Was there nerd/geek culture? might be the first question. You're assuming this present group can be projected back into time and all you have to do is find equivalent activities for them. Was there Victorian nerds? Georgian nerds? Renaissance geeks? Did medieval geeks and nerds hand-draw comic books and pass them around in manuscript?
Stepping back to the 1960s, geek=|=nerd. Geek comes from the carny designation, where the geek was the hired to be the Wild Man of Borneo and bite heads off live chickens. That's a Thirties/Forties geek. In the Fifties, televised professional wrestling popularized the phrase "pencil-necked geek" for someone the opposite of athletic.
A nerd, on the other hand, was from the Fifties on a square, someone not hip, socially inept.
Neither was even associated with intellect, STEM subjects, games, or electronics. You could be a red-neck nerd or a hillbilly geek.
So what we need to do is make up a list of defining characteristics and see if any group recognized at the time fits some sort of proto-nerd existence. I think there will be a problem in that nerd behaviors were not stigmatized back then. It kind of takes the nerd out of it.
In the 1930s and 40s in America it was startlingly similar to how it is now. I had the good fortune to spend several months working with a private library collection of SF/F books and ephemera -- the fanzines sound almost exactly like internet discussion boards. They were arguing about the point of fandom, of SF/F, of whether or not this book and that book should qualify, and on and on and on. These were produced on home mimeograph machines and mailed to anyone who sent a postcard, or a letter with five cents -- and during WW2, free to any soldier who requested one even if others had to pay.
There were conventions as well. Like-minded folks would meet at hotels to talk about books without ever trying to get guests or panels. They would just hang out with one another, usually having "met" through letters or the fanzine circuit. Sometimes they would meet at one another's homes, and then talk about those meetings in the next fanzine.
A lot of amateur publishing groups also simulated the sort of culture we're talking about here, but I know less about those save through my research on Lovecraft (who was a member of an amateur journalism group for years).
Even further back you get the Holmesians. Some people date the beginning of that pastime to 1902. They debated both the meaning and the content of the Holmes canon -- and indeed were some of the first people to care about the difference between what people wrote about the works and the works themselves, basically constructing the fan definition of canon.
FDR was a Holmesian, and wrote an essay in 1945 arguing Holmes was actually American, not English. Some critics, like Michael Chabon, have argued that the concept of literary studies was heavily influenced by the "Great Game" (the Holmesian name for their study), a view I like to work with in class myself.
So to answer your question succinctly: they did exactly what nerds today do for fun. Just in letters instead of message boards.
(I haven't even mentioned the nerdy aspects of the telegraph operators or the later ham radio operators, as I only know of them and don't know enough to talk about them, but hopefully someone can swoop in and discuss that).
EDIT: I lost some letters in there, then put them back
EDIT2: I just recalled another detail about fanzine sharing: a lot of people would give free issues to anyone who sent them a copy of a fanzine other than theirs. So if Bob sent Jane "Bob's Zine #1," Jane would send Bob "Jane's Zine #3." It reminds me of the way a lot of stuff propagates on the internet now, with an exchange assumed at the core, rather than a publishing model that works "one way" (author to reader). Zines were kept up pretty doggedly up through the 70s or 80s, and a few private groups kept up zines between themselves and may still be doing it! The bulk of my work on the fanzines was on something called the "Fantasy Rotator," in which each member, in turn, was responsible for editing an issue and getting the next X number of people to contribute. Like a round robin sort of thing. There were FRs dated 2009.
Ever heard of Kriegsspiel? (german for war game) Every tabletop game like Warhammer 4k and even strategic video games like Age of Empires can say thanks to their great great grandfather designed by the Prussian officer Baron von Reisswitz in the year 1812. It is played on a special designed table (designed like a geographical map with grid system and different pre-cast terrain types, as well as making use of special gaming pieces, role-playing elements and dice. All officers knew Clausewitz' war manual On War and so his theoretical concepts like the 'friction of war' and 'fog of war' were incorporated in the gameplay (you may know them from modern strategy games). There was even a game master! It was used to train the officers of the tactical and strategical finesses of war in peace time.
