About the cover illustration

The figure on the cover of Machine Learning Systems is captioned “Japanese Infantry—Musician.” The illustration is taken from Auguste Wahlen’s Manners, Customs and Costumes of All Peoples of the World, a four-volume set published in Brussels by the Librairie Historique in 1843. The books contain scarce and beautiful images: the costumes of the world are finely illustrated with a wonderful series of highly colored full-page plates.

Wahlen, whose real name was Jean-François-Nicolas Loumyer (1801–1875), was an archivist for the heraldic authority of Belgium. Fascination with faraway lands and travel for pleasure were relatively new phenomena in the early nineteenth century, and collections such as this one were popular, introducing both the tourist as well as the armchair traveler to the inhabitants of other countries.

The diversity of the drawings in Wahlen’s volumes speaks vividly of the uniqueness and individuality of the world’s nations some 200 years ago. Dress codes have changed since then, and the diversity by region and country, so rich at the time, has faded away. It’s now often hard to tell the inhabitants of one continent from another. Perhaps, trying to view it optimistically, we’ve traded a cultural and visual diversity for a more varied personal life—or a more varied and interesting intellectual and technical life.