The first printing press was invented during the Renaissance era around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz. This printing press used a movable metal type which was set to print one page of a book at a time. Oil-based inks were used to coat the type. After so many copies were made of one page, the type would be cleaned and rearranged to form the next page, until all of the pages of a book were complete.
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| Johannes Gutenberg |
(which was also used for printing images), as it was molded of metal and would not crack or break as easily. The type was also more uniform and easily read, unlike written writing which was often times corrected by multiple people with different hand-writings. The type could also be adjusted or created to be more aesthetically pleasing and appealing to the eye. Often, art was also inserted into books through printing as well. Oil-based ink was used because it was long-lasting and would not fade as much.
Because books and other written works were able to be printed quicker and through mass production, the price of books became cheaper and became more available to the common people. The most famous of these mass produced texts, the Bible (or the Gutenberg Bible), was most commonly read more than any other book during this time.
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| Gutenberg Press |
With this new found way of mass producing written works, the printing press popularized all throughout Europe within only a few decades. This allowed for scientists, religious leaders, and other scholars to circulate their ideas and discoveries quicker and on a much broader scale that was available to the middle class as well.
This method of printing and distributing of knowledge continued until the 19th century when the hand-operated Gutenberg press was replaced by the steam-powered rotary press and, eventually, computer printers.
I look at the printing press equivalent to the modern day inventions of the computer and the internet. All of them serve to disseminate and produce knowledge in increasingly more efficient ways. (The computer and the internet obviously also serve as a powerful tool to access information as well) This is exceedingly important because knowledge sitting alone on a piece of paper on your table at home does nothing but if that SAME piece of paper circulates the world, the power of your ideas can take root among the people and cause the world to change. This is kind of obvious but none the less it is very true and interesting that knowledge does absolutely nothing until it is distributed.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting thing about the printing press that I learned while my LDS Church youth group was visiting the historic town/temple at Nauvoo, IL. We visited one of the churches original printing press. I learned that in the printing press dingbats are often used. What are dingbats? They are simply useless ornamental symbols that are added to or take the place of words or letters. From this term we get the derogatory slang terms of dingus and dingbat etc. Kind of amusing if you ask me.
Hahaha. That is funny will. I had no idea that that is where that word came from.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good intro to our printing unit misa. I have a question for anyone though. I have wandered if our writing print (as in not cursive) is something that became popular because of print (is in the press). I think that our letters must have developed block letters first and then cursive but it seems that all old hand written documents are in cursive. Cursive would be too dificult to use in a printing press so maybe that is why block letters became more widespread. I am not sure but that is my hypothesis and I couldn't really find anything on the internet. Someone let me know if you know.
Hey I'm here to the rescue! So, I did take a calligraphy class once and we learned about the development of round hand and copper plate (very ornamental calligraphic styles). These styles were invented by calligraphers who felt their jobs were threatened by printing. They came up with the most beautiful ways of writing that really were very difficult to reproduce in print as a way of maintaining job security.
ReplyDeleteBut I would say that the repopularization of print rather than cursive is the direct result of replacing penmanship classes with typing classes. We type rather than write things now so we don't put in the effort to developing good handwriting. This may be an American development because when I was in Austria and Germany, anyone who had more education than middle school always wrote in cursive. They made fun of us Americans because we wrote like babies. But this may not be applicable to other places.
It is an interesting evolution, of block writing to cursive to block again. I think the last transition really just has to do with the frequency of writing nowadays. My grandmother, who can't figure out email, and didn't have a computer until she was 60 years old, has beautiful cursive handwriting. My mom has pretty good cursive, but the block style has kind of crept in over the years. I know how to sign my name in cursive and that is about it. If you think about it, my mom had to hand-write all her college notes and PAPERS, where I have a computer to type them up and print them out. The varying frequencies of writing in my generations I feel, have a lot to do with my the style they write in, because good cursive really is a faster way of writing for those who have to write more. Just my ideas and opinions on the quandary.
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