Dr. Eric Rasmussen of the UNR English department gave a presentation on how technology of today can solve mysteries of the past.  In his presentation he talked about how William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" does not have an original publishing date, so nobody really knows when the first play was printed.  He then told us how he decided that he was going to find out when the first Hamlet was published and how he used a computer system to find it.

       Dr. Rasmussen took a group of graduate students and a high resolution picture program with him across the world and took pictures of every copy of Hamlet.  With the picture program they had they magnified each of the copies of Hamlet and looked for irregularities in the publisher stamps.  The reason he looked at the stamps is because they were done with metal plates and as the metal plates got worn they chipped and the stamp would change a little.  He also looked at other books with the publishing stamp printed around that time period to see how those stamps looked.  He then notice that in a small corner of the stamp that there was an animal head that was connected to a scroll.  The stamp of Hamlet had the head and the scroll connected, but the connection was less than a book that was believed to be printed before Hamlet.  This other book that was believed to be printed after Hamlet had no connection between the head and the scroll.  With the other two books, besides Hamlet, having only a two year span between there printings meant that Hamlet was printed somewhere within those two years.

       This was a very interesting presentation for everyone I believe because it was a little different.  The presentation however was done very well by Dr. Rasmussen.  It was a unique way of finding out the answer to a problem, and it was  very interesting.  It was a very good presentation all around.
 

    Marcus McElroy
    12/18/01