John Overholt
When a piece of type gets damaged, it's like a fingerprint that can be used to tie all the work of a printer together, whether or not their name appears on the title page. The Catalog of Distinctive Type is building a database of these fingerprints for Restoration England. https://cdt.library.cmu.edu/
Feb 5 at 3:33pmWeb
Show threadMiaFeb 5
@overholt ooh, this is very relevant to a conversation at work yesterday!
Show threadAllan ChowFeb 5
@overholt if this hasn't been used in an episode of csi it's just a matter of time
Show threadThe Orange ThemeFeb 5
@grumpasaurus @overholt *glances nervously at my laser printer*
Show threadAllan ChowFeb 5
@theorangetheme @overholt I every single laser printer's firmware has a unique fingerprint that I've been able to script and search for this exact a
Show threadThe Orange ThemeFeb 5
@grumpasaurus @overholt The microdots? I just checked mine for them, and I couldn't find any, but I can only scan at 600 DPI and I don't know if that's enough. šŸ˜…
Show threadAllan ChowFeb 5
@theorangetheme @overholt just ENHANCE the image
Show threadThe Orange ThemeFeb 5
@grumpasaurus @overholt
Show threadSteve GisselbrechtFeb 5

@overholt

My husband collects coins (quite seriously) and he is involved in a similar (but distributed, community-based) effort to catalog all the dies used to make Morgan silver dollars at various mints in various years. He received an award for, if I'm remembering correctly, his work on the 1883 Philadelphia dies.

Show threadThe Orange ThemeFeb 5
@stevegis_ssg @overholt That's so cool! :3
Show threadSteve GisselbrechtFeb 5

@theorangetheme @overholt

If you're looking for a rabbit hole ā€¦

https://www.vamworld.com/wiki/Home

Show threadThe Orange ThemeFeb 5
@stevegis_ssg @overholt A detailed MediaWiki instance about a niche topic I've never heard of? Oh HELL yeah! This is fantastic, thank you.
Show threadgudenauFeb 5
@overholt I bet you can use damage over time to help date stuff too. I'm sure this is a very interesting thing to study.
Show threadacbFeb 5
@overholt @briankrebs Iā€™m expecting this to unearth some scandals, such as upstanding Bible printers who did sidelines printing pornography and/or seditious pamphlets or similar
Show threadEli the BeardedFeb 5

@overholt

Shades of typewriter registries with samples of output, supposedly used for tracking documents in USSR and the like

Show threaddeelzbthFeb 8
@overholt @JulianOliver HHHHHHHH