Why are books the size they are?

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

No, it means you didn't happen to know something, which is ignorance, not stupidity.

But no penalty. It's a relatively obscure bit of trivia most folks probably won't know, because they have no need to.
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Dennis

like I said... I have a feeling I know a lot of bizarre obscure stuff that I just kind of think everyone else does.... VERY odd childhood/upbringing

[GraceKrispy]

Thanks for the additional info, Dennis. Just for the record, I just asked my husband if he knew what parchment was made from.... he said "bark?" Guess ignorance is as ignorance does.

[kindlekitten]

it's not ignorance... some of us just get weird stuff loaded in our grey cells

[GraceKrispy]

s'ok, sometimes ignorance is bliss (I think continued ignorance on this fact might have served me better anyway!). I have plenty of random knowledge about bizarre things that does me no good anyway.

[GeoffC]

i thought parchment was what one got during a walk in the desert ....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Interesting. I thought vellum came from animal skin.

It does. Vellum is very high-quality parchment, made from young animals (generally lambs or kids) and hence free from the blemishes that parchment made from older animals generally has.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

Thanks for the additional info, Dennis. Just for the record, I just asked my husband if he knew what parchment was made from.... he said "bark?" Guess ignorance is as ignorance does.

And he conflated parchment with papyrus, too. It's an easy enough mistake to make. And most folks have no particular need to know such things, nor an opportunity to learn. Why should they? Unless you're in the publishing, printing, or paper making industries, it's not something you are likely to encounter

I knew of the standard sizes for books - quarto, octavo, et al, but hadn't known that the starting sheet size was determined by the available area of an average sheep skin back then.

Books now are normally produced on sheet fed offset presses, with the same sort of folds and trim to produce the final book size, and the same terms applied, but paper substitutes for parchment.
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Dennis

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

i thought parchment was what one got during a walk in the desert ....

No, during a walk in the desert what one gets is an elephant on the head - if you aren't careful and do your walk between 4 and 5 pm, when they do there parachute exercises.

[HarryT]

That's why paper was such a revolutionary invention. Preparing parchment was an extremely labour intensive process; it was extremely expensive as a result.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

No, during a walk in the desert what one gets is an elephant on the head - if you aren't careful and do your walk between 4 and 5 pm, when they do there parachute exercises.

I heard about a US effort during the Vietnam War called Operation Barroom, intended to paradrop an elephant into a remote Vietnamese village for ceremonial purposes. You can strap parachutes to an elephant and parachute it out a plane. The trick is getting it to step out of the plane in flight. That reportedly required heavy duty tranquilization of the animal, and a side effect of the tranqs was extreme flatulence.

The cargo bay crew wore gas masks during the mission.
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Dennis

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I heard about a US effort during the Vietnam War called Operation Barroom, intended to paradrop an elephant into a remote Vietnamese village for ceremonial purposes. You can strap parachutes to an elephant and parachute it out a plane. The trick is getting it to step out of the plane in flight. That reportedly required heavy duty tranquilization of the animal, and a side effect of the tranqs was extreme flatulence.

The cargo bay crew wore gas masks during the mission.
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Dennis

I would have thought the first difficulty to be getting the animal on the plane

[Sandra Edwards]

Interesting. I'd never really thought about it before. Learn something new every day!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I would have thought the first difficulty to be getting the animal on the plane

Nah. Just march it up the cargo ramp. Getting it to step off the plane while in flight was another matter...
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Dennis

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Nah. Just march it up the cargo ramp. Getting it to step off the plane while in flight was another matter...
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Dennis

Smart elephant

But didn't it break its legs when landing?

[Ea]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And he conflated parchment with papyrus, too. It's an easy enough mistake to make. And most folks have no particular need to know such things, nor an opportunity to learn. Why should they? Unless you're in the publishing, printing, or paper making industries, it's not something you are likely to encounter

I can't remember ever not knowing what parchment is, but Lord Peter Wimsey's interest in antique books taught me a good deal more because I had to look up some words.

Edit: I forgot to add my point, which was that reading is good for you, because you invariably learn something.