Google Books

[antoniosz]

There is so much to be discovered about the history of fountain pens. Under "regular" conditions this means a well equiped library with access to company information and ephemera etc. Google has been kind to all of us. After the Google/patents that made some of our patent lists obsolete , the next frontier is http://www.google.com/books. I have used it for a while now and have been able to get a lot of interesting materials. For example:

 

* The Dr. Seuss ads for Chilton, were found using this simple search: http://www.google.com/books?q=Chilton+Seuss

 

* Most of the information about the Prince's Protean Fountain Pen , was found with Google Books.

 

* Also this interesting 1895 document with a lot of info on pen companies.

 

You can restrict the information chronologically. The usual patterns with regular Google (like "exact phrase", +must, -exclude, etc...).

There are 2 types of books: (i) Full view, (ii) limited preview. The first ones are the most fnu but often information can be digged out of the second.

 

Take a stroll down Google/books it is fun. Let me show you one serendipity driven search to see how mcuh you can find.

 

Lets search for Conklin. I usually put also a term like pen or ink to limit the irrelevant hits. So

see where this search will take us: http://www.google.com/books?q=Conklin+pen gives us 43 pages of links.

The first link shows a wonderful ad of Conklin from 1906.

You can download the whole magazine (it is just 61.Mb ) - it is the The American Monthly Review of Reviews from July-December 1906.

Once I find such an ad, I like to snoope around for more. So you can search in this book for "fountain pen". Bingo! Page 90 has a full page ad of Waterman pens with prices and models, clipless, german silver clip, gold bands, filigrees ... and on and on it goes. There is also an interesting John Holland ad here.

When you find such a magazine - it means that other issues are also online. Just search them under the name of the magazine. For example you can find a 1897 issue.

Where if you look for fountain pens, you will find an ad for Lincoln pens and another really beautiful one for Waterman.

 

I hope you enjoy this tool (if you did know about it). Use it and share your findings!

Edited July 3, 2007 by antoniosz

[rhr]

Last April, Dave Johannsen posted this message about "Google Books" on Lion & Pen. It concerns the digitized version of a book of British patents that he found on Google.

 

http://kamakurapens.invisionzone.com/index...?showtopic=1331

 

At first, I rejoiced and welcomed that addition to the online record, but only until I tried to click on the link in his post. All my joy was quickly dashed, because no matter what I did, and how hard I tried, there was no link to the PDF version of the book, and no preview of any pages within the book. I asked friends in Belgium and the UK to try to click on Dave's link, and they were unsuccessful as well.

 

I corresponded with the "Internet Help Center" at "Google Books" when I first encountered troubles with viewing some of their books, and as it turns out, certain items are under copyright restrictions outside of the US. That means they are viewable only within the US. It's ironic that the digital version of the book of UK Patents, which was originally published in Britain, is blocked from appearing in the UK and its colonies, let alone the rest of the world.

 

Unfortunately, Antonios, all the links to "Google Books" within your message suffer the same fate outside the borders of the US. Those links are all dead outside the US. All the links to your own FPN messages and to your uses of the Google material are linked, but almost none of the ones from Google are clickable. The only one that was linked was the first item on this page, the link to the Chilton ads in the book of Dr. Seuss's "early works".

 

http://www.google.com/books?q=Chilton+Seuss

 

But only the first 124 pages of the book are accessible. "Pages 125-175 are not part of the book preview", as a note on the webpage informs us. Your links to the rest of the pen ads are dead.

 

Such is the sad, new, insular world of internet copyright.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

 

[antoniosz]

Unfortunately, Antonios, all the links to "Google Books" within your message suffer the same fate outside the borders of the US. Those links are all dead outside the US. All the links to your own FPN messages and to your uses of the Google material are linked, but almost none of the ones from Google are clickable. The only one that was linked was the first item on this page, the link to the Chilton ads in the book of Dr. Seuss's "early works".

 

http://www.google.com/books?q=Chilton+Seuss

 

But only the first 124 pages of the book are accessible. "Pages 125-175 are not part of the book preview", as a note on the webpage informs us. Your links to the rest of the pen ads are dead.

 

Such is the sad, new, insular world of internet copyright.

 

This is a pitty... Yes certainly some books have only limited preview, but there is more than enough to fully view, (for those in the US).

There is no doubt that in the future there will be a service with charge there. It will not be "free" for too long.

 

In the mean time, you people in the US start digging into these books and post your findings. George is waiting eagerly for your results

Edited July 2, 2007 by antoniosz

[rhr]

In the mean time, you people in the US start digging into these books and post your findings. George is waiting eagerly for your results

In fact, that's the only way the rest of the world can see the results of your findings. Antonios, I wish you'd post images of those ads in your original post, instead of making direct links to the "Google Books" pages.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

 

[antoniosz]

Antonios, I wish you'd post images of those ads in your original post, instead of making direct links to the "Google Books" pages.

 

OK, OK...

You just can not believe how complicated this is.

As you know Google book is experimental. When you try to change the magnification of the page it looses it.

The magazine has about 950 pages about 60Mb... If you download it, you need to manually find the page because the pdf is not searchable.

Even after you find it is complicated to extract it because the regular ways loose the gray scale and the result is nearly unreadable.

I ended up having to alt-del-print screen and stitch two parts together. Then I have to upload the image to photobucket or whatever.

Back here to link the photo. Link does not work... Shoot. Photobucket changed the formal - now the first code is the one to use.

Back here to edit the post.... 14 minutes later here it comes. One of them is enough for tonight. I need vacation from this

 

All this for a curious Canadian that can not access Google Books. It might be better that he buys a ticket and comes south for few days to download everything his heart wants

 

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b325/azavalia/waterman-Amer-Mont-Rev-of-Reviews-1.jpg

Edited July 3, 2007 by antoniosz

[handlebar]

Thanks for the links folks.Much appreciated.

 

JD