HIS SCRAPBOOK IS REAL ENCYCLOPEDIA (Oct, 1931)
HIS SCRAPBOOK IS REAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
Five years ago Arthur Carlson, subway worker of Brooklyn, N. Y., began to clip interesting articles from Popular Science Monthly and other magazines. Now he has a 140-page “encyclopedia” that would be the envy of many a scrapbook devotee. Spending eight hours a day, it would take about a week or two, he estimates, to read it through. A dozen or more complete articles may be placed on one page, by the ingenious method Carlson devised. They are not pasted flat but are neatly hinged at one edge with gummed tape, the larger clippings overlapping the smaller. By this space-saving system he has managed to cram an enormous amount of information into a single volume. Many of the clippings are grouped under special subject headings such as “Astronomy,” “Codes,” “Police,” “Speed,” “Time-pieces,” and “Inventions.”
So now we have the digital version of this guy’s scrapbook right here. And we include his paper version of modernmechanix.com!
Subway worker, is that what Arthur Carlson did before he was manager of WKRP?
So that’s what people did before EBooks.
But did he bind them in red and black with gold lettering? Wait – that was the Popular Mechanics Encyclopedia. Still a classic.
@Toronto: Re: PM Encyclopaedia: I have a set of those – bought in a yard sale nearly 20 years ago. Fr home tasks, machine-tool work and the like still priceless. Electrical wiring, elctroplating with cyanices, and home remedy manufacture…not so much.