Stephen Fry’s BBC documentary, “The Machine That Made Us,”about Johannes Gutenberg, is an homage to the German engineer and printer who designed the Gutenberg Press, (58 minutes) was a fascinating look at what it is like to make a replica of the hand press and the type. Since there is no actual reference, he has workmen improvise what they believe is similar based on their knowledge of the wine-press [hypothesis]. Gutenberg’s inspiration was the challenge of thinking out solutions to problems he encountered and a saleable, efficient method to produce books uniformly, and he was successful. Books could be used to teach, spreading Christian doctrine and ideas. Like all good artisans he saw the beneficence of the Catholic Church, more printing commissions, as an economic means, though his concern was the hand press and moveable type, or perfection of his work. 2/3 of these followed us into this century: the book and the type, even if the press is obsolete. It seems to me very much like the craft of making bullets, or other cast items. He was dependent on trained dedicated craftsmen. Into this endeavor he pours his knowledge, time, ingenuity, and money; focused on how much the means, he wills the machine into existence, oblivious perhaps as to how popular it was to become, or debt, like many inventors. He doesn’t make any money off it. Like Rembrandt and other idealists, he went bankrupt. Fry takes us through a look at history, which is very insightful and shows us how this was accomplished by action. It is a fascinating look at a time, just before the Renaissance, when the spread of knowledge was dependent on reaching more people with information at once, allowing the exchange of ideas, people to own a copy of a book of ideas, an artwork, or to receive information from different sources, and this caused irretrievably, a move away from the Church, more modern thinking, and the spread of alternative ideas, as well as the dissemination of information to the masses, including missiles, plays, and newspapers as well as books and prints.
The Keith Houston pieces, “The Prints and the Pauper: Johannes Gutenberg and the Invention of Moveable Type, Chapter 6 [Commons] and Chapter 7, “Out of Sorts: Typesetting Meets the Industrial Revolution,” repeats some of what Stephen Fry (or vice-versa) traces in visual detail, with a more technical description of similar history, but also ventures much further to discuss the complex history of the hand press period from about the mid1400’s to the 1800’s, and then the advent of more modern printing machine-press methods, from the 1800’s until about 1950, as well as ancient, rollers, woodblock printing methods, inks, and the computer, calculator, etc., and the development of the steel and iron presses to accommodate larger and longer printing runs. He gets very technical about the design of the machines to follow, including many failures, as well as successful ones which in some places you still see today-steam-driven and ones- and ones that multiplied the pressman’s strength so that a single impression could be pulled with a lever instead of tightening and loosening the screw multiple times, and which eventually led to a reduction of the number of people required to operate the machinery and produce printed pages as economically as possible. A major milestone was the Stanhope Press. He discussed the many revisions the printing press underwent, especially in the areas of commercial and book printing, how cost effected output, the trade unions, and as far as newspapers were concerned the need to give news in an up-to-date way, serving a growing subscriber base-millions possibly, so that the press had to be reliable and cost effective, now this would be deleterious to the environment. He also shows how the same concerns of medieval craftsman became the concerns of modern printers, publishers, and binders, how these professions grew, held craft secrets, and how today’s printers can recognize and operate the same tools as they did then. How it was important to get information out, and that without these people we would not have the books we do, the resources for information that we do, or the link with all that has been printed in this way for centuries. Much of this knowledge we have learned by reading books. We all have access to this for now. But these histories also point to the future of printing and selection of works which will be published, and how, what factors have become important today as we guard our resources, question veracity and truth and seek to make the same communication possible, accessible, and retrievable by everyone, and at what costs.
Studying Early Books, by Sarah Werner, 2019, John Wiley & Company, cleared up a lot of little difficulties I had in understanding paper folding, typesetting, and tools-the glossary of the hand press, etc in plain language, which I appreciate, and as well covered a very important part of the lesson which is how the publishing industry works, why trade unions developed and how work and flow is controlled or dictated by economics and licenses and professionals, as well as the “market.” This is still the case in England at least where all kinds of publishing is regulated by other competitors, Companies House and the division of trade you participate in, such as unions or licensing, whether it is books, records, or media. These texts also underline how books are retrieved, not stacked on shelves in libraries, in many cases today simply due to their sheer number and all of the books that are added to these stacks every year run into the millions at The British Library. But, what about other libraries and access by children, students, and adults? Is everything everyone has to say important enough to print? Who will control printing and information in the future? Also, how are the prices of digital materials regulated to be so closely aligned with print when the format is not as expensive to produce? Especially how can books be valued when or if they are not able to be owned, accessed at libraries, and if people are throwing them away? It seems that once this information is lost, or changed to reflect new ideas and interpretations, it is irretrievable-you cannot get it back except at great cost, and to censor books, or destroy them is to destroy something of value to someone. It is the access to the printed word, not changed by anyone that seems to be the most valuable, and likely to be in the future as fewer and fewer actual books are available, this value, the value of information, will rise until it is largely unaffordable by anyone and everything produced by secondary means will be suspect. Then we will be right back where we were before Gutenberg’s hand press and its moveable type.
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Reflections on the History of Print
The readings and BBC documentary show the development of the printing press which was a major technological component that ushered the modern era. That historical development allowed for reading material to become accessible to a wider audience. Houston notes that the printing press- blew apart the insular world of Europe’s scholars, scribes, and clergy (pg129). This allowed for the questioning of the status quo and the development revolutionary ideas. Although Gutenberg was not the first to tinker with the moveable press – there were precursors in Egypt and China, his was the most successful because of the confluence of several factors such as the technological development paper and ink at reasonable economic cost. Gutenberg- saw the possibility of economic profitability in the printing of religious matter because of the dominance of dominance of religion and the church during this period. Houston notes that his return to Mainz depended on its peculiar mix of skilled goldsmith, a wealthy church and a pious population (pg 103). One of his first printing runs was the bible.
Several things have changed over years. These range the technological changes in the printing press, to role of authors, publishers and printers in the production of what we read. We now have Audible books and electronic readers with hyperlinks. The format may have changed. Still dominance of and control of knowledge. What information is given status as authority based on the publishing house.
Several of the new advances have changed the makeup and size of workforce in the printing industry. There is always resistance to change. For example, the Swiss printers’ guild was not in favor in the technological advances proposed by Wilhelm Haas. The low cost of desktop publishing, the ability to self-publish and the availability of text electronically has to some extent democratized what is available to read. However, large publishing houses still dominate and control what is read. In addition, large distribution houses such as Barnes and Nobles lead to demise of small bookstores. The dominance and influence of Amazon now dominates what we read and how we consume reading material.