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In the first centuries of the early modern period, postal regulations were an important instrument of standardization; beside standardizing distances and units of time, they also regulated their fares and conduct in the communication space – of both the functionaries of the mail and their customers. The uppermost goal of the postal regulations was the smooth functioning of the highly specialized mounted messengers and mail coaches on which the European communication system was based before the advent of the railway.While an alleged body of French postal regulations f…

1. Concept and derivation“Mercuries” was the name given in the 17th century to political newspapers, because in England in particular such publications were generally named after the Roman messenger of the gods, Mercurius. The name  coranto (“Courant”) was commonplace in the 1620s, but from 1641, “Mercury” titles were so dominant that the name became genericized to refer to periodicals in general. Only after 1660, following the Stuart Restoration, did “Gazettes” also become established, then from the 1690s newspaper titles maki…

In the first centuries of the early modern period, sleighs (or sledges, slides, sleds; German Schlitten; MHG  slite; Italian  slitta; Swedish släde) on runners served less for sliding down hillsides (toboggans) than for the traffic and transport of persons or freight over level snow or ice. This did not rule out their use for sport, however. Sleighs were found all the way to northern Italy, because in the period of the Little Ice Age winters were often so long that other forms of travel were hardly possible outside …

1. ConceptDirt is matter in the wrong place at the wrong time, “something misplaced” [5. 52], undesirable remains (abundant synonyms including refuse, muck, rubbish, garbage, trash, detritus, feculence etc.), or pollution coming about through lack of hygiene and sanitation by mechanical, biological (e.g. menstruation), physical, or chemical processes (e.g. oxidation, rust) and capable of contaminating an organism or system with undesirable or harmful materials. The term is also used in metaphorical and symbolic senses.Wolfgang Behringer2. ReligionAccording to the B…

1. GeneralThe necessity for heating varies with geographical latitude; there were great regional and historical variations in its practical development. In the cold years of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1900; especially 1560-1710), there was a pressing need for adequate heating. The hypothermia poor people suffered from when fuel (wood, peat, charcoal, in England also black coal) was too expensive made them more susceptible to illness [3. 430 f., 456f.]. Heating standards improved during the early modern era as part of a general cultural development. Wherea…

1. Development of the theoryBy the 14th century, several thinkers had independently concluded, based on Aristotelian physics, that the sublunar airspace must be navigable by vessels. During the 15th century, the principle of aeronautics was sometimes replaced by attempts to achieve flight by imitating birds (see Aviatics, with fig.). At the beginning of the 16th century, in his manuscript Sul volo degli uccelli (1505; “On the Flight of Birds”), Leonardo da Vinci observed that bird flight required great powers of propulsion in order to take to the air f…

1. IntroductionThe proverbial “time and tide” (the latter etymologically related to the German Zeit, “time”) respectively denote time as abstract concept, “extent” (“a time of plenty”), or “point” (“what time is it?”), and as “season” (ccompare “eventide”, “Christmastide”, “ocean tides”). All these concepts are anthropocentric, and reflect perceptions of cylical and linear changes in the phenomenal world. Zedlers Universal-Lexicon defines Zeit as “a certain and determined sojourn of the celestial bodies in their paths according to which the being an…

1. Concept and origins English-language scholarship uses the term “news book” to refer to books that were systematically bound in order to present newspaper stories from the preceding year [4]. Although some authors assume that this text genre first appeared only in the 1640s [7. 5], others call the weekly London corantos of the 1620s “the first news books” [5]. Corresponding to the concept in German is the   Zeitungs-Buch (“News[paper] book”), a term used by the Hamburg publisher Georg Greflinger, imitating the English model, when he offered the first year of his Nordischer Merc…

The phrase  periodical press denotes the publication of news by means of the printing press at regular intervals. Apart from calendars, the phenomenon of periodicity emerged some time after the invention of printing with movable type c. 1450; it depended on the increasingly regular transmission of news due to advances in the organization of the postal system (Mail) after the mid-16th century. The term  periodical press covers various frequencies of newspaper publication, reflecting the fact that the daily newspaper, standard since the 19th century, dev…

1. OverviewAlthough the apparent simplicity of its construction obscures the fact at first, a sundial is not a timepiece (Clock) but an astronomical instrument that uses the position of the sun (Sun and Moon) to calculate the geographical latitude of a place as well as to indicate noon (apex of the sun’s motion), the time of day and the season as a function of the sun’s declination, the equinoxes, the solstices, and the ecliptic. Its design was determined by knowledge of astronomy along with arti…

