Revolutions in

Communication
Media History from
Gutenberg
to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik

Chapter 1 – Printing -- #4
Web site & textbook
http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

Textbook:

1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016

This lecture is about …
Technical & historical context of printing
◦ Papermaking
◦ Typesetting
◦ Development of presses
Gutenberg
Incunabula
Monk Power
Life in a print shop
Before printing: Oral culture
People are “pre-wired” for
language and storytelling
◦ Reading & writing are learned
Sense of connection
Alex Haley’s Roots –
◦ Ex. of working oral culture
Fireside chats –
◦ Ex. Of radio as promoting oral culture
Storytelling comes naturally
Before printing: Writing
Learning to write was the “tuition” for human education –
Wilbur Schramm

6th millennium BCE, earliest

known Neolithic writings.

Writing developed in a
progression from picture –
oriented (logographic)
symbols to abstract phonetic
images
Types of written language
 Logographic -- In which the Egyptian hieroglyph is a
duck, and the Chinese logogram 山 stands for
mountain.
 Syllabaric -- In which certain symbols stand for syllables.
Complex logographic systems like Chinese, or those
derived from logographic systems (like Japanese), have
characters that stand for syllables.
 Alphabetic -- Where individual characters stand for
phonemes (sounds) of the spoken language.
English is based on the Latin alphabet (ABCD...) ;
Russian is based on the Cyrillic script ( A B Г Д ... ).
Before printing: Papyrus

“For does a crop grow in any field to equal this

[papyrus], on which the thoughts of the wise
are preserved? For previously, the sayings of
the wise and the ideas of our ancestors were
in danger…” Cassiodorus
Before printing: Parchment
Split animal skins
◦ calf, sheep, goat
More durable than
papyrus
◦ But far more
expensive
Skins were soaked,
treated, split,
stretched, smoothed,
cut
Bamboo, wood pulp paper
Known since 100 AD in China

Linen, bamboo or other long-

fiber material suspended in
water
Before printing: Paper (China)
Fibers suspended in
water, then
“screened”
Developed in China
c 105 ACE
Reached Europe
around 1200 ACE
Attributed to Tso
Lin
Before printing: Linen paper
Romans discarded
unwieldy scrolls in
favor of the “codex,”
or arrangement of
pages in succession.
Before printing: Acta Diurna
Handwritten news
widely distributed
across Roman empire
“Acta Diurna” – Daily Acts
131 BCE to 400s ACE

Helped keep up loyalty to Rome

News of sports (esp gladiators),
proclamations from Senate,
battles, omens, and human interest stories
Before printing: The Roman Codex

Romans discarded
unwieldy scrolls in
favor of the “codex,”
or arrangement of
pages in succession.
Books were sacred
During the “dark ages”
especially, books were
considered the tiny flickering
candle flame of civilization

Book of Kells, 800 ACE

Monasteries laboriously
created works of art as acts
of reverence

Illuminated manuscripts
(not incunabula )
 Monk power
2 - 3 pages per day

One monk takes

2 years to copy 1,282
pages in the Bible *

In 1447, just before printing, it takes 45 scribes

22 months to copy 200 manuscripts for the
Cosimo de Medici’s library. **

1 Monk Power = 2.5 pages/day, or 1/2 Bible / year

* Frederick Somner Merryweather, Bibliomania of the Middle Ages, (London: Merryweather, 1849).
** Brian Richardson, Printing, writers and readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge U. Press, 1999)
Wood block - China 220 ACE
 Ceramic – 1041-1048 ACE

Bi Sheng is credited with invention in the Dream Pool Essays

Aachen Pilgrim’s badge
Gutenberg’s matrix
Johannes Gutenberg’s key insight:

•Re-useable, moveable type.

•The “matrix” was a mold that

formed a piece of type from hot
lead, tin and antimony.

• Printing sped up book

production by 1000 -2000 x
What Gutenberg actually invented was
not the “press” itself – That was widely
used in agriculture and for woodcuts.

As a metal smith, Gutenberg found the

right combination of lead and antimony
and tin for type.

