Evening star., 1924-07-19
TRACE SHORTHAND
TO BABYLON|ANS
Geographic Society Paints
Word Picture of Mesopo-
tanian AmanuenSis.
HAS MANY DESCENDANTS
Stylus of 1000 Years Ago Has
Become Fountain PEN and
Printing Press.

"Bebe Norris of New York, n. Y.
Is a stenographer, A. D. 1924. She
doesn't trace her blood lineage to
ancient Babylon" says a recent bulIe-
tin OF the National Geographic So
ciety. But Bebe had what might
be called professional grand
mother a hundred or so times re-
| moved-Bibea Narem, by name-ybo
did precisely the same sort of work
as Bebe's for a prominent merchant
IN Mesopotamia's greatest city more
than two thousand years before
Christ
When Bibea's boss clapped his
hands or made whatever signal
Babylonian bosses made in place of
pressing buzzer button, Bibea grab
bed her stenographic pad picked
up stylus and hurried in to tal,s
dictation.
stenogrnphy 1000 Years Ago.
Murashu Sons, Murashu RuiIdine,
Nippur: Honored Gentlemen nroh-
aoly began the dictator, addressing
the historic banking firm which held
the place in Babylonia that the
| Rothschilds have held in Europe.
| AS her employer dictated Bibea
rapidly jabbed her stylus into the
SOFT clay of her little pad for, like
| all her stenographic sisters of 1000
Years ago, Bibea was literally a
,pencil pusher;' The stylus was a
| little rod Of bone about sly innb.s
long, triangular in cross-section cut
on SHARPLY at one end SO that when
thIs end was pressed into damp clay
| IL 4eit Wedge-shaped Impressions"
Worlds Oldest Pen.
Such a bone stylus, described in
dispatches from Bagdad as the old
est known PEN" has just been dug I'd
on the site of the ancient city of
hlsh, and gives archeologists one OF
their best specimens of the tool with
which the priceless cuneiform tablets
OF Babylonia and Assyria were made
| The discovery of this stylus led the
| Geographic Society, in the bulletin
quoted above, to reconstruct with
| actual names and facts CLEANED from
| other recent discoveries d scene in
| typical business office of forty cen
| turtles ago.
| After the dictation was finished"
continues the bulletin, the dictator
! might very well have issued s,Ich
familiar instructions as these: Pleas
! make a copy of that, Miss Narem:
| sign 1t for me. and get it off Have
an engagement that will keep me out
! until after the Nippur mail leaves
| For Babylonian business firms kept
copies OF letters in their files: almost
every one OF any prominence had a per
sonal seal used by himself or his en-
pioyes in signing documents; and
regular postal routes were main
tanned between Babylon and the other
principal cities of the empire"
Man Only "Writing Animal
The discovery of the bone stylus at
Kish. the bulletin points out, dis
| closes a class of implements that has
been more important to the develop
ment of civiliza ton than perhaps any
other group of tools.
Man is even more truly diStin-
guished as writing animal than as
a speaking animal" continues the
bulletin. for il is the growing fund
of knowledge set down on various
| surfaces by various implements, and
| so passed on to generation after
| generation, that has made possible
development in the arts. sciences and
| industries. Back of the kiSh stylus
are more primitive members of the
pen family: chisels to cut into stone
! and wooden tablets. thornS to scratch
on hides, flint splinters with which
| to furrow cave walls. bones and
sticks with which to make probably
| the first rude marks of all in sand
or dirt. In parallel line. stretch
back the fewer ancestors of the
pencil bits of lead. Jumps of chalk
and soft earth, and the ends Of
| charred sticks.
Great Array of Descendants.
| THE descendants of the Babyionian
| and no tools that
preceded it present a startling array
! of implements and mechanisms. In
China and Egypt paper and papyrus
were invented to supersede the
cruder and heavier writing surfaces
and the great forward step was made
| of applying a third substance, INK,
| by means of brush or pen. The
| Egyptian reed pen made of a hollo"
tubular stem may be looked upon as
| the direct ancestor of the modern
pen. 1t had practically the form of
its present-day descendant, peihs
pointed and slit to make IT pliable.
THE early Greeks and Romans,
however. did not use any material
comparable to paper. They hrst scrio-
bled with chalk on broken nlts OF po.1
terry, or scratched with pointed metal
rods on wooden blocks. Their next
step was to cover the blocks with wax
and scratch their messages in that
material. InelT Sli ido hi'bS ''i
one end, used to smooth out erroneous
marks New wax could be applied
and the tablets used over and over,
The metal styli were truly as mighty
desired. julius Caesar is said to have
been stabbed to death with such pens.
Flint Splinter to Printing Press.
when papyrus reached Greece and
Italy the reed pen and the use OF INK
went with it. This combination was
also used in writing on sheepskin
parchment and vellum, and, in the
hands of slave and, later. monkish
copyists, went into the making of the
worlds most highly priced illuminat-
ed manuscripts and hand-wrought
books.
"Qullls. chiefly from goose feathers,
furnished the next source for i'm
proved pens. Not until the nineteenth
century did detachable metal pen
points come into general use and
shoulder quills out. Now something
like three million gross of them are
made yearly in the United States
alone.
the latest models Of fountain pens do
not complete the pen genealogy. The
far-off bit of bone or flint used by the
less dumb savage who recorded an
unimportant event many thousand
years ago was truly the original An
cestor Of our typewriters. our etching
needles, the light rays and acids we
have harnessed to make our half
tones, and the gigantic, thunderous
printing presses that grind out their
millions of newspapers, magazines
and books"
81 Hoe-Can't understand how Jed
Perkins got his corn planted so
dine-swizZled quick this wear