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Venture inside the Folger Shakespeare Library, built by oilman Henry Clay Folger in Washington DC to house his immense collection of rare books, and you step back in time: the walls are panelled in dark wood and stained glass windows filter light upon hushed readers and ancient tomes. But hidden in a supply room, shoved between a stepladder and a pile of toner cartridges, sits the Folger鈥檚 great unheralded artefact: a contraption once described in newspapers as 鈥渁 bulky, box-like monster about six feet tall with a row of toggle switches, flashing lights and a generally sinister appearance鈥�. It changed the way we understand old books 鈥� and it might not exist were it not for dedicated astronomers, some borrowed children鈥檚 toys and a few well-aimed beer cans.

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC is host to exhibitions, theatre and events as well as rare books. For information visit

MODERN literary scholarship began with bombs 鈥� or, at least, with a problem that those bombs presented. For while it鈥檚 one thing for warplanes to hit a target, it鈥檚 quite another to measure the damage they inflict. And so it was that Shakespeare scholar Charlton Hinman, who joined the US navy as a cryptographer in 1941, heard an intriguing idea that military intelligence was considering. What if you ran before and after aerial reconnaissance photos in quick succession, creating a primitive motion picture? Any change between the two would be interpreted by the brain as movement, with bombed gun emplacements rather appropriately appearing to shake violently. But an intractable problem arose: how could you take before and after photos from precisely the same spot in the sky? The scheme was shelved.

The idea of running two similar but subtly different pictures in quick succession to look for telltale flickers of change was not an entirely new one. In 1904 the German instrument-maker Carl Pulfrich invented the 鈥渂link comparator鈥�, which flickered images fast enough for astronomers to spot changes in photographic plates taken on different nights. Subtle differences, such as a passing comet or asteroid, would cause a telltale wobble in the image. The blink comparator helped astronomer Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto in 1930. The same concept, brought to Hinman鈥檚 attention during his days in the navy, would eventually revolutionise a very earthbound task 鈥� literary scholarship.

As a doctoral student studying Shakespeare at the University of Virginia in the late 1930s, Hinman pored over early editions of the Bard, determined to pin down 鈥渨hat Shakespeare actually wrote鈥�. It was a daunting task, as virtually no two early copies of Shakespeare are identical. In one copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, Laertes yells out at Ophelia鈥檚 graveside 鈥淥 treble woe鈥︹�� But in another he says 鈥淥h, terrible woer鈥�. These should be two identical books: the same line, the same printer, the same edition. What was going on?

The explanation lies in the chaotic process of publication in Shakespeare鈥檚 day. Printers corrected their pages during the print run, sometimes more than once. But they were loath to discard uncorrected and half-corrected pages, and because printers tended to haphazardly jumble and stitch their finished pages together, no two books had exactly the same combination of corrected and uncorrected pages. The result presents a riot of variations that make it nearly impossible to determine what the 鈥渞eal鈥� text was at all.

鈥淭o everyone else, they will seem rather inconsequential 鈥� 鈥楨ureka! A missing comma!'鈥� says Ian Gadd, who is collating an edition of Jonathan Swift鈥檚 political writings at the University of Oxford鈥檚 Bodleian Library. But for literary scholars like Gadd and Hinman, tiny variants reveal the origins of each page. For centuries, there was only one way to untangle these texts: manual collation, or going back and forth from one copy to another to check each word and punctuation mark. It鈥檚 an agonisingly slow process dubbed 鈥渢he Wimbledon method鈥� for its endless back-and-forth movements of the head. Little wonder that Hinman鈥檚 doctoral project of manually collating and analysing multiple copies of Othello took him years.

What then, of his goal to collate all of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays? Hinman estimated it would take at least 40 years. But, emerging from the navy to teach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1945, the failed attempt to assess bomb damage nagged at him. What if the concept of a blink comparator was modified? What if you were comparing not planets or bombing runs, but books?

