About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Griffon in Action is captioned “An inhabitant of Breno.” The illustration is taken from a reproduction of the travel logs of Francesco Carrara (1812–1854), a historian and archaeologist, who traveled extensively through Dalmatia, Northern Italy, and Austria, recording his impressions of the history, politics, and customs of the places he visited. The travel logs, accompanied by finely colored illustrations, give a rare and detailed account of regional life in that part of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum in Split, situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of the town: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304.

Breno is a small town in the province of Brescia in the Lombardy region of Italy. The town is the historical capital of the Valcamonica, the valley formed by the river Oglio as it flows through the surrounding Alps. The area is famous for its petroglyphs dating from around 20,000 BC, which are listed among UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.

Dress codes and lifestyles have changed over the last 200 years, and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It’s now hard to tell apart the inhabitants of different continents, let alone of different hamlets or towns separated by only a few miles. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.

Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought to life by illustrations from old books and collections like this one.