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Gutenberg: The Press that Printed

By April 23, 2017August 23rd, 2018Reading Formats

Most of us take books, newspapers, magazines or any printed material for granted. But imagine life if the printing press had never been invented. The printing press counts as one of the most important invention of our time that brought about a literary renaissance.

Before the printing press was invented, all writing had to be painstakingly done by hand. People who did this work were known as Scribes. They worked in a special room in the monasteries they lived in, called a Scriptorium. The scribes would work silently, measuring the page layout and then copying text from another book to make multiple copies of the same. The book would then be sent to the illuminator who would look after the design and embellishments on the book that had to be done by hand.

It is said that the Chinese invented the earlier form of block printing when they first made paper out of pulped mulberry bark and rags in 105 A.D. and then ink about a 100yrs later. They carved characters on wood, cutting away all the excess wood and using these as blocks to be dipped in ink and printed on paper.

Around 1045 A.D., a Chinese printer, Pi Sheng had the idea to use separate clay characters pasted on an iron plate and inked. A paper would then be hand rubbed on it. Contrary to the earlier full page blocks, these small block characters could be changed easily. This was the first printing in movable type.
In 1200 A.D., the Koreans who had been using the Chinese block printing method decided to use metal characters. These separate coin like characters were fixed on a tray, inked and then paper was hand rubbed onto it.

This block printing method reduced the time required to make copies of books. From this came the idea that it was indeed lucrative to create mass amounts of one particular product.

The history of modern printing began around the year 1450 with a German goldsmith named Johann Gutenberg. He already had previous experience working at a mint, and realized that if he could use cut blocks within a machine, he could make the printing process a lot faster. Even better, he would be able to reproduce texts in great numbers. However, instead of using wood blocks, he used metal instead. This was known as a movable type machine, since the metal block letters could be moved around to create new words and sentences. With this machine, Gutenberg made the very first printed book, which was naturally a reproduction of the Bible. Between 1450 and 1455, the Gutenberg Bible was completed. Early documentation states that a total of 200 copies were scheduled to be printed on rag cotton linen paper, and 30 copies on velum animal skin. It is not known exactly how many copies were actually printed. Today, only 22 copies are known to exist, of which 7 are on velum. If an entire Gutenberg Bible should become available on the world market, it would likely fetch an estimated 100 million dollars! Even an individual leaf (a single two-sided page) from the original Gutenberg Bible can fetch around $100,000. Gutenberg’s work is the rarest and most valuable printed material in the world.

 

With the original printing press, a frame is used to set groups of type blocks. Together, these blocks make words and sentences; however, they are all in reverse. The blocks are all inked and then a sheet of paper is laid on the blocks. All of this passes through a roller to ensure that the ink is transferred to the paper. Finally when the paper is lifted, the reader can see the inked letters that now appear normally as a result of the reversed blocks. These printing presses were operated by hand. Later towards the 19th century, other inventors created steam-powered printing presses that did not require a hand operator.

What really set Gutenberg apart from his predecessors in Asia was his development of a press that mechanized the transfer of ink from movable type to paper. Adapting the screw mechanisms found in wine presses, papermakers’ presses and linen presses, Gutenberg developed a press perfectly suited for printing. The first printing press allowed for an assembly line-style production process that was much more efficient than pressing paper to ink by hand. For the first time in history, books could be mass-produced — and at a fraction of the cost of conventional printing methods.

The printing press certainly initiated an information revolution on par with the Internet today. Printing could and did spread new ideas quickly and with greater impact. Printing stimulated the literacy of lay people and eventually came to have a deep and lasting impact on their private lives. Although most of the earliest books dealt with religious subjects, students, businessmen, and upper and middle class people bought books on all subjects. Printing provided a superior basis for scholarship and prevented the further corruption of texts through hand copying. By giving all scholars the same text to work from, it made progress in critical scholarship and science faster and more reliable.

Today’s printing presses are electronic and automated, and can print far faster than ever before. We indeed owe a lot to the Chinese, the Koreans, the Europeans and of course, Gutenberg, for the spread of the written word that has helped us progress by leaps and bounds.



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