Media in TW2000

[aspqrz]

Or you could go the old time route ...

* Acta Diurna: Public Notices (Court Cases, Decrees of assorted Magistrates etc.) and some general news, placed in the Roman Forum from the mid 2nd century BC till the government moved to Constantinople. Evidently inscribed on copper or metal plates and archived, sometimes copied by scribes and sent to Provincial Governors.

As an extension, Caesar's 'De Bello Gallico' were letters sent back to Rome to be published/read or generally made public to the Plebs to maintain support against the Patricians who, generally, hated his guts.

* Town Crier: A long tradition going back to early medieval times. A public official whose job it was to make public announcements of laws, regulations, decrees, market days etc. etc.

Don't need a lot of tech to do those things.

Getting the news in the first place would come via the usual suspects, depending on the degree of damage to comms infrastructure, but you don't really need newspapers or radio stations for basic news distribution.

Phil

[aspqrz]

And that will be fine until the paper runs out.

It's actually fairly easy to make recycled paper from roneo/mimeo/gestetner quality paper ... some water, enough power to run a blender, and a fine mesh screen (and you can probably work something out instead of the blender).

Even the ink would be relatively easy ... linseed oil and lamp black.

Phil

[WallShadow]

The most difficult component of a mimeo/spirit duplicator machine to find or manufacture would be the mimeo master blanks, which are sheets of paper that are coated in a thin coating of (usually colored) wax that a typewriter key makes an impression on. These would be the achilles heel of the system.

[Silent Hunter UK]

* Town Crier: A long tradition going back to early medieval times. A public official whose job it was to make public announcements of laws, regulations, decrees, market days etc. etc.

We still have one in my borough; he's brought out for royal births etc.

[aspqrz]

The most difficult component of a mimeo/spirit duplicator machine to find or manufacture would be the mimeo master blanks, which are sheets of paper that are coated in a thin coating of (usually colored) wax that a typewriter key makes an impression on. These would be the achilles heel of the system.

ISTR that in the 1632verse this proves to not be much of a problem. Of course, that's fiction, but the tech side of things is always (afaict) well researched.

ISTR that the problem they had was getting the wax coating thin and flexible enough ... they may even have created a flatbed rather than rotary machine to use the stencils, it was evidently simply enough to be assembled and run by locals with hand tools and not much else.

Where there's a will there's a way!

Phil

[Silent Hunter UK]

Printing presses have been around since the 15th century, BTW.

[aspqrz]

Well, in Western Europe.

Printing Presses have been around for much much much longer in China. About 1300 years longer ... and the method they used was much simpler than the initial Gutenberg style presses and successfully competed with Western style presses in China until all woodblock printing was suppressed by government fiat after the 1911 revolution for reasons of 'modernity' (hell, knowing how inherently corrupt the KMT were, they probably received kickbacks from owners of the newstyle presses to suppress the competition, as like as not).

They also used moveable type from about 1000 AD or so in China and at least the late 14th century in Korea, though neither methods were widespread because of the cost of the thousands of ceramic (or metal) ideograms necessary.

Phil

[Jason Weiser]

Folks...something germane to the discussion

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1i...g&pref=2&pli=1https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1i...g&pref=2&pli=1