Slip boxes, the multitasking systems before 1800
The procedure of writing or already having written numerous books at the same time with the incessant work of a slip box was not first invented by Niklas Luhmann. Prior to Luhmann's famous slip box, concrete historical precursors and exemplary application existed. We have to mention Johann Jacrob Moser(1701-1785) who was - measured by his more than 500 publications - one of the most productive legal scholars of the 18th century. Fore each new publication, Moser merely selected the appropriate slips of paper, tied them into bundels, and gave the compiled bundles to the typesetter without any further additions, in order to then file the returning slips of paper together with the new book back into the shelf and box. In line with Moser's tradition. Jean Paul describes this procedure of re-reading his excerpts: "The most important thing is that I make excerpts from my ecerpts and pull off the spirit once more. Once I read them through, for example, merely because of the article about dancing, andother time merly about the flowers, and carry this with two words into smaller notebooks or reisters and thus fill the barrel to bottles." (Jean Paul, "Die Taschenbibliothek". In: ders., Sämtliche Werke: Abteilung II. Band 3. Jugendwerke und vermischte Schriften. Ed. by Norbert Miller, Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 1796/1996, pp. 769-773, here page 772, emphasis in original) iThe texts thus distilled form Adversarii, Loci Communes, Promptuarien, Commonplace Books and slip boxes, florilegias in the best and literal sense, form the reasury of quotations, though precisely not (only) in an intellectually edifying sense, but also and above all in accordance with an economy of your own labor, as a measure to rationalize and increase text production thanks to reusability.
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