Are "old" skills and technologies worth learning??

[wolfie]

That "cross-writing" gives me a headache. Was paper THAT expensive in the distant past so that such an economy measure was justified?

One thing similar to "cross-writing" that I've heard about was the manual layout of double-sided circuit boards (masters for photo-etching). On a mylar film, you'd lay out pads (opaque black stick-ons), and connect them with transparent red and blue tapes. You'd then use a red-sensitive photoresist for one side, and a blue-sensitive for the other (or on larger production runs, you'd make working copies on litho film, with a red filter for one side and a blue filter for the other).

Your "master" would have all the lines for both sides, and the lines for the "wrong" side would drop out in the photo process.

[AccountingDrone]

Actually yes paper was that expensive a commodity at the time. It was originally linen with cotton sometimes mixed in. When you hear of 'rag pickers' going around collecting old cloth, one of the things it was specifically for was the paper industry. Wood as paper really got its start in about 1840 as I vaguely remember. If you look at a thin piece of wood, you can see the wood fibers, pound on a wet thin piece of wood to see the fibers separate out, and you will note how relatively big the fibers you manage to get out are. So good paper was something that was going to cost, even up until the 1900s. The idea of a special paper for the bathroom for someone other than nobility was insane, hence all the other ways of getting your butt clean including using the sears or whomever catalog, old newspapers and magazines.

And it was not unusual to respond to a letter using the blank parts of the paper, or by crosswriting.

[I took a seminar on books and paper one summer as adult continuing ed, fascinating!]

[Ironclad Alibi]

That "cross-writing" gives me a headache. Was paper THAT expensive in the distant past so that such an economy measure was justified?

Another reason for cross-writing was the scarcity of paper. US Civil War soldiers did not have access to much paper and had to make do with what they had.

[Chromatix]

Interestingly enough, the cross-writing example comes from a competition held a few years ago by the (British) National Railway Museum's blog. The curators had, of course, already deciphered it themselves, but they offered a prize to the first reader to provide a correct transcription.