Moveable type made from wood was

known, but even the hardest woods don’t
hold up after hundreds of impressions.
Mainz, Germany, 1453 – Johannes Gutenberg (1395 – 1468)
1 billion books by 1800
Printing Revolution
THE pivotal development in history,
Theturning point in the transition between the
Medieval and the Modern
Printingcomes from an build-up of
techniques, resources & demands
◦ pressing (olives, grapes)
◦ paper making (to replace animal hides)
◦ woodcuts of religious images
◦ abundance of linen paper
 Francis Bacon
 Novum Organum (New Instrument,
published 1620):
"Printing, gunpowder and the
compass: These three have changed
the whole face and state of things
throughout the world; the first in
literature, the second in warfare, the
third in navigation; whence have
followed innumerable changes, in so
much that no empire, no sect, no star
seems to have exerted greater power
and influence in human affairs than
these mechanical discoveries.
Printing 1450s - 1790s
Typical production of wooden
flatbed press was 3200 impressions
per 14-hr day*

A “token” (an hour’s work) was 250

pages (single sided)

Four men working 100 days set type

and printed 200 volumes of the
Gutenberg Bible**

So in effect, one person produced

one book in two days, compared to
a monk or scribe producing a book
in two years.
* Hans-Jürgen Wolf, Geschichte der Druckpressen (Frankfurt:
Interprint, 1974)
** Brian Richardson, Printing, writers and readers in Renaissance
Monk Power = 312 Italy (Cambridge U. Press, 1999)
Bed &
platen
press

 Among many improvements to hand powered presses

 Treadwell, c. 1820s, was 4x faster
Monk Power = 1,280
Friedrich
Koenig’s
Steam
Press

Six-person crew – First used at the Times of London

1814 -- 2,200 pages per hour MONK POWER = 2,000

1828 – 8,000 pages / hour MONK POWER = 7,500

Hoe
rotary
press
(sheet fed)

1844 – 20,000 pg / hour (4 cylinder)

1852– 50,000 pg / hr (10 cylinder)
Monk power = 20,000
Fourdrinier paper process

First
by Henry Fourdrinier, 1803,
Frogmore, UK
Web (continuous paper) press
1865 (Bullock) -- 480,000 pages / hour
Uses stereotype plates
 Monk power = 2.6 million
Not many changes in Letterpress
techniques from 1870s–1970s
 Stereotypes invented in 1725 in Scotland
 Widely used to save typesetting expenses by mid-1800s
 Also called “cliché” from Clichy lead works near Paris
Hoe letterpress – Australia, 1950
Note heavy gearing for lead plates
Man-Roland offset printing press c. 1970s
Plates are thin aluminum not heavy lead stereotypes
Far lighter, cheaper, cleaner, higher quality color
Works well with photo-mechanical and digital systems for type setting
Typesetting by hand

5 to 10 wpm
= 2.5 x
Avg Monk
Speed

Manchester Guardian, c. 1890, approx 100 people working in typesetting;

note upper & lower cases; compositors in front assemble galleys, paper
galley proofs hanging from board to the right (It looks like a door).
Typesetting by hand (WWI era)

Note Upper &

Lower case

Drawers of
fonts under the
cases

Proofing press
to check for
errors
Chicago Defender, c. 1940, approx. Four men work with Mergenthaler’s
Linotype machines setting type. The fifth man here is a compositor who
assembles the work into columns of type. This was hot, dirty, and dangerous,
but at 30 wpm, it was much faster and far cheaper than setting type by hand.
Photomechanical typesetting
“Cold” type
60 – 80 wpm

$10,000 in 1970s
(1/5 cost of Linotype)

Paste-up artists replace

hot type compositors

30 – 40 x
Monk Speed
COMPUGRAPHIC, c. 1975

Rene Higgonet, Louis Moyroud / Vannevar Bush

Monk power / monk speed
From 2.5 pages / day
◦ To millions per day
◦ Monk Power x hundreds of millions
From 2 words / minute writing
◦ To 30 wpm Linotype
◦ To 60- 100 wpm photomechanical, digital
◦ Monk Speed x 50
 Digital typesetting /
desktop publishing
60 – 80 wpm

$4,000 1984 – 1990

plus laser printer

1/10 cost of Linotype

Digital pagination
(no paste-up)

End of typesetting as a
APPLE MAC, c. 1985 separate part of the
process
Next: Chapter 1b
Impacts of the printing revolution