Dear colleagues,

The Digital Humanities Network at the University of Potsdam invites you to another 'Code & Culture' online lecture on November 12 . Our guest this time is Prof. John Dawson, who served as the Head of the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 2009.

Title: Digital Humanities — an Ancient History

Abstract:

The Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) at the University of Cambridge was established in 1964 and had to devise innovative methods for inputting, storing, and analysing text of many types and in several alphabets.

John Dawson was Head of LLCC from 1974 to 2009. During that time, advancements in computer storage, software techniques, and printing technology revolutionised Digital Humanities, but they also posed many new challenges for humanists. Two examples:

• In 1977 Chinese characters could only be drawn as simple line-drawings on a graph plotter, and there was no established way to sort and print the mixture of Chinese and English required for a Chinese–English dictionary.
• Concording the Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot required a large amount of computer store, three magnetic tapes, and 45 minutes of computer time on a mainframe computer. The Concordance had to be sent on magnetic tape to be printed on a Monotype typesetter at Oxford University.

The talk will show how some of these problems were overcome. Many of the techniques have been made redundant by modern technology, but lessons can still be learnt.

The talk will take place online on November at 16:00 CET. Please register here to get the Zoom link:  https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/digital-humanities/aktivitaeten/code-and-culture-lecture-series/digital-humanities-an-ancient-history

Best wishes, and have a good start into the week!

The DH Potsdam team