At an unusual book launch this week Peter Ashby, a local entrepreneur, read the definition of the word ‘Abbreviator’ from the first volume of a rather special book. It was an early copy of the Oxford English Dictionary which Peter had been given whilst transforming the dictionary into a compact version via microfiche. He had in turn generously given the many volume Dictionary to the nearby Frewen Club and had borrowed back the first volume for the evening.

The definition that he read from the Abbreviator entry was ‘An officer of the court of Rome, appointed...to draw up the Pope’s briefs’ possibly proving that the ardent compilers of the great Dictionary had a sense of humour – or a blind eye!

Rob Walters, local guide and author, in launching his new book on the history of the Dictionary explained that the great book took nearly seventy years to complete. It was issued in parts by the Oxford University Press which took over publication in 1879 and ‘Abbreviator’ appeared in the very first section to be issued covering A-Ant. This miniscule fraction of the Dictionary was released in 1884 when already five years into a ten year contract. With half the A’s and all of the rest of the letters to do the task seemed ‘mission impossible’.

It was James Murray, a self-educated Scotsman, who nursed, guided and cajoled the Dictionary through its many years of near extinction finally arriving at Volume 3 which took the struggle up to the end of the E’s. It was at this point that the tide turned and the whole country, the University and the Oxford University Press  put their backs behind this grand and entirely uneconomic project. Rob explained that Murray died working on the letter T in 1915 in the full knowledge that his great work would be completed. Robert Bullard, local author of the popular Business Writing Tips read from a job application letter written by Murray which demonstrated the man’s phenomenal knowledge of the languages of the world.

Rob explained that the Dictionary had its true beginnings in 1857, but was not completed until 1928 with the publication of the first edition. However, this was not the end. The voluntary readers who scanned the thousands of books for quotations on which the dictionary was based continued their work through the near seventy years of compilation and so there was a backlog of new words leading to a supplement issued in 1933. And this is the story of the Dictionary’s life – the work never ends as new words are added and old definitions updated. Fortunately updating is much easier nowadays and the third edition of the Dictionary exists entirely on the Internet.

The evening finished with a rousing rendition of the ‘The Dictionary Song” by local musician and composer, Peter Madams, lead singer of the much missed Oxford group Veda Park.

The book is entitled A Concise History of the Oxford English Dictionary and is available from the Visitor Information Centre, the Book House, and Amazon. The launch was held on 21^st March at the St Aldates’ Tavern, Oxford.

The story of the Oxford English Dictionary

I have a new book coming out. It is the shortest book that I have written so far and its subject is one of the largest books ever published. It’s all about the birth and development of a dictionary and the title is: A Concise History of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The actual launch is on March 21^st in Oxford, but the book is already available on Amazon as a paper and an eBook. Here’s the link via my bookshop where you can find more details and a sample.

The idea for the book emerged from a tour. Last year I began planning a new Oxford guided walk based on the history of the Dictionary and became so fascinated by the story that I decided to write about it. Of course there are already plenty of books on the subject so why write another? Simple – they are all four course dinners and mine is just a snack. So, just as the concise version of the Dictionary reduces twenty hefty volumes of the second edition to one handy book, my book compresses the story of its development into a slim volume that you can read in an hour or two.

To some the topic might seem rather dry. It is not. What enlivens it is the characters involved and the doggedness shown in continuing with the work over so many years when all seemed doomed. Many of those characters were unpaid volunteers who valiantly sought sources for the many thousands of words that are defined in the Dictionary, making its creation comparable to Wikipedia by post.

I hope that my book will satisfy most people, but if you prefer the four course dinner then there is a comprehensive history coming out later in the year from Oxford University Press. It will cost £40 whereas my little snack costs just £3.99 in paper and £2.99 as an eBook: tasty and cheap, complete with pictures of the main characters involved.

End of the road for doctors and lawyers?

Why are the ‘professions’ paid so much? Because they are worth it, of course. They have the knowledge that allows us to function in our complex modern world. Doctor’s maintain our health, lawyers settle our disputes and arrange contracts, teachers teach and so on. However, most of the professions are knowledge based and a recent book asserts that their days are numbered, as are their high salaries.

