"invention" of silent reading (McLuhan)

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#5396

From: Henry Hanna
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 18:36

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http://www.relevanthistory.com/archive/000790.html

A long time ago I read a book by McLuhan stating
that silent reading was invented in the middle ages.

Was this such a difficult thing that needed to be
"invented"?

Why did the scribes read aloud before then?
Wasn't it noisy and distracting?


http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/anatomy/p145.htm

The first regulations requiring scribes to be silent
in the monastic scriptoriums date from the ninth
century.34 Until then, they had worked either by
dictation or by reading to themselves out loud the
text they were copying.  [...]

Once silent reading became the norm in the
scriptorium, communication among the scribes was done
by signs: if a scribe required a new book to copy, he
would pretend to turn over imaginary pages; 


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Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 10:36:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Henry Hanna <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]>
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Subject: "invention" of silent reading (McLuhan)
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