This WWII-era machine was used to decode Shakespeare’s works
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Have you ever tried “decoding” Shakespeare the old-fashioned way?
In the latest episode of “Matt About Town,” WTOP’s Matt Kaufax reports on what it takes to make sure volumes of books and plays — which are more than 400 years old — make it through to the modern age intact and accurate through an obscure piece of technology at D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library.
Shakespeare Library Series
- Preserving Shakespeare: How DC’s Folger Library keeps 400-year-old volumes pristine
- Step into a vault of rare texts from Shakespeare and beyond at DC’s Folger Library
- A rare look at some of the earliest published works of William Shakespeare
The Hinman Collator was a 400-pound opto-mechanical device that William Shakespeare scholar Charlton Hinman invented in the late 1940s.
It used lights, mirrors, and a blinking strobe effect to superimpose and rapidly compare two pages from different copies of a book, making minute typographical variations or text differences instantly jump out to the researcher.
Over the years, it has been used by scholars and researchers from all over the world who study Shakespeare, and it’s a huge part of the reason our favorite plays, movies, novels, etc., that adapt the famous playwright’s works today are still such a huge part of the culture.
This is part four of a five-part series on the Folger Shakespeare Library.
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