I listened to a panel of speakers discussing the book, The Future of the Professions, this week in Oxford. Both authors were present and both had the surname Susskind - at first I thought that they were brothers though they looked very different. Both handsome men, one of them reminded me of Frankie Vaughan and the other Freddy of the Dreamers, in other words very, very different. It was only when the thin, bearded one called the broad-featured one Dad that I got it.

Illustration by Norwegian cartoonist and illustrator, Kristian Hammerstad, from “Rise of the Robots,” a New York Times Sunday Book Review article, May 11, 2015. 

Their book was praised, criticised and analysed by three academics: one from the Internet world, another from the religious dimension and the third a sociologist. The latter was the most critical; she quoted the use of MOOCs, the free on-line courses where only 5% of those who started actually completed the courses. The authors’ response was that enrolment for one of Harvard’s MOOCs attracted more applicants than the total number of students of Harvard – ever. So 5% completion of a free course was pretty good.

The authors were both cogent and convincing, arguing that it is wrong to look only at jobs in the professions – the jobs should be broken down into tasks. They cited the example of the tasks that nurses now do that doctors previously did. But their main point is that technology is creating solutions that are superior to those offered by the professions and that this trend will continue. Expert systems could soon be better at diagnosis than the GP and could also be programmed to be empathetic. Similarly, lawyers cannot access and process the vast databases of trials and case law at the speeds and scope that a clever computer can. They cited a simple and existing example: millions of disputes about transaction on eBay are now settled via its resolution system with no lawyers involved.

I think that they are right, particularly where the tasks are simply knowledge based – as many professional tasks are. Progress in this direction will be spotty, but could be rapid. The NHS already has an online symptom checker. I’ve tried it. It is very basic and does not even link to the patient’s records, but when it does so, and when it incorporates AI and access to the massive amount of data on treatments, it is likely to exceed the competence of the average GP with his or her salary of £100,000 per annum.

There are problems of course: ownership of data being one and culpability in the event of incorrect diagnosis being another. But these problems exist for the existing doctors too and it is conceivable that future automated solutions may have greater access to data and hence provide superior diagnoses.

Sometimes a little voice in my head says to me, “haven’t we heard all this future gazing stuff before? Long before, perhaps in the 1970s, when the computer was going to take over almost everyone’s jobs and robots the remainder”. That did not happen, or at least not to the extent that some soothsayers then claimed. But in the meantime technology has made great strides: computers are so much more powerful and have the capability to learn; the Internet and Web provide an undreamed of degree of interconnectivity; and the means of sharing and intelligently mining vast databases has become feasible. So maybe we are on the brink of a great change which will revolutionise the professions.  Interesting isn’t it that this revolution will rock the well paid professionals, possibly leaving the artisans, creative artists, bricklayers and so on to carry on as before.

As I finished writing this I had need to approach a solicitor for advice  and was shocked by their charges – almost £300 per hour! Roll on automation and a more equitable world.

Bowled over by boles: Do have a look at my trees

A bole

I have always liked trees: climbing them when I was kid, cutting them down and planting more as an adult, burning their logs for warmth, carving their wood to explore its inner beauty, walking through woods and forests, and more. For a few years now I have been photographing boles (the trunk of the tree if you like) especially distorted and/or unusual ones with a vague idea of publishing this strange collection somehow. And now I have begun...I have attached a selection to my website Rob’s Bookshop.com!

Do have a look. I think you’ll find it interactive and fun, oh and please sign the guestbook while you are there. Just go to the bookshop and take it from there. Do pass the bookshop website address (www.robsbookshop.com) to any friends who might be interested. More boles will be added soon. I’m concentrating on North Oxford at present.

I have also spent some time renovating my website. They are a bit like trees you know – things fall off. Files go missing from the Web; things that once worked no longer do so; YouTube videos are removed for obscure copyright reasons; and so on and on. This seems to have most effect in the pub section: it’s hard being a landlord. Anyway I’ve done some pruning and replaced some branches so all should be well. Have a drive around – if you spot anything amiss let me know.

Whilst on my tree theme, and noting that ‘poetry’ and ‘tree’ do rhyme as all poems in my lowly estimation should, I have had a search around for poems on trees. Unfortunately, the low lying fruit does not have rhyme or rhythm, but I have found two that meet my childish strictures. Here they are.