Anyway after the Prussians won the three wars of unification (Denmark, Austria and German alliance, France) the prussian military became the hot cool new thing to copy. That's why you can still find the Pickelhaube in parade uniforms around the world. One of the new exports was the Kriegsspiel. It wasn't long after that that a "free" Kriegsspiel was played by people outside the military. (Even adding tin toy soldiers for extra coolness) One very influential Nerd, who you may recall as someone who wrote dinosaur fan fiction and scifi novels in his spare time wrote a book about a freestyle Kriesgspiel with a very interesting title:
"Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books"
The author was HG Wells and this book was puplished in 1913.
That's one example for pre-nerd nerd culture. If you want to see an extreme example of a pre-nerd nerd character than you should take a look at accounts about the chemistrist Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), the discoverer of hydrogen, a man always dressed shamefully out of fashion who was said to be so extrem "shy and bashful on a degree bordering on disease". When Humboldt visited his private library he was not allowed to speak or even address Cavendish for a strange face for him was "pure horror". It is said that he was only only able to utter "shrill shrieks" at scientific meetings when someone tried to talk to or just looked at him and only communicated with his servants via letters. This man would have loved the internet. I used "The Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities" by Russell McCormmach for the examples and in many biographies of Cavendish you encounter the argument that he might have suffered from Asperger Syndrome.
If you want to encounter old nerdy humour than I would beg you to read Georg Christoph Lichtenberg' (1742-1799) sharp satirical Sudelbücher (Scrapbooks), for example:
"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery"
"A book is a mirror: If an ape peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out."
"Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism."
"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."
"There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. "
There's a theory out there that says telegraphers of the 19th century shared a great deal in common with modern Internet nerds. Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet is a good (albeit too brief and overly simplistic) book that delves into this. You might also try Edwin Gabler's The American Telegrapher: A Social History, 1860-1900, but that book is somewhat dated.
As the "Victorian Internet" theory goes, telegraphy was on the cutting edge for much of the 19th century, and it had much the same culture of obsessive interest that the Internet does today. Telegraph operators had the allure of a technological elite, with knowledge and skills not possessed by others. They had arcane but useful skills, and their expertise gave them some separation from other society. They could communicate best with others who had the same skills.
Who else would understand that each operator had his or her own "fist," a fingerprint in Morse code that identified each telegrapher? The public certainly couldn't understand Morse, or the shorthand that sprang up as a result. Ham radio operators carry some of that shorthand today, but it was richer and more elaborate in the 19th century.
You've heard of the online wedding ─ but have you heard of wedding by telegraph? It happened, and it was covered with the same smiling incredulity that a Warcraft wedding would be.
At the same time, the impact of the "Victorian Internet" was limited by its penetration. There wasn't a telegraph in every home, and the community of telegraphers was small. Its leading magazine, Telegraph Age, never reached many people.
Problems with nomenclature aside, I think it is reasonable to assume that nerd/geek culture is epitomised by the obsessive interest and activity in trivia/media/entertainment/hobbies that are non-essential to daily living and ignored or found odd by the majority.
To pursue such interests to obsession before the internet and mass media necessitates a great deal of leisure time, which means that such a culture would be reserved almost exclusively to the rich, mainly the gentleman class. I think such a culture found fertile soil in the Royal Society in the 17th and 18th Century, who became so obsessed by such minutiae and seeming nonsense that Jonathan Swift satirised them mercilessly in Gulliver's Travels. I think that the culture of the early Royal Society and the international men of letters who interacted with it and each other could well be considered an example of historical nerd/geek culture.
They formed social clubs wherein they did things together and talked about things they did. The larger ones eventually became known as 'societies'. One of the oldest and largest is the Royal Society of London.
