3 ms·

Even in 1000AD? Low grade vellum could be made by anyone at home. Was paper in industrial production by that point? Paine was not a medieval writer.

• dredmorbius 7y ago
  The period addressed by the article is ~1260 - 1520. So 1000 CE is out of scope. Even were it: - The typical person was illiterate Households would not be producing writing materials in any quantity. - Animal products are expensive, period. Non-animal alternatives would be used where possible. - For short-term writing surfaces, wood, stone, clay, and at some point (possibly later in time) slate were used. The Greeks used wax-coated boards (few of which, for obvious reasons, survived). - Woven textiles were a significant form of recordkeeping, such as the Bayeux Tapestry (11th century). - Notable legal documents, such as the Magna Carta, were written on parchment (animal skins). - Other surfaces included fired pottery, birch bark, and (in east Asia) bamboo. It's not so much that vellum was cheap, as that paper simply didn't exist before ~1000. Over the next ten centuries, processes for production and reductions in price increased not only the prevalence of paper, but the total amount of written material. Gutenberg's press coincided with new, cheaper, papermaking processes. Even so, many of the original works printed by Gutenberg were on vellum, including about a quarter of the original Gutenberg Bible. In all of Europe as of 1400, estimates are that there were on the order of 50,000 books. Not title, but volumes in total. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#/media/File%3AEuropean_Output_of_Printed_Books_ca._1450–1800.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#/media/Fil...
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  I wasn't mentioning Paine as an example of a mediaeval writer, but as an example of a pamphlet whose construction I'd noted, was curious of, and had surmised the printing logistics of. There are several problems with your assertion. The most relevant is simply that written materials were rare. Unbelievably rare. The library of the University of France in the 10th century contained a total of fewer than 2,000 books, and was among the largest in Europe. I noted pamphlets as an alternative to books: multiple pages, formed by simple folds, stitches, or staples. And ... not widely produced until the 16th century. See: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4371 https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4371 The methods however did not appreciably change until mechanised processing and printing in the 19th century, mostly after 1850. I recommend, again, Hamilton Holt's excellent, short, informative, and readable Commercialism and Journalism which describes the explosion of popular print in the latter half of the 19th century, from the perspective of 1909: "Since 1850, the [printing] industry has increased over thirty-fold..." https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/6 https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/6 As of 1000 CE, if you wanted to distribute something widely in print, you'd probably ... use a single-page woodblock (or woodcut) prints. Though even that didn't become widespread until the 1300s, and then, was impressed not on vellum, but cloth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#In_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#In_Europe You might wish to aquaint yourself with some of the actual history here, and grasp for intent rather than trivial and incidental characteristics. https://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?cat=36 https://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?cat=36
  • dredmorbius 7y ago
    s/University of France/University of Paris/