Windy Tree

Think of the muscles 
a tall tree grows 
in its leg, in its foot,
in its wide-spread toes -
not to tip over 
and fall on its nose 
when a wild wind hustles 
and tussels and blows.---
Aileen Fisher

Bough

Give me a land of boughs in leaf,
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land."
- A.E. Housman

Truth, perception and Hedy Lamarr.

I have a friend who often tells me that “it’s all about perception” - not truth. And another, sadly no more, who once said:“Rob, you know a lot about marketing, why don’t you write books that people want to read rather than the books you want to write?”

I have been interviewed twice in this very young year about my book, Spread Spectrum: Hedy Lamarr and the mobile phone, and both interviews touched obliquely on truth and perception.

The first interview was with a US based radio station called The Kim Komando Show.  Which is “a nationally syndicated radio show in the United States that focuses on technology”. The second was with two schoolboys.

The first was, I think, a disappointment for the interviewers. They are making a programme about Hedy Lamarr’s “contributions to WiFi and Satellite technology”. And the problem is that there isn’t any – not really – but that is not what they want to hear. We started the interview as usual with “I’ve read your book and it’s very good” followed by a series of questions which are all answered in the book. That’s fair enough since they want my voice as the author, or perhaps the authority that implies (something that gives me some difficulties since it is now ten years since I wrote the book).

 As the interview proceeded it became clear that my interviewer had not read the book. That too is fair enough since they are busy people. So I explained that Hedy and George Antheil’s patent (there were two names on it – George was a piano player) describes a particular implementation of frequency hopping in securely steering a torpedo. They did not invent the core technology of frequency hopping, there were earlier patents covering that. The next question was where is ‘Hedy’s technology’ used today. I replied that frequency hopping is used in some cordless phones and in Bluetooth.

This particular interviewer then asked the cruncher, “If Hedy had not taken out the patent in 1942 would Bluetooth exist nowadays?”

And my answer was a disappointment for him, “Yes, it would”. Oh, oh. Wrong answer. Perception destroying.

Now, if he had asked me if the 1942 patent contributed anything to the advance of technology, my answer would also be yes. The idea of jumping between frequencies is likely to occur to many people who are thinking about secret communications or sending signals in a noisy environment, but you still have to figure out how to do it. Hedy and George’s implementation is entirely out of date now; it is electro-mechanical whereas Bluetooth is entirely electronic and mostly digital. But the patent is a neat implementation for its time and solves the difficult challenge of synchronising the ship and torpedo systems in a clever way.

So yes, there’s little doubt that the patent moved things on a little. One man who did actually build a frequency hopping system in later years told me that he took the idea from the then expired patent. And Hedy, and to a much less publicised extent George, certainly did add a touch of glamour to a rather grey area.

Oh, and by the way, I told the interviewer, the detail of the patent was drafted by Samuel Stuart MacKeown, an assistant professor at Cal-Tech: neither Hedy nor George would have had the technical knowledge to do it. And the idea itself was probably stolen from Hedy’s ex-husband, Mandl, the arms dealer. Oh, oh – more perception destroying.

The other interview was over Skype and involved two delightful eleven-year-old boys from Laurel Elementary School in Brea, California who are working on a National History Day project about Hedy Lamarr. That interview was harder and much more enjoyable. They had read a lot of my book and their questions were (probably with some help from their teacher) more searching. However, their starting perspective was that Hedy had invented some serious technology which has had a fundamental on our lives today, so I felt a little cruel in gently telling them the truth. I also told them that Alexander Graham Bell was not the first to invent the telephone and that Harry Potter was not a real person – no, not that last one, that might be going too far. I certainly hope that I did not disappoint the two lads too much and who knows, their project might start them on a career in telecommunications one day.

There are more successful books than my one about Hedy Lamarr and the patent. I have not read them of course, but I am pretty sure that they do not contain the facts that I have briefly outlined here and am also sure that at least one of them is much more successful than mine, and probably perceived as more authoritative.

I’m going to finish this blog with a perception, it’s taken from an Amazon.com review of my book in which the reviewer, to my utmost delight, describes the book that I did intend to write. A book that is more about the truth as far as I could unearth it rather than perception filtered through desire.

“If you're looking for a biography of Hedy Lamarr, there may be better but this is good. If you're looking for a biography of George Antheil, there may be better but this is good. If you're looking for the history of radio with an emphasis on spread spectrum, this is very good. And if you're looking for a book that weaves all three together you've come to exactly the right place.”