I don't know if you'd consider more social organizations (like Freemasonry) or professional guilds to be part of what we'd consider 'nerd/geek' culture. But they were very common.
Read some biographies of famous scientists and inventors. It was very typical of them to be in 'clubs' (societies, lodges, etc) or at least in regular written correspondence with 'like minded' people.
I searched through the comments without finding a reference to HG Wells and "Little Wars.", so here it is.
Then there's the hobbies involving minatures painting and research - model trains, model making of all kinds and a whole subculture of garage / shop culture geekery that can be found in the online archives of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.
It's really quite amazing to flip through them and see what sorts of things garage tinkerers were up to. Everyone was hoping to be the next Ely Whitney - and quite a few managed, actually. That sort of improvosational tinkering was pretty important during WWII and the british, in particular, depended heavily on them. I suppose I should mention the "Boffins" of Bletchly Park in passing. And of course, Von Braun himself came out of amateur rocketry.
Then there's stamp and coin collecting. Having been exposed to it, it's the nerdiest thing you can imagine.
But I think the most obvious candidate for nerd culture in that exact period would be Ham Radio and the American Radio Relay League.
Ham radio was the tech nerd culture that immediately preceded computer nerds. Here is an interesting book that chronicles that movement: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ham-radios-technical-culture In the early days of personal computers there was a lot of overlap between Ham radio enthusiasts and PC enthusiasts. I am sure that some of you remember those days.
Organized Science Fiction fandom has it's own historians, and of course anyone involved in organized science fiction should meet your nerd/geek
The first "fan history" was published in 1939 by Jack Speers called "Up To Now" by the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, copies of it were later distributed at the first World Science Fiction convention in 1939. You can see a listing of some the books/articles on early fandom here http://fancyclopedia.org/fan-history
The first world science fiction convention in 1939, a convention that still occurs I think would be a great place to get a look at an existing culture.
You have people dressing up in costumes, author Forest J. Ackerman http://fanac.org/photohtm.php?worldcon/NYcon/w39-030
Deep interpersonal conflicts; 6 people were banned from worldcon in 1939 and there was a pamphlet passed out that wouldn't look out of place
http://www.jophan.org/mimosa/m06/kyle.htm
If you want more you can see a listing of some the books/articles on early fandom here http://fancyclopedia.org/fan-history which would give you a very good view of how things were like in the 1930's
I think Jack Parsons is a good example of a nerd/geek of those days. He got into rocket engineering in the 1920s because of his interest in science fiction, and went on to be one of the founding members of NASA. He did a lot of important work in rocketry. But he also was heavily involved in Aleister Crowley's Thelema religion and sex magick. He believed that magic could be explained through quantum physics. Unfortunately, he became friends with L. Ron Hubbard, who ripped off Parsons' life savings and ran off with his mistress.
Tolkien and his friends showed their nerd by forming clubs to read ancients sagas in Old Norse or Icelandic. Which is pretty much the most wonderfully geeky thing to do in my opinion and certainly puts my childhood obsession with LOTR to shame.
https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA473&lpg=PA473&dq=tolkien+old+Norse+club&source=bl&ots=hiEAaIcb-h&sig=jO9xZd6Y7q3LV40tCDW-P3dzguE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oftTVZ_AO6iwsAS9jYCgCw&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=tolkien%20old%20Norse%20club&f=false
The San Francisco Bay Area, probably the most prominent of the United States' regional nerd kingdoms, had 10% of the US amateur radio (HAM) operators in the mid 1920s, despite having 1.3% of the US population in 1930.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was a nerd. He's famous for building Neuschwanstein Castle, which was dedicated to Wagner's operas, especially the Ring Cycle. The castle is beautiful, fabulously expensive, and mostly ornamental. He ended up being deposed, and died under mysterious circumstances (drowned in about a meter of water, even though he was a strong swimmer).
books, it's books all the way down.
Hey there, new to this subreddit, and to actively contributing on reddit in any way, actually. Hope I can meet the high standards here (which are certainly a good thing).
