"Besides books, the other major predecessor and rival for communicating new science in the seventeenth century was the "learned letter," most famously illustrated by Galileo's letters on s and the . As the ideas of the scientific revolution spread in England and on the Continent, the accelerated pace of scientific activity compelled natural philosophers to communicate their recent findings through personal correspondence within and between countries. But these are not "letters" in the traditional sense of the word; authors wrote these epistles on some scientific or technical topic with the understanding that they would be passed on to others. Thus the actual intended audience was interested members of the scientific community at large, though short passages within them may personally address the primary recipient. To disseminate the information in these learned letters more efficiently, industrious scholars became centers for spreading the latest technical news at home and abroad. Their job was to receive letters, make copies, and pass them on to other interested scholars. After the emergence of , the job of "trafficker in intelligence" became more formalized in that the societies themselves appointed a secretary to handle correspondence and circulate newsworthy learned letters among society members and friends."