History
The most famous early systematic use of error detection was by Jewish scribes in the precise copying of the Jewish bible, beginning before Christ. An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings evolved into the idea of a perfect text in 135 CE, and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid. The scribes used methods such as summing the number of words per line and per page (Numerical Masorah), and checking the middle paragraph, word and letter against the original. The page was thrown out if a single mistake was found, and three mistakes on a single page would result in the entire manuscript being destroyed (the equivalent of retransmission on a telecommunications channel). The effectiveness of their methods was verified by the accuracy of copying through the centuries demonstrated by discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947-1956, dating from c.150 BCE-75 CE.
Read more about this topic: Error Detection And Correction
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)