Posted on 11/14/2004 4:43:31 PM PST by blam
Gutenberg Printing Method Questioned
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
Nov. 12, 2004 — Johannes Gutenberg may be wrongly credited with producing the first Western book printed in movable type, according to an Italian researcher.
Presenting his findings in a mock trial of Gutenberg at the recent Festival of Science in Genoa, Bruno Fabbiani, an expert in printing who teaches at Turin Polytechnic, said the 15th-century German printer used stamps rather than the movable type he is said to have invented between 1452 and 1455.
Overlapping Letters in the Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg and His Bible
Gutenberg (c.1397-1468), whose real name was Johannes Gensfleisch, is credited with inventing a mold for small metal blocks with raised letters on them. The blocks could be put together to form words.
After a page was printed, the type could be reused for printing other pages.
With this method, Gutenberg is said to have printed an edition of about 180 copies — of which only 48 exist today — of the 42-line bible, so called for the number of lines in each printed column.
The invention produced a literary boom in Europe.
According to Fabbiani, Gutenberg printed his bible not with movable type, but with a brilliant metallographic invention.
After scrutinizing an original page of the 42-line bible, Fabbiani noticed that some letters were slightly superimposed.
"Movable type are metal blocks, sort of parallelepipeds put together, one attached to another, to form words. With this method, it is practically impossible for type to be superimposed," Fabbiani said.
Instead, Gutenberg used keys similar to those on a typewriter, according to Fabbiani.
"Just think of something like the keys of a typing machine, but bigger of course. Using them, a character after another, a line after another, Gutenberg impressed a metal plate until he created a page and printed it. With this method, it is quite likely that some imperfection such as the slightly superimposing type, occurred," Fabbiani said.
The researcher devised and showed 30 experiments at the trial that would indicate Gutenberg did not use moveable type.
The claim caused uproar among academics. Some researchers simply dismissed Fabbiani's experiments as a stunt.
Eva Hanebutt-Benz, director of the Gutenberg Museum in the German town of Mainz, where Gutenberg was born, told reporters that there are "many open questions" on how Gutenberg produced the Bible as no documents exist from the printer's workshop. But she was strongly skeptical about Fabbiani's claim.
Other experts were intrigued.
"This is very important and credible research. We should not be afraid to destroy the myths, " Francesco Pirella of Genoa's Museum of Print told Discovery News.
We still have an Intertype machine we use for letterpress printing. Very similar to a Linotype.
Is that damned kerning going to expose Gutenberg, too?
BTTT
"CAP 1 1 In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe. 2 Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face of depthe; and the Spiryt of the Lord was borun on the watris.
3 And God seide, Liyt be maad, and liyt was maad. 4 And God seiy the liyt, that it was good, and he departide the liyt fro derknessis; and he clepide the liyt, 5 dai, and the derknessis, nyyt. And the euentid and morwetid was maad, o daie.
6 And God seide, The firmament be maad in the myddis of watris, and departe watris fro watris.
7 And God made the firmament, and departide the watris that weren vndur the firmament fro these watris that weren on the firmament; and it was don so.
8 And God clepide the firmament, heuene. And the euentid and morwetid was maad, the secounde dai.
9 Forsothe God seide, The watris, that ben vndur heuene, be gaderid in to o place, and a drie place appere; and it was doon so."
I thought the Chinese invented printing a couple of Centuries earlier, Chinese guy named Al Chin Gore Guy (Means stick of wood, I think)
"Marco Polo Reports, You Decide"
No, I think he's saying that instead of making blocks of raised letters, then clamping them together in a row to make a line of type, he had blocks of *recessed* letters, and individually stamped them into a plate (presumably with a hammer) in order to leave raised letters on the plate. The plate was then used as the printing plate.
The end result would be a manual version of what typesetting machines do automatically, but it would still be manual.
Still, the multi-stage rocket was invented by Schmidlapp, not some unknown Mongolian Chinese Korean.
You were the first one I thought about with this story. LOL
Did you try both examples? The left one is awfully close, though I agree, it alone is not very convincing evidence. (Former editor, but typography was only a hobby, and I wasn't a Linotype operator.)
I hadn't noticed that. But on further digging, I see that they are selling CD roms of old English translations of the Bible, as well as Russian versions.
Next they'll be telling me Al Gore didn't invent the internet either.....
Sheesh.....
;-)
That is still occuring today.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Hey at least police academy was a good movie, and you can't take that away from this guy.
I read that Koreans were the first to invent pirnting.
middle english....neat!
That's a copy!
Note: this topic is from . Re-ping. I watched this documentary this morning, found it on YT as well. Thanks blam.
Stephen Fry takes a look inside the story of Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the world's first printing press in the 15th century, and an exploration of how and why the machine was invented.The Machine That Made Us (Gutenberg Printing Press Documentary) | Timeline
BBC - Stephen Fry - The Machine That Made Us
His invention was probably another gift of technolgy from the extraterrestials among us.
On a more serious note, the timeline juxtaposition of the printing press and the fall of Constantinople is fascinating, because the coincidence enabled the forward movement of Western civilization and the closing of the East to modernity in technology and all the arts because of the Islamic culture that was imposed.
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