Reinventing the Wheel [Paperback]

Jessica Helfand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2006

Now available in paperback, this delightful book spins the history of the information wheel, as inventive and instructive as intriguing, that has been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything from time and space to military history to recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers and in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design. From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This thoroughly unusual book by designer and critic Helfand will delight graphic, information, and book designers. It will equally fascinate those interested in intellectual history, history of technology, and popular culture. Helfand begins with an essay that interweaves the history of wheel charts with humanity's fascination with the circle. The earliest volvelles (graduated movable paper circles-within-circles), as they are also called, are found in Renaissance astronomy texts. They offer data on celestial cycles, movements of the heavenly bodies, and the tides. Illustrations of these early texts are beautifully reproduced here. Other volvelles, such as the planisphere, a kind of manual computer used to reveal the portion of the night sky visible from a particular spot on earth, are discussed. The 20th century saw a mass audience develop for volvelles, representing an enormous range of topics from astronomy to American history to zoology, and the major portion of this book is devoted to full-page illustrations of these. Readers interested in information design will seek this out, while those interested in book and graphic design will be thrilled by the surprise. Includes footnotes and bibliography. For large libraries. Michael Dashkin, PricewaterhouseCoopers, New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Scientific American

"Twentieth-century volvelles--often referred to as 'wheel charts'-- offer everything from inventory control to color calibration, mileage metering to verb conjugation. They anticipate animal breeding cycles and calculate radiation exposure, measure chocolate consumption and quantify bridge tips, chart bird calls, convert metrics, and calculate taxes." Starting as a collector of wheel charts, Helfand (a design critic and lecturer on graphic design at Yale University) came to recognize how old the concept is and to marvel at how many uses it has found. Focusing on the proliferation of these devices in the 20th century, she presents pictures and descriptions of nearly 100 of them. Her book is therefore visually intriguing. But it also ventures deep into the philosophy of the devices. Despite their wide range of content, Helfand writes, "these paper artifacts are somehow philosophically united in their unique approach to information design."

Editors of Scientific American --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (May 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568985967
• ISBN-13: 978-1568985961
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,259,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

This project percolated in my brain (and my sketchbooks) for years until I realized that scrapbooks were simply visual autobiographies filled with stories waiting to be told. I am fascinated with the degree to which non-visual people felt, for whatever reason, compelled to keep these remarkably visual records of their lives. Its a chapter in American history (and in graphic design history) that has not been told: in my book I call it outsider art with insider knowledge. It's raw and primitive and heartbreaking and real, and if it bears little if any resemblance to contemporary scrapbooking, it's probably because a generation ago, people made things from the detritus of their lives: they rescued things, saved and savored them, and pasted them in the pages of books. And therein lies the scrapbook's particular and enduring magic.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Viva volvelles, July 2, 2002

By 

Jason Kottke (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reinventing the Wheel (A Winterhouse book) (Hardcover)

Jessica Helfand's Reinventing the Wheel is my favorite kind of design book: one part lookie-L@@K-pritty-pictures, the other part explaining what it all means. The book is about information wheels -- alternatively called wheel charts, wheel calculators, or volvelles.

Folks my age might remember the circular BAC (blood alcohol content) calculators distributed every three months or so in junior high and high school...spin the wheel to your weight and a certain number of drinks and it calculated how drunk you were. Fat lot of good that did me; I could have done with something a little more useful such as a wheel calculator that determined your attractiveness to girls based on GPA and where your mom bought your clothes ("3.9 and K-Mart? Not looking good...").

The BAC and Unfashionable Teen Boy calculators aren't featured in the book, but many other wheels are, including several from the 30s and 40s. My favorites are the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer (for its complexity), the DeKalb Hybrids "What Your Corn Can Do to Help Win the War" wheel, the Wonder Bread Guide to U.S. Warships, the U.S. Navy Semaphore Signaling Guide (this one is really ingenious), and the colorful hand-made "Cercle Chromatique", and the surreal Puzzle Pets Letter Wheels.

Helfand has done a really nice job with this fun book. Definitely recommended.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helfand's book is a gem, September 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Reinventing the Wheel (A Winterhouse book) (Hardcover)

More than a simple collection of ephemera, Helfand's book is as generous as it is specific. Her thesis is that the simple form of the circle - or two joined circles (a "wheel") - literally turns all it touches. Unlike boxy, "windows" environments, circular logic spirals and spins out into webs and whorls, mapping and envisioning the world itself. Her introductory essay deals with moveable circular diagrams before the turn-of-the-century, specifically in astronomy, mathematics, and navigation. A gorgeous color plates section shows over 100 twentieth-century wheels at work. Her final thesis turns to the nature of the wheel in modern art, music, philosophy, and design. Aimed at a wide array of readers, Helfand manages to find a voice for them all: "Reinventing the Wheel" will be a welcome and unusual addition to bookshelves of designers, collectors, and the curious alike.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Graphically outstanding. Text is academic, dull and ill-formed., January 3, 2006

By 

D. Stuart "Researcher at Kudos" (Auckland NZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reinventing the Wheel (A Winterhouse book) (Hardcover)

Jessica Helfland appears caught here between her inner love of collecting trivia, and her academic role: and while the graphics put on display her remarkable collection of wheels and volvelles her text unfortunately veers toward academic pontificating of the worst order as she uses her collection in an attempt to ruminate on how we see life, and how linearity as in the design and format of books (left-to-right, one page after another) is confining compared to the multidimensional viewpoint afforded by circles. Helfand's writing is rigidly locked into the very paradigm she criticises, and in the end her more human Foreword is by far the most interesting text in this handsome hard back volume.

Handsome? Graphically, this is an outstanding book - well-designed, beautifully typeset, graphics gorgeously reproducing the collection of wheels, even the paper seems especially chosen - but I found Helfand's logic and her weak arguments quite frustrating. It reads like the first draft of a thesis - before the student's overseeing Professor has had a real go at the author. ("Come on - you've made a leap in logic here!")

So this is one book where the pictures can do all the talking. The text and the often redundant captions (they describe what we can already see, thank you) is frankly superfluous.