About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Scala in Action is captioned “A woman from Senj, Family Vukasovic, Croatian Coast.” The illustration is taken from a reproduction of an album of Croatian traditional costumes from the mid-nineteenth century by Nikola Arsenovic, published by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2003. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum in Split, itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of the town: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

Senj is the oldest town on the upper Adriatic coast, founded in the time before the Romans, some 3,000 years ago, on the hill Kuk, overlooking the sea. Through the centuries, Senj was a prosperous seaport which was ruled by many different tribes and nation states in its long history. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dress customs in the town indicated not only the social standing of a person, but also the family to which he or she belonged. The colors and embroidery patterns would tell the story of a person’s class and family affiliation. The woman on the cover is wearing a richly embroidered blue dress and vest and a fancy lace apron and headscarf, which would have signaled both her status and her family ties.

Dress codes and lifestyles have changed over the last 200 years, and the diversity by region, town, or family, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is 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 back to life by illustrations from old books and collections like this one.