Daily: THE FIRST SEARCH ENGINE – In Praise of the Index

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The book index might be an unassuming tool, yet it has a remarkable history - not least because it has shaped the modern world. Author, English professor and book historian Dennis Duncan talks to Alex Andreou about his latest novel Index, A History of the, which tells the remarkable story of our first search engine, from its invention (twice) in the 14th century, to preventing someone from becoming Speaker of the House, right up to our current love for Ctrl-F. “When we started to use books rather than read them, we needed to navigate them in a different way. that’s where the index came in” “An index actually prevented someone from being Speaker of the House of Commons” “It’s an unwritten rule that fiction books don’t have an index, but it hasn’t always been that way” Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Dennis-Duncan/Index-A-History-of-the/25605199 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.4	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retrain. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I love to go to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
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0:28.0	Search Phoenix Group living longer.
0:30.0	Pets brings so much joy.
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0:48.0	Essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so
0:55.2	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker daily I am your host Alex Andreo. As a writer I am rightly obsessed with text in a
1:16.6	decent example of the written word nothing is there as padding or by accident. As an
1:22.2	actor I additionally obsess about subtext the things that remain
1:26.7	unwritten. What had largely hitherto escaped me was a wonderful world of the parrotex, the thing that sits alongside the table of contents,
1:36.7	the footnote, the index.
1:39.1	It is on that last item, the index, that I am delighted to welcome my guest today.
1:44.3	Dennis Duncan studied English at Manchester University,
1:47.3	completed his doctorate at Birbic, where he also taught.
	...

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