Re: Earliest published ambigram?

In article <4391e12d$0$566$b45...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>,
 <tch...@lsa.umich.edu> wrote:
>A friend of mine asked for the earliest historical example of an ambigram.
>
>To make this a potentially answerable question, suppose we require that
>an ambigram (1) consist of text and (2) exhibit no other legible reading
>(under nontrivial rotation or reflection) in its canonical representation,
>but only in a distorted representation.  Suppose further that we ask
>for the earliest *published* or *recorded* example (or description of
>an example, to allow for artwork that appeared in an exhibition that we
>have a record of, even if no printed reproduction of the artwork was
>ever produced).  Let us not, however, put any restrictions on which
>language is used.
>
>Any information on this?

Hi. I'm not sure of your qualifications, but I might have a candidate.
I doubt it's the first though, but your quest hasn't generated a lot
of responses.

With requirement (2) I presume you mean to eliminate what might be
considered naturally-occurring ambigrams, words in ordinary form that
can be read in more than one way, like "I" or "MOM" that do not require
any creative effort to produce. The one I have in mind is borderline.

The ambigram -- not called that, but its reason for being presented,
its property of rotational symmetry, was called out in the text -- was
a cursive rendition of the word "chump". I have reproduced it from memory
here: <http://www.01101001.com/images/chump.gif>.

(For those with a hunger, hundreds of my ambigrams are here:
<http://www.01101001.com/ambigrams>.)

Is it canonical form? I don't think so. I believe some (admittedly
slight) care has to be executed in its rendering or the "p" viewed
upside-down will not form a "c" and part of an "h".

Sadly, I cannot provide a citation. I can only estimate its age. It
was in a book of curiosities for children that I read in the 1950s. It
was a hand-me-down from my brother, so it was probably printed in the
'40s. Were a gun placed to my head and a title demanded, I might guess
something like "101 Curiosities for Children" or some such number. The
probability of that actually being the title, or even of any of those
words actually appearing in the title, is extremely low. It was mainly
a list of odd facts, puzzles and stories. I remember little else about
it. Possibly, it had a one- or two-page version of the tale of Kaspar
Hauser.

A good researcher might be able to find it, and this is hopefully
a helpful clue to anyone who might one day be digging for this.

Has anyone else run into this book, this "chump", or an earlier
deliberate ambigram?
-- 
Hud Nordin <hu...@pobox.com> Silicon Valley