'Technologies of Writing'

Greek papyrus fragment, second century BCE, concerning taxes in connection with beer and soda

In every way imaginable, writing is at the center of our lives. Writing is memory, recording everything from the history of the Western world to the price of a tube of toothpaste. Writing is art – from the delicate yet dynamic swirls of calligraphy to the greatest of novels. Writing is both power and the force to wield it, deriving from the Germanic root "writ," which meant a cutting, an etching, a grinding of human words into stone. Writing is creation, is shade without form, gesture without motion, the moment between the thought and the action, made corporeal.

You can see the history of the ancient and modern worlds as glimpsed through this most central of human expressions if you visit the "Technologies of Writing" exhibit that opened this week at UT's Harry Ransom Center. "How does one actually write?" asks Dr. Kurt Heinzelman, the exhibit's curator. "What is the material process? What are the things you use historically, as well as in the present? That's the material and physical center of this exhibition.

"Whatever the purpose of writing originally was, the very presence of writing creates another necessity. Once you start getting a written record, you develop another kind of material history. And not just historical documents, although we have those. The exhibit has a decree from Charles V of Spain that gives possession of the Western Hemisphere to Cortez. It's a great document – with this piece of writing, I give you possession of this country."

The material contents of the exhibit are drawn not just from the HRC, but from other UT sources as well. Some of the items have never been shown publicly, including a set of Mayan glyphs with a carved image that has been stored, uncataloged, in the basement of the Texas Memorial Museum for 50 years, as well as three pieces that use Aztec glyphs, generously loaned to the Ransom Center by the Benson Latin American Collection. One of the star items is a tiny notebook that sits in the palm of your hand. It was smuggled into Irish prisons by IRA sympathizers in 1917 and passed to the prisoners, who wrote their names and the names of their prisons. One of the names inscribed therein is Eamon de Valera, a president of Ireland and a leader in the struggle for Irish independence.

"The relationship between changes in writing technology and sweeping historical change is clear," says Heinzelman. "Gutenberg's Bible was printed in Latin, but within a decade the first German-language Bible was printed. Within 15 more years, there were nine different vernacular Bibles in print. Before Gutenberg, there were 30,000 books in Europe. Thirty years afterward, there were 10 million. That's an explosion. And that sort of event is repeated throughout history. We're seeing it right now, a major overhaul in writing technologies."

You can see it, too, etched in stone and clay, sketched on parchment and paper, if you go to get a glimpse of where we've been, where we are, and how we got here.

"Technologies of Writing" is on display through Aug. 5 at the Harry Ransom Center, UT campus. For more information, call 471-8944 or visit www.hrc.utexas.edu.