A catalog of the Maya hieroglyphs

The year 1962 saw the publication of a major new book in Maya studies from the University of Oklahoma Press: J. Eric S. Thompson's A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs. Thompson's Catalog represented just what it said: it was a catalogue of most of the glyphs known up to the time of its publication. Especially over the couple of decades after its publication it was a critical tool, for in that period few signs could be read with any certainty. With Thompson's Catalog it was easier to refer to a sign as "T110" rather than to something like "that squished sign with the ends marked off and parallel lines along the middle".