I wish school curriculum included things like "how printing actually worked through ages". Monks writing out manuscripts is somewhat relatable since we all (at least for now) still learn how to write. Everyone is taught the Gutenberg press was a big deal -- but how did it actually work? Why was it still a pain and how did later inventions fix those problems?
I was able to do something probably few have, which is visit one of those small hole in the wall museums staffed essentially by just a single passionate old guy assembled with his life savings, dedicated to the printing press. Incredible experience.
Anyways, it’s been about 15 years, but the thing that made an impression on me was that it wasn’t just one invention. Gutenberg basically had to assemble like two dozen separate innovations to make it all work.
The type alloy (3 metals!) had to be just soft enough to cast easily, just expandable enough to set well, just hard enough to last. How to cast in quantity and re-melt as needed. The ink had to be just runny enough to apply easily but not so runny it gets everywhere, sticky enough to stick to type, and dry at a good middle speed. The blotter to apply the ink to type. The system of wooden casing to hold the pieces together with the right spacing, that won’t fall apart. How to set up the casing. The screw press needed to have very even pressure. The paper needed to be able to slide and take ink properly without spreading but also not tear. Proper fonts and ligatures for the type. And so on…
IIRC most things stayed pretty similar for a few hundred years, mostly changing stuff like the paper feeding mechanism or tweaking ink application or minor variations in how the lever or screw work. So to be honest, Gutenberg did almost all the hard work himself. It was a big deal because a lot of these smaller inventions had to come together for a narrow purpose all at once (on top of the obvious huge historical effect of cheaper books!)
Thank you for taking the time to type that, I found it informative and interesting. Like we like to think of it as a single idea that worked well, but it's actually a ton of work to get a million details just right, and failure in just a few of them would just have made the whole endeavor (of the printing press) fail.
The Crandall Printing Museum! Yeah he used to do live demonstrations and everything, to the degree where he would cast a type piece right there in front of you from the liquid metal! Super cool guy, crazy knowledge about even tiny details. Sadly the original near-one man show passed away about a decade ago, but apparently the family has some role still in running it (I think the son runs the tours now?) since they just barely saved it all from being shut down and sold off, so it’s still around! https://www.thecrandall.org/collectionhttps://youtu.be/p9ikfO0MHQE if you wanted to get a glance at what they had/have. Even a linotype machine too!
Really fond memories of my visit, you can tell when someone is passionate.
I once celebrated my birthday where I asked everyone to give the following gift to me: create a presentation or workshop about something you're passionate about in your life. Treat us like experts and go down into your level of thinking, even to the tiniest amount of details. Don't be afraid if we don't fully follow or ask you to explain some terms. I'm hyped to hear what you come up with.
It was such a fun birthday. It was basically a conference, haha.
Gutenberg's press was made out of a wine press. Letters were cast in lead, then lined up on a tray under the press. The tray was inked. A piece of paper was set over the inked letters, and the wine press forced the paper onto the letters. This cut the cost of a book by a factor of 300(!).
The trouble for Gutenberg was it was too easy to duplicate his press, and that combined with not being good at business led to his bankruptcy.
And Gutenberg still was shooting for the high-end of the market -- he had his printed Bibles touched up by artists (Illuminated capitals, some color added here and there), meaning his Bibles weren't much cheaper than hand-copied because he believed that nobody wanted just cheap, functional books.
Commoners weren't literate in those days, so I expect his literate customers would be wealthy and would be willing to pay for an illuminated book.
But as books proliferated, it suddenly became advantageous for commoners to learn to read (the Bible was the typical primer used), and a virtuous cycle began and revolutionized everything.
And at least as important are the surrounding economic, social, and archival systems for printed information. How much of the populace was literate? Was there licensing (for copyists or printers), copyright, public domain, or public libraries? Distribution systems? What sorts of material were being copied or printed? And how long did those materials physically last? My understanding is that there's a vast amount that we don't know about Ancient Rome, because their "paper" was papyrus - cheap and easy to make, but easily destroyed by rot in damp environments and by crumbling in dry environments.
All of those considerations are predicated on having the printing press first. There is little value in advanced literacy if written knowledge is rare or hard to come by. There is no need for licensing if verbatim copying takes a lifetime rather than an afternoon. Why would someone need an elaborate distribution system if their output is limited to (let's say) 2 books/year?