1. DefinitionThe term  communication revolution was coined in the first half of the 20th century by American economic historians with reference to their own national history [3]; since the 1970s, it has usually appeared in the plural (communications revolutions) [7]. It was subsequently borrowed by German scholars as  Kommunikationsrevolution [11]; [9. 2, 51 f.]; they have attempted to redefine it with reference to macrohistorical processes.Modeled after the concept of the industrial revolution (cf. Industrialization 1.3.), a series of fundamental rev…

1. ConceptWorld time is a time considered to be valid across the whole planet and dependent on the Earth’s orbit about the Sun. Agreement was reached at the 1884 International Meridian Conference, held at Washington, D.C., to stipulate the zero meridian as passing through Greenwich, England, and to establish Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the first universally valid world time (see below, 2.).This mean local time, established by astronomical measurements, on the meridian passing through the Greenwich Observatory, was renamed Universal Time in 1928, and…

1. IntroductionZedler’s  Universallexikon (1743) offers only biblical quotations on the subject of “quickness” ( Schnelligkeit) – a value in itself in opposition to “slowness” since the late modern period in such areas as working life, communications, or sport. The article on “speed” ( Geschwindigkeit; 1735), meanwhile, was written by a physicist who defined his subject by means of the formula  v= s/t, citing the example of the motion of two messengers, one of whom covered one (German) mile in one hour, the other in two. Even in the early modern period…

1. DefinitionIn contrast to the cyclic phenomena of the natural world (see Cyclicality), the term  periodicity denotes the artificial generation of a rhythm at equal intervals that influences the everyday world and functions as a time base shorter than a year for social processes independent of astronomical phenomena. Periodicity is usually associated with the periodical press, but its periodicity is based on the early modern configuration of communication.Wolfgang Behringer2. The annus mirabilis of the communication system1534 was the  annus mirabilis of the Euro…

1. General 1.1. OccasionsFestivals (from Latin  festus, “joyful, festive”) interrupt the routine of the everyday world, to which they contrast as a temporally and spatially limited “anti-structure” of which they are the structuring element [21]. In the early modern period, festivals marked the phases of natural, social, or individual chronologies, which could be either cyclic or linear. Cyclic chronologies included the annual agricultural cycle, the economic cycle, the church year with its recurring saint's days (Saint), and …

1. Concept and significance Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (“Relation of all Polite and Noteworthy Histories”) was the title of the world’s first printed periodical newspaper – alongside the invention of printing with movable type, one of the key manifestations of the media revolution of the early modern period. The publisher consciously emphasized the currentness of the news content (News, currentness of; Aviso) in conjunction with the durability of the printed word. Like the inv…

1. ConceptIn a general sense, communication (Latin  communicatio, “making common,” “imparting”) denotes all possible forms of exchange within and between systems. Scholarly definitions have been developed in all fields from biology to sociology, but not even within the social sciences are such definitions transferable. Historiography turned its attention to the theme of communication only at a late date.Communication takes place on the microhistorical as on the macrohistorical scale. In a historical perspective, the introduction of new media of comm…

The concept of the network, as developed in sociology in the late 20th century [8], can also be applied to earlier eras and is useful as a measure of structural development in the organization of the everyday world [7]. A distinction must be made between (1) networks supported by people or institutions, and (2) material forms of infrastructure that placed communications as a whole on a new foundation and brought media revolutions [2]. Further distinctions can be made between organizational and structural/material levels. On the whole it can be said that incre…

1. Terminology The modern term  sport was already in use at the beginning of the early modern period; it is derived from Anglo-Norman  se desportes (French  se deporter, “enjoy oneself, amuse oneself”). Thus it denoted activities which serve to pass the time. In early modern German, these activities came under the heading of  Kurzweil (pastime; see Pleasure). Besides physical competition (Contest) [1] and physical exercise (Latin  exercitia corporis), sports included animal fights (“blood sports”) and competitive games (Play, game) of all kinds, including…

According to the definition of curse (German  Fluch) in Zedler's  Universal-Lexicon, a curse is “a speech by which we wish someone ill” [1. 1337]. In fact, to wish well (Latin  benedicere) and to wish ill (Latin  maledicere) are linked. Both rely on belief in the power of the word, particularly when that word is spoken by an authority adhering to particular formulae and rituals. To this category belong so-called “curse psalms” and “curse masses.” The curse is a counterpart to the prayer, which, directed to God, is intended to pro…