Most books are printed in colloquial character sets on physically accessible media to preserve instant readability. Most archived electronic data is stored using complex binary-base algorithms to preserve resources (digital storage space). In its heyday, microfilm provided a happy medium, hardy har har, that used simple technology to economize data preservation prior to the advent of computers.
What came before microfilm? Surely, it had to occur to some post-Gutenburg librarian with a bad back that the works of Shakespeare could be immensely condensed and preserved for future generations if only rice writers were given a tiny pen and some time. I exaggerate, but someone did at least acknowledge that bibles and dictionaries printed on tissue paper were much easier to lug around than, say, newsprint.
Is the explanation as simple as it never occurred to anyone before the 20th century to archive information as efficiently as possibly simply for the sake of preservation at the expense of immediate legibility? Was it just too difficult and uneconomical to manufacture tiny sorts to make dedicated archival volumes? What examples are there of technology used to archive data for preservation purposes foremost?
I very much doubt it never occurred to anyone. My WAG is that it was a combination of 1) the high cost of pre-industrial printing in general, 2) the even higher cost of the technological hurdles associated with any condensation method, 3) the higher level of annoyance required to retrieve/read the condensed work (due to technological limitations), 4) the deterioration of the condensed work before the age of plastics, and 5) a lack of sufficient incentive to overcome said difficulties. I think #5 is key – the condensation of works would have been a nice enlightened idea, of mild interest to the aristocracy and of moderate interest to a few intellectuals, but it would take a leap of technology and affluence in order for this sort of idea to be taken seriously in practice. Eventually it became *easy[/I and cheap to condense data, at which point people found the idea worth throwing a few pennies at.
Actually, they did in fact do something not unlike data compression.
Manuscript books, which were extremely labor-intensive to produce, made use of a huge number of widely recognized abbreviations, and the first printed books did the same, as readers were used to them. It took some time for people to recognize that the abbreviations were no longer necessary when using the new technology.
(To give you a sample, the word “nostris” would be abbreviated “nris” with a line over it. The word would only be spelled out in full on title pages, in chapter or page headers, etc. There were hundreds of other standard abbreviations.)
Last week I was at the local records office, researching my family tree - I found a microfiche photographic copy of a will written for and signed by one of my ancestors in 1642. It’s really hard to decipher, partly because of the language, but partly because it seems to employ a great deal of abbreviation - almost like shorthand in some places.
This would have been written with a dipped quill - a fairly laborious process - and I suspect the abbreviation is partly to maximise the transcription of information hitting the page between dips in the inkwell (as well as to make best use of the paper/parchment).
Some time during the 1970’s I was given the job of cleaning out some old bank storage files. There were microfilms there that dated to the early 1930’s. We put them in a viewer and they were just as clear and crisp as when they were taken. Every check was an example of perfect Palmer penmanship. Gave a few rolls as sample to our then current Kodak sales rep and the rest went into the shredder.
In 1971 the Oxford English was released in a photographically reduced 2 volume edition. it had 4 reduced pages on every pages. It came with a magnifying glass. In 1991 they came out with a single volume with 9 pages on each page.