{"id":1532,"date":"2021-07-09T09:03:20","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T16:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/?p=1532"},"modified":"2021-07-09T09:03:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T16:03:20","slug":"from-ancient-wax-boards-to-ipads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/from-ancient-wax-boards-to-ipads\/","title":{"rendered":"From Ancient Wax Boards to iPads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s interesting to think about what counts as &#8220;technology&#8221; for particular generations of people. We might consider Apple&#8217;s latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/2021\/04\/apple-unveils-new-ipad-pro-with-m1-chip-and-stunning-liquid-retina-xdr-display\/\">iPad Pro<\/a> on the edge of what&#8217;s new in personal tech. But in centuries past wax boards (literally wooden frames filled with melted beeswax) may have been the exciting new writing technology:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:18px; font-style:italic;\">&#8220;Wax boards can be seen as the iPads of yesterday &#8230; they all allow writing without ink, and the erasing and re-inscribing of written text as much as is desired.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>That&#8217;s from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asor.org\/anetoday\/2021\/07\/assurbanipals-ipad\">this article from the American Society of Overseas Research<\/a> which goes into great detail about these wax boards and how they were used in ancient Near East regions like Egypt. It&#8217;s fun to think about how neat these boards must have been when they were first available. What&#8217;s new and exciting is always relative.<\/p>\n<p>One tidbit that I found interesting is the possible &#8220;<i>use of a release agent made from sesame oil, date syrup and ghee<\/i>&#8221; to help prevent the stylus from sticking in the wax\u2013 <b>delicious<\/b>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s interesting to think about what counts as &#8220;technology&#8221; for particular generations of people. We might consider Apple&#8217;s latest iPad Pro on the edge of what&#8217;s new in personal tech.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nisus.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}