The fine line between research and timewasting

[acmespaceship]

Today's New York Times says:

"With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities ... It consists of the 500 billion words contained in books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian."

I have here graphed the occurrence in English books from 1900-2000 of "robot," "martian," "monster" and "spaceman."  I conclude that "spaceman" had a short run but "monster" is forever.  And who was using "robot" in 1900-1910 before Karel Capek?  (Google admits there are OCR errors which can explain some anomalies, which seems ironic given the word we're looking at.)

I also conclude that the word "uke" had a different meaning in English in 1730.

Have at it, folks.

Comments

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

It would be an infallible robot. An infallible Papal steampunk robot! With great clothes, because everything at the Vatican has great clothes. Ooh, I want to see that, although as a Protestant I should be very, very afraid.

Our holographic re-animated Martin Luther probably can't compete. We'll need to activate the Calvinator.