Woo Hoo! Hutchison's Boxing

**lklawson** · Posted On: 5/21/2010 8:09pm

Just picked up D.C. Hutchison's 1913 "Boxing."

Very groovy.

No grappling in it, but all illustrations are bare fist. No gloves here.

It looks like a cross between Edwards' manual and Sullivan's manual. The pics, for some reason, remind me of what I saw of the Thomas Inch boxing manual, published decades later.

The book in in awesome condition for being nearly a century old.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

**Permalost** · Posted On: 5/22/2010 12:59am

Any chances of you graciously offering it through Lulu?

**lklawson** · Posted On: 5/22/2010 6:53am

Originally Posted by CodosDePiedra

Any chances of you graciously offering it through Lulu?

Absolutely.

Bearing in mind that I am now down to "only" a backlog of about SIX books. :)

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

**lklawson** · Posted On: 5/22/2010 9:32am

Originally Posted by lklawson

Bearing in mind that I am now down to "only" a backlog of about SIX books.

Scratch that.

Just did a quick catalog and found that my backlog is actually closer to NINE books.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

**HereBeADragon** · Posted On: 5/22/2010 1:43pm

What I wouldnt give to have 5 minutes alone with your library. Don't suppose you ever trade books? :D

**TheVigilante** · Posted On: 5/23/2010 8:18am

Hey Kirk,

Would you mind telling me what OCR program you've found is best? Also, do you have any particular tips for taking digital photos of pages? I think I'm going to do this with the Bonafont manual as the book is a bit fragile, not to mention rare.

**lklawson** · Posted On: 5/24/2010 7:18am

Originally Posted by HereBeADragon

What I wouldnt give to have 5 minutes alone with your library. Don't suppose you ever trade books? :D

My library isn't really that impressive, to be honest. But I might be willing to trade books. :)

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

**lklawson** · Posted On: 5/24/2010 7:27am

Originally Posted by TheVigilante

Hey Kirk,

Would you mind telling me what OCR program you've found is best? Also, do you have any particular tips for taking digital photos of pages? I think I'm going to do this with the Bonafont manual as the book is a bit fragile, not to mention rare.

I work almost exclusively in Linux so what I use may not be what you want. For OCR, I use the Tesseract engine with VietOCR as the front-end. VietOCR is a java implementation so that eats a few more cycles but it's really a very nice, basic GUI front-end. Select your text, hit "OCR" and it crops out, converts to the proper format to feed to Tesseract, and spits out text in the accompanying pane. I've found the Tesseract engine to be better than the other two popular OCR engines in Linux, but it doesn't come with a good GUI to start with. There are several, with varying options, but my needs for OCR are pretty basic.

As for your fragile book, that's a hard one. One, in fact, that I am facing too. Most of what I've gotten I've run on my flat-bed scanner, but very fragile books just won't take that sort of handling. The answer is to build a photo stand. This is just a podium-like stand for books which will hold them open. The difference is that the ones designed for photographing fragile books are V shaped so that the book sits in a vertical v-notch which opens the covers up at about 90 degrees (or a smidge more). You still use some sort of arm or plate to hold open the pages (anti-glare plastic or glass plates are popular). Then you set your camera on a tripod and take a photo, one page at a time. Then you rotate either the tripod or the camera and take a photo of the other page.

It's slow, but it's a lot more gentle on the book.

If you intend only a one time use, you could use heavy cardboard for the majority of the build.

I'm still working on mine.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

**TheVigilante** · Posted On: 5/24/2010 9:52am

Thanks for the insights. I downloaded a program for windows based on the Tesseract engine and I tried just taking a picture with the book open on the desk. Recognition was pretty dire, maybe the lighting wasn't good enough? I know basically nothing about photography.

If the worst comes to the worst I guess I will have to type the thing out myself...

BTW I have W. Billy Wood and EJ Harrison's wrestling book on the way...you seen that one? is it any good?

**HereBeADragon** · Posted On: 5/24/2010 1:31pm

Originally Posted by lklawson

My library isn't really that impressive, to be honest. But I might be willing to trade books. :)

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

I do not have any old fight manuals, thou I wish I did. I do however have a pretty impressive collection of classics. Most of my books are 90 years or older. The oldest in my collection is a set of French encyclopedias from either the 1700s or 17th century. I cannot reach French so I am not sure which. What books might you have that you would be willing to sell/trade?