Sybilla Oritur

We see them all the time - the logo on the bottom of the TV screen telling you that this CSI episode is playing on CTV. Digital watermarking, “the process of possibly irreversibly embedding information into a digital signal. The signal may be audio, pictures or video, for example. If the signal is copied, then the information is also carried in the copy,” may be so much a part of post-modern life that we almost don’t notice, but it has a rich heritage going back to the 1300s.

Already before 1300 the custom began of distinguishing paper by the use of watermarks. These trademarks, consisting of a wire outline fastened to the grid of the mould, made many shapes: letters, animals, tools, emblems of all kinds. They are charming in their variety and useful as well, for they enable us in many instances to determine the provenance of the paper and to date a manuscript approximately. (Bernard Bishoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 13.

Before paper, or rather in the days of parchment, you could tell a lot from the piece of parchment: Smoothness, the visible (or not) hair follicles, the animal it came from, were all clues to the quality of the scriptorium and the region of its providence - but it is difficult to be sure. Paper changes that - and is a more cruelty-free option.