Its more like older generations of all sorts nailed cursive. Remember, back then 99% of all writing was handwriting. Even those who had typewriters only used them to make final drafts of documents - the first versions were all handwritten. The fact that people's handwriting back then was so good comes from them having ample opportunity to practice good handwriting.
Schools which force you to have perfect handwriting are crushing creativity and entrenching bureaucracy.The implied message is that the expression of ideas is more important than the ideas themselves.As long as your handwriting should be legible and that's it. Do not put the medium before the message.
I actually grew up there, and I remember that my teacher's would take points off for anything less than awesome handwriting. During math exams we'd basically do all the work on a separate sheet/scratch sheet and then copy it over to the final notebook we'd submit for grading. Great handwriting and neat notes were considered a sign of an educated person... (With the exception of doctors, they were required to have crazy handwriting, at least for prescriptions)
Wikipedia says "Since paper was very expensive, Ramanujan would do most of his work and perhaps his proofs on slate, and then transfer just the results to paper".
I want to add here , he use to write on napkins , used paper from patties while in canteen. He use to write on same paper with 4 different pen so that he could save page as much.Most time all thing can go in his head only.
This guy should be a hero to everyone who has taught themselves programming, computers, business...anything. Though he was already a mathematical powerhouse as a teenager, he still dropped out of college and endured very hard times while he wrote these notebooks. Ramanujan was well below "ramen profitable," and very much a "solo founder."
I first learned about this guys work in The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy. Excellent read for anyone interested in these topics. I understand maybe one hundredth of the mathematics and it's still seriously fascinating.
It is very nice to see the notebooks. I grew up hearing stories about him from my mother, herself a math teacher. I especially remember learning about Ramanujan number 1729 at a very young age (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_%28number%29) and naively trying to invent my own number :-)
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 43.0 ms ] threadThis is probably way over my head...
P.S. : I always have been huge fan of Ramanujan , despite condition he faced , he become to great mathematician on his own.
Remarkable.
He was genius in true sense.
Possibly an object lesson for VCs as well.
P.S. I made a site dedicated to him http://mathalon.in/?page=contacts.php