I came across an article from The Economist about a new exhibition at the British Library, which sounds great: it’s all about the history of writing and note-taking. The article is behind a paywall, unfortunately, but here’s a taste:

NEATLY HANDWRITTEN, with a simple diagram below a numbered list, the sheet looks like any fussy hobbyist’s record of some cranky project in a garden shed. This, though, is a page taken from a hospital bacteriologist’s lab notebooks in December 1928. A few weeks previously, the researcher had found by chance that a common-as-muck fungus had contaminated his experiment but seemed to be purging bacteria. This sheet confirms that Penicillium, that nasty old mould that thrives in damp, has thoroughly zapped the streptococcus bacteria in a blood sample. Within 15 years, Alexander Fleming’s discovery at St Mary’s Hospital in London had—thanks to biochemists Ernst Chain and Howard Florey—led to effective penicillin treatment. It would inaugurate the antibiotic revolution, save tens of millions of lives and even (in some accounts) help win the second world war after its supply to Allied forces after D-Day. 

At the British Library (BL), Fleming’s modest but epoch-making notes sit alongside a selection of other illustrious scrawls as part of the exhibition “Writing: Making Your Mark”….

Source: The Economist: The Magic of Notebooks

The exhibition runs until August 27, 2019. Find out more at the British Library website.