Monday, December 20, 2010

Following Google's Nose

The new Google Books Ngram Viewer lets you create charts showing how often words or phrases have occurred in the world's books over the years. Fascinating. Chart "fiduciary," for example, and you'll find the word showed up in books less frequently after the Great Depression but rebounded in recent decades.

The viewer also lets you view books and magazines that contained a chosen word or phrase. "Fiduciary" led me to a c. 1920 edition of Trust Companies and this ad:

Don't know the company, but another Google search led me to this, from a 1922 issue of Printer's Ink:

Edwin Bird Wilson is a name I do know. His agency is where a New Hampshire lad, Merrill Anderson, got his start in financial advertising.

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