InfoD: History of the arrow

[multi-author]

   * Arrows and footprints *   (discussion issue)

     messages by:

     1) Rob Waller
     2) David Sless
     3) Kate Gladstone
     4) Paul Kahn
     5) Karel van der Waarde


These are reactions to Rose Zgodzinski's question:

> I am looking for a history of the arrow.
> Can anyone point me in the right direction?

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1) message by:  Rob Waller <rwaller@idu.co.uk>

I remember somone authoritative (possibly Michael Twyman) asserting
that he had not found the arrow used directionally before about 1880
(I think - it was a long time ago I was in that seminar...).
My impression is that nineteenth century signposts mostly used fists
(ie, pointing hands) or just pointed, but I'm not sure what they did
to show direction in engineering drawings. I seem to remember seeing
early uses of the arrow as leader lines (that is, linking a label to
a part of a drawing) rather than pointing towards something in the
distance. 

This could be one of those conventions that has a long history in a
specialised area but only became generally used later on.

A possibly apocryphal angle on this is the fact (?) that in some
tribal cultures the symbol we use as an arrow actually points the
other way (ie, towards the shaft), as it represents a bird's
footprint...

Rob Waller
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2) message by:  David Sless <d.sless@communication.org.au>

This is written late on a Friday night, at home and in the absence
of appropriate reference texts.

I think there is some material corroborating Rob Waller's view but
from another direction. My recollection is that in some aboriginal
iconography the directionality of the 'arrow' is reversed because
Kangaroo paw prints, like Rob's bird feet, give the opposite
direction to the 'arrow' for directionality.

If this were the case (to be confirmed) then it would dispute any
claim that the arrow was 'universal' as a sign of direction.

ds
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3) message by:  Kate Gladstone <kate@global2000.net>

Interestingly, the directional arrow has apparently been assumed to
be "universal" (or at least decipherable even by a culture not using
this convention) by NASA - at least, in the 1970s when they designed
the two-nudes-and-map plaque on the unmanned PIONEER "message-in-a-
bottle" spacecraft.

The plaque (which is now floating with the ship in space, well
beyond the orbit of Pluto) includes a directional arrow extending
from Earth (indicated on a map of our solar system) to an out-line
drawing of the spacecraft itself. This is intended to convey, to
whatever extraterrestrial beings may happen upon the PIONEER, that
the craft was launched from the planet indicated.

Carl Sagan, describing the plaque in his book THE COSMIC CONNECTION
(he had been consulted on the plaque's design), used this arrow as
an example of a symbol which all intelligent beings would "probably"
understand correctly. His reasoning was that - since the E.T.'s
would have the actual spacecraft in their hands (or whatever
grapsing-organs) - they could presumably "work back" and deduce the
meaning of the arrowed line in order to find Earth and perhaps make
a visit.

He *also* assumed that the aliens could similarly "work back" from
our use of an arrow-symbol to deduce that we had had a past as
primitive hunters and were still influenced by it.

But it would seem that, if the plaque were to arrive on a planet
inhabited by sentient birds or kangaroos, they might "work
backwards" and deduce that the plaque meant to say:

"The third planet of that far-away star was first 'seeded' with
life by beings which arrived on that planet in this, their
spacecraft. No other interpretation can be placed on the presence
of an unmistakable directional 'footprint' symbol, similar to the
symbol we use for the same purpose at the start of a line leading
from the picture of the spacecraft to the picture of the planet.
This also lends confirmation to what our design-psychologists
have long suspected must be true: the idea that the 'directional
footprint' is a universal symbol which will occur in the graphic
conventions of any intelligent bi-pedal race."

The possibility that the "footprint" could possibly represent a
primitive projectile might never even occur to them - particularly
if the arrow had never been invented on their planet, its place in
primitive life being supplied by the discus, yo-yo, or boomerang
(all of which have been used on Earth as tribal hunting-tools).

Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair
Albany, NY
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4) message by:  Paul Kahn <paul@DynamicDiagrams.com>

In his book "Maps and History, Constructing Images of the Past"
(Yale 1997), Jeremy Black devotes three pages to the work of
Emil Reich (1854-1910). Black suggests that Reich's atlases
(the one example shown in the book is from Student Atlas of
English History, London 1903) pioneered the use of arrows for
analytic and pedagogical use.

Paul Kahn
Dynamic Diagrams, Providence, USA
http://www.DynamicDiagrams.com
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5) message by:  Karel van der Waarde <waarde@glo.be>

Piet Westendorp shows in his 1993 booklet 'Gebruiksaanwijzingen'
(= user instructions) an illustration of a water-wheel in which an
arrow is used to indicate the direction of the water. The source:
Bernard Forest de Belidor, Architecture Hydraulic, 1737.

The 'fist' (used to call attention to the subsequent words - also
called 'mutton-fist' or 'hand') was used a bit earlier. It appears
for example in 'Horace', printed in 1498 by Johann Grueninger of
Strassburg. Charles Hasler points out that they were used in
manuscripts 'as early as the thirteenth century'. (Charles Hasler.
A show of hands. pp 4-11 in: Typographica 8. Edited by Herbert
Spencer, published by Lund Humphries, London. no date).

Kind regards,
Karel van der Waarde


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