Not sure what you mean by "advanced literacy", but credible experts seem to put literacy rates in Ancient Rome (zero printing presses) in the neighborhood of 20%. If you consider how little demand (for printed material) there could be from slaves, rural peasants, and such - that's damned high.
You seem focused on books with enormous page counts, requiring 6 months to a lifetime to copy. That's really not how societies without modern (ultra-cheap) printing technology did things. Same as their horse-drawn carriages didn't weigh anywhere near what a modern SUV does.
(Yes, hand-copied Bibles were big. And rare. Are you trying to judge the size and cost of typical medieval buildings by the surviving the cathedrals and castles?)
> I wish school curriculum included things like "how printing actually worked through ages". [...] Everyone is taught the Gutenberg press was a big deal -- but how did it actually work?
Just go to technological museums in cities near you: there you can see and learn all these things.
That’d be nice, as a news nerd and pagemaker monkey myself. But school curriculums don’t even have the space to teach touch typing anymore. Or huge chunks of U.S. history (nevermind histories of countries far older).
That's really awesome! Did they have you try and typeset something by hand? I feel like for us it presented as some magical thing that made producing books trivially easy, whereas in reality typesetting a page was still very labor intensive and not that fast!
We learned about how the Gutenberg Press physically worked, how it was based on wine presses and how difficult it supposedly was to produce a single metal letter. Also, how it was a PITA to re-arrange them to print something else, alas it was mostly used to print the Bible.
I think even the printing was still not _that_ fast. You needed to physically press down each page. Make sure the ink was right, replace the paper, make sure not to smudge anything, etc.
I'd be surprised if they could average more than 2 pages / minute? Which for 1000 pages is still a full days work.
Compare 30 seconds to print a sheet to the cost of pulling hundreds of letters out of bins, tossing worn ones out, casting new replacements, lining them up, inserting spaces, and proofreading. I'd probably want to print 1000 sheets before setting up another page.
I was involved a bit in printing manuals in the 1980s. The cost of printing 100 copies vs 1000 copies was pretty much the same. The delta is the cost of the paper.
> overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education
People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better.
Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical classroom, because as it is self directed, self paced, can use the best materials someone can find and a whole variety of them vs. whatever was assigned, etc., but it takes a lot of skill (which comes from past practice) and effort on the part of the learner. Many researchers/scholars are doing significant amounts of self-directed learning as their career, and can get very good at it with decades of practice.
The speed of learning in a classroom with 15+ students is inevitably unbelievably slow, and the time is used incredibly inefficiently. This isn't any particular problem with specific teachers, but as far as I can tell an inherent problem with aligning a bunch of people's preparation, motivation, and attention, and a problem with giving feedback in a 1:many setting. Teaching/learning speed generally seems worse at a primary school level vs. at a college level, given a very good teacher in both; I'm not sure if this is because of better prepared (because older) students, or just more motivated students.
Formal education is wider than just 15+ people classrooms. Apprenticeships don’t require removing people from the workforce, but they require feedback to function well not just watching a master craftsman.
Yes, apprenticeships are an interesting model. And in practice, whether formalised or not, it's how a lot of professions are taught to this day: as an example compare what they teach at university vs what you actually need on the job for your favourite white-collar profession. Some places, like management consultancies or investment banks, don't even require any specific degree.
It’s not only feedback, having arbitrary checkpoints like exams is an important motivator, and it also creates a whole culture around it that makes the learning experience into a social one.
English is my second language I learned outside of school. Formal education is pretty worthless all around in my experience, as they only tell you what you should learn on your own but make no effort to actually teach you. Otherwise every person leaving school would be fluent in at least two languages.
The most incredulous part is how easy it was to learn English on my own. It took less than two years after having failed to do so with 10+ years in school.
No, no, just the opposite: school curricula are full of lofty highfalutin ideas.
I didn't say anything is hopeless. It's just that adding more good and lofty ideas and topics to the curriculum isn't addressing the actual bottleneck.
Yet the end result appears that people on their own accord go and "learn" things like vaccines are bad, fluoridated water is used for mind control, rectal enemas can cure bowel cancer, and that the moon landings were fake.
At least the education system enforces some baseline level of standards