I just stumbled across this and find it very interesting as it touches upon questions of terminology vs. concepts as well, i.e. "what was the meaning of the words 'geek' and 'nerd' in the year x" vs. "what kind of activities were there in year x that might be similar to what we today think of as 'geeky' / 'nerdy'".
The former will only go back so far (and only make sense in English), but with regards to the latter and from a mainly German history perspective, I immediately thought of the Restoration / Biedermeier period (between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the revolutions of 1848) which is generally thought of as being characterized by a return to "private" life after the upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (and in the face of heavily reactionary / repressive policies). Hobbies, sometimes called Liebhabereien in German, which translates to something like "things of which one is enamored", seem to have become much more of a thing around this time.
This includes in particular "nerdy" things such as botany, entomology, mineralogy etc. (and the collecting that goes along with those!), but also just reading - books as well as newspapers and other periodicals which became more numerous and widespread over the course of this period. While being affected by heavy censorship, they still offered opportunities to engage in the exchange of ideas. As reading and listening to texts being read to was often very much a collective affair, literary salons and "reading societies" (Lesegesellschaften; [here's a great painting] (https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/the-reading-room/nwEf354h1oTjbA)), in which members shared in subscriptions to periodicals, were important. They formed part of an emerging landscape of civic clubs (Vereine) which were instrumental in the rise of an educated bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the aristocrats who were still largely in power in most German states, especially at a time during which direct political expression (and the founding of actual parties) was virtually impossible.
This tension between the ideal of a peaceful private life in a small-town setting, dedicated to "nerdy" self-study pastimes or romantic literature, and the political and social context that would in fact only let middle-class people live this kind of life at the price of political powerlessness is well captured in some of Carl Spitzweg's paintings. ([The German Wikipedia page] (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Spitzweg#Liste_der_Bilder_.28Auswahl.29) has a comprehensive collection of reproductions.) While they are often superficially thought of as depicting the "good old times" and their lovable eccentrics and thus embodying the "apolitical" Biedermeier period, there is more to Spitzweg's truly "geeky" characters than one might assume at first glance. The best example is perhaps the ["Newspaper Reader"] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Carl_Spitzweg_Der_Zeitungsleser_1868.jpg) who may have chosen to withdraw to his secluded garden to read his paper not least because this might have been considered a suspicious activity at the time. The (privately) idyllic and the (politically) menacing could thus be said to meet in this image.
This interpretation is drawn in part from [Sabine Schulze (ed.), The Painter's Garden: Design, Inspiration, Delight. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2006.] (https://www.worldcat.org/title/painters-garden-design-inspiration-delight-stadel-museum-frankfurt-am-main-november-24-2006-march-11-2007-stadtische-galerie-im-lenbachhaus-munich-april-5-july-8-2007/oclc/76949617)
Other paintings by Spitzweg depict more hobbyists, engaged in some of the more sciency of the above-mentioned Liebhabereien, among them a "butterfly hunter" and several cactus enthusiasts!
Another important primary source would be Adalbert Stifter's novel Der Nachsommer (["Indian Summer"] (https://www.worldcat.org/title/indian-summer/oclc/11756304) in English), a classic Bildungsroman in which the main character / narrator is raised to become a scientist by his father who had himself been a merchant an "only" an amateur collector of minerals etc.
A general secondary work on the period is e.g. [Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napleon to Bismarck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.] (https://www.worldcat.org/title/germany-from-napoleon-to-bismarck-1800-1866/oclc/33280749)
I admit all of this may digresses from the original question to quite some degree, but I hope one can see the connection to modern nerdiness!
my father made his own radio's as a kid in the 1920's. he became an electrical engineer and all around renaissance man and inventor.
As a follow-up question, i remember that in the 1930's baseball cards became a huge hit in the USA. Lots of avid collecters for them as well. Weren't they considered geeks/nerds as well?
They're called books, Google it.
