The Timeslip Restoration at the Malay Heritage Centre - the Malay Printing and Publishing Industry

The slot silently takes your ticket, and the wall falls away. The exhibit rooms quiet down and return to what they were before. Inspector Kay and you move to the next area and once again you feel the strange pressure.

"Looks like we have to fix yet another area," Inspector Kay says as he starts looking around.

Let's try to fix the disturbance!

Arabic Typewriter

"Isn't this typewriter interesting?" Inspector Kay points out a typewriter that has Arabic lettering on its keys. "Having this typewriter allowed for quicker and more faithful reproductions of the flowing scripts."

Malay Printing and Publishing in Kampong Gelam

Bussorah Street in Kampong Gelam was known as a publishing hub in the early 20th Century. The stores along the street imported and sold self-published books to the region, Turkey and Egypt. By the 1980s, the smaller publishing houses closed down for various reasons.

Malay Language Publications

Most of the publications published in Kampong Gelam were periodicals that ranged from religious publications written in Arabic to newspapers written in Malay patois. The Malay intellectual scene would later be supported by publications such as Hiboran, Mastika and Qalam.

There are some magazines here that you can browse (click on the pictures!).

Jawi: A Localised Script

The exhibit here shows some different forms of Arabic script. In the Quran, the Arabic script used conveys the more refined and formal Arabic language. The inscriptions on the back of the photographs are in Jawi, a localised Arabic script which includes additional characters to accomodate Malay sounds.

Mimeograph

This device is a mimeograph press, which works by “pushing” ink through a stencil to create identical copies on paper. Using this technique, flowing and connected scripts such as Arabic and Jawi could be more quickly and accurately produced in bulk without hand-copying.

There are some torn pieces of paper next to the mimeograph. Take a closer look.

A Shimmering Wall

When you try to move into the next room, three shapes appear to block your path.