鈥淓ven the CIA bought a collator, though it wouldn鈥檛 say what for鈥�

An inveterate tinkerer, Hinman set about cannibalising parts for his project, and later recalled that he had procured 鈥渁 pair of ordinary microfilm projectors (scavenged from the navy), some pieces of a wooden apple box (abstracted from a trash pile), some heavy cardboard (begged from the Folger bindery), and parts of a rusty Erector set (more or less hijacked from the small son of a close personal friend)鈥�. Add mirrors and an eyepiece, and he was ready to succeed where military intelligence had failed.

It didn鈥檛 work. The problem was that he wasn鈥檛 actually comparing books: he was comparing microfilms of books. Microfilm was prone to smudges and scratches and Hinman鈥檚 blinking motion picture was bedevilled by phantom shakes. The only way to avoid the problem was by using the priceless old books themselves. By 1949, Hinman had completely redesigned his machine. The new model, a gigantic sheet-metal beast, resembled a cluttered lab table with a ventilation hood and now included a system of blinking lamps and mirrors arranged around books on velvet-covered wooden racks.

It wasn鈥檛 a perfect arrangement. If you placed the high-intensity lamps too close, you would burn the books. But libraries around the world eagerly bought Hinman Collators from Hinman and his builder Arthur Johnson, and the results were dramatic. Hinman himself carried out a life鈥檚 work in no time, collating Shakespeare鈥檚 First Folio of 1623 in just 19 months. Other scholars, working on everything from Nathaniel Hawthorne鈥檚 Scarlet Letter to Mark Twain鈥檚 Tom Sawyer, published a flood of newly definitive editions of classic literary works. By the 1970s most major universities had a Hinman Collator, as did the British Museum and the US Library of Congress. Even the CIA bought one, though it wouldn鈥檛 say what for.

Mechanical collation can be curiously disorientating. Experienced users, viewing pages as a whole image rather than reading the words on them, run their eyes in an S-pattern down the page in a matter of seconds, much faster than they could read the actual text. 鈥淚 enjoyed it immensely,鈥� says Twain scholar Sidney Berger, 鈥減artly because I was working alone in a dark room and could shut out the rest of the world. It鈥檚 a meditative experience, once you get used to the Zen of the thing.鈥� As the lights in the machine blink hypnotically, the trained eye quickly spots a flickering and nearly subliminal phantom text that flickers just within the edge of perception. View dual copies of Act 3, Scene 1 of Two Gentlemen of Verona in the Folger鈥檚 collator, for instance, and the phrase 鈥渢hrice in that Article鈥� seems curiously out of phase. Looking at one of the books reveals that it has an extra word: 鈥渢hrice in that last Article鈥�.

Working with mirrors and flashing lights in a library still brings researchers strange looks. But collators like the Folger library鈥檚 are becoming a rare sight, supplanted not by computers but by mirrors. Instead of relying on the perception of motion, newer portable 鈥渙ptical collators鈥� use the same stereoscopic principle as a child鈥檚 Viewmaster. The brain naturally takes two separate images, one from each eye, and combines them to create perception of depth. By lining up mirrors and positioning your head just so, you can train your left eye on one book, your right eye on another; variations in the merged image appear to float off the page.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a strange sensation,鈥� admits Carter Hailey, the inventor of the collator鈥檚 latest and simplest refinement into a two-mirror system. 鈥淭he text becomes topographic in nature.鈥� Even pages that have been reset with identical text but slight variations in spacing 鈥� a difference invisible to the naked eye 鈥� become immediately apparent. 鈥淭he whole page leaps up in a jumble,鈥� says Hailey.

Hinman himself never saw his invention gathering dust; he died in 1977. And though he and Johnson tried selling collators to banks to detect forgeries and to pharmaceutical companies to catch misprinted labels, neither made much money from their machines. Theirs was labour of love, subsidised by a more profitable invention of Johnson鈥檚 called the Targeteer 鈥� a poor man鈥檚 trap-shooter that tossed beer cans into the air for soused gun-owners to blast away at. It鈥檚 all a long way from discovering planets and analysing bombing runs. But then again, it wouldn鈥檛 be the first time that a few beers have helped coax out an old writer鈥檚 secrets.