The appearance of the printing press was a revolution in fifteenth-century society, a technological revolution that allowed the mechanical and faster reproduction of texts and images. Now that we can possibly consider a revolution in information. The printing press made it possible for both news and knowledge to reach many more people, becoming global. This article titled Gutenberg: The First Computer Revolutionwe will review the history of printing to learn how the printing press marked a before and after in what we can consider the first computer revolution.
Gutenberg – The First Computer Revolution | Brief History
Printing can be considered as the first expression of art, it has been possible to study human evolution from its earliest beginnings thanks to the artistic manifestations that it has left imprinted on stones and caves. Handprints, where after impregnating them in color pigments, they shaped their impression on the stone. The interesting thing about this fact is that these representations have been found on all continents from Europe to Oceania.
The Invention of Type, Paper and Ink in Asia
If we move forward in history, the romans and greeks They already used clay or stone seals to print inscriptions in the 5th century BC. Although we cannot speak of the first printing press until the 11th century, in China when the inventor Bi Sheng created the first printing system. with movable letters or type.
Chinese printing was based on porcelain pieceswhere Chinese characters or letters were carved, later, these were placed forming the text, smeared with grease and printed on rice paper. But this system was too complex due to the number of letters that make up the Chinese script.
Subsequently, in the thirteenth century, in what is now Korea, aware of the Chinese innovations regarding the mobile printing system, where the letters or types could be moved to configure different texts, they created the first types based on the Chinese, but this time of metalwhat we could really consider the first printingbut this was rarely used.
But it was not until the fifteenth century, when we can speak of modern printing, a creation attributed to Johannes Gutenberg. As we have been able to verify, the printing press was not an invention of Gutenberg, he simply improved the system and the technique, making it a automation-based system.
The fact of not reflecting the egyptian writingsis because although they did use seals, most of their writing was limited to handwritten copy that the scribes made on papyrus paper. Perhaps they were the ones who used the color red not as decoration or embellishment, but to highlight important texts.
On the other hand, the use of the plant of the Papyrus for the manufacture of paper, it was used to obtain a type of paper that, due to its characteristics, could be erased simply with a little water if the scribe made a mistake.
Copies in the Middle Ages
Until well into the fifteenth century, the dissemination of books was done through handwritten copies, the so-called scribeswhich as its name indicates, were people dedicated to copying, most of them were monks or friars, whose only function was to pray and copy the books that the church itself, nobles or kings commissioned.
The techniques used even depended on the congregation to which they belonged, the Carthusian or Cistercian monks used to write in the solitude of their cells. Not necessarily the copyists or scribes had to know how to read or write, it was simply a matter of copying or imitating the spellings. The fact that not all copyists knew how to read or write was important, since it was they who were commissioned to make copies of banned books, that is, those who talked about medicine or sex.
But in most monasteries the copy was made in the scriptorium, a common room inside the monastery enabled for the copy, in which several monks worked at the same time. In order to make different copies at the same time, a monk read or dictated the text to be copied, while the monks did their own, transcribing. In this way they could be removed multiple copies at once.
Copyists were also used for the translation of the texts from Greek or Latin. This type of copies forced to strain the eyes, with a very scarce and poor light, the work was hard and thankless. The copyists worked every day on a fragment of the copy to be copied or codices were created where each copyist dealt with a specific booklet.
Special treatment they deserved so much illustrations as capital letters that started the page or the text, these were treated as decorative objectswhere each copyist decorated these letters or illustrations according to his taste or general vision.
Gutenberg – The First Computer Revolution | Print
The appearance of the woodcut On the European continent at the beginning of the Middle Ages, it served to publish labels, or informative pamphlets, always made up of a few pages. This xylographic system was a purely artisanal method, where on a wooden tablet the text and drawings were sculpted. These tablets were attached to a wooden table, smeared with ink made with fat, this could be black, blue or red, only colors that existed, then the paper was placed on top and with a roller passing it from top to bottom, he fixed the ink.
Each printer also manufactured its own paper, where left his own mark in print as watermarks or simply the printer’s signature. But the wear that the wood suffered with the roller made it necessary to change the mold very frequently.
At the beginning of the 15th century, cards and prints with religious motifs were already being printed using the xylographic method, a technique that we must not forget was already used in Asia and that had reached Europe, specifically Italy, thanks to the silk route.
The appearance of individual letters or symbols had arisen from the need to introduce corrections in the texts. Gutenberg in 1440got refine these techniques creating a procedure that has almost remained undisturbed almost to this day.
The Modification of the Xylographic System
Gutenberg, he was a great connoisseur of gold smelting and was already an outstanding blacksmith who worked the goldsmith for the bishopric. The invention of the printing press with movable types, it was due in a certain way to a bet launched by the young goldsmith.
The bet was create several copies at once of the Holy Bible, in half the time of the world’s fastest copyist with the addition that Gutenberg’s copy would not differ from the handwritten one.
supported financially by Johann Fust, jumped on the challenge. This time instead of using tablets made of wood, which as we have seen deteriorate easily, he created wooden molds of each letter of the alphabet, then filled those molds with leadin this way the first ones would appear metal and movable types.
Metallic and Movable Type Appears – La Imprenta
He perfected the mold technique until all the letters were at the same height and coincided. He generated more than 150 types (characters), of imitation of handwritten letters. The letters were joined to form sentences by holding them on a support, which made the job easier.
taking advantage of a grape press, he attached the support where the movable types were located, leaving the empty spaces both for the capital letters, which as we have seen had a different treatment, and for the images. These would be added by the traditional manual method, once the texts were printed.
But when I was about to finish the 150 Bibles who had proposed for the bet, ran out of money. Johann Fust refused to finance him any longer, especially when his nephew had become Gutenberg’s apprentice and had learned the entire process that he had carried out in the new form of printing.
Gutenberg died bankrupt soon after, but his apprentice Peter Schoffer, he finished the wager his master had started. The Bibles, 150 were sold to various ecclesiastical positions, including the Holy See. The technique was received with great enthusiasm and orders quickly began to pour in.
Definitely reduce printing time was the trigger, a handwritten text could take years to finish, in this way the times were reduced considerably. These bibles were called 42 line biblesthe most perfect book printed up to that time.
Gutenberg – The First Computer Revolution | Computing
The changes brought about by Gutenberg’s printing press are comparable to the revolution and changes that occurred mid 20th century. The appearance of computers they are succeeding in replacing printed documents with computerized documents, which are better for transmitting and preserving texts.
Gutenberg’s printing press was replaced by the printer, much faster and of extraordinary quality. The emergence in the 21st century of 3d printing, is generating a new revolution. Even so, the continuity of printed paper continues to be assured, we continue to live in what some sociologists have called “Gutenberg’s Galaxy” the history marked by the printed letter.
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