3 ms·

It's not the English language but the latin alphabet that helped there. It had already been optimised in ancient times to a limited set of easily readable chara

by Maken 2y ago

It's not the English language but the latin alphabet that helped there. It had already been optimised in ancient times to a limited set of easily readable characters, and then was further standardised by the introduction of the printing press. Going from a collection of metal pieces to a collection of bitmaps is way easier than adapting a handwritten languaje (which already had problems adapting to the printing press).

smegger001 2y ago
>which already had problems adapting to the printing press as i recall the printing press was developed in the East first. Each page was essentially a wood cut and pressed on to the page, the major innovation that Gutenberg in the west had was movable type more than the press.
- qwytw 2y ago
  > was movable type And even then, Chinese had already used movable type ~400 years before Guttenberg, possibly even for "serial numbers" on printed banknotes. The oldest surviving book printed with movable type was published in the late 1370s in Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jikji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jikji. Even woodblock printing, while it was seemingly know in Europe or at least the Byzantine Empire since the 11-13th centuries only became heavily commercialized and widespread around the same time as Gutenberg's press pretty much in parallel with it (for playing cards, illustrated books etc.). There was something special about Europe in the 1400s. I'm not downplaying his skills/ingenuity but Gutenberg's greatest achievement was doing what he did at the right time and place. It seems there wasn't enough demand for books/printed materials that would have justified the needed investments anywhere else.
  - wrp 2y ago
    Another thing about the development of movable type. I've heard that Gutenberg's main contribution was the development of an alloy that made metal type feasible, and that the (earlier) Korean solution was to use ceramic type.
    - qwytw 2y ago
      They also tried bronze and copper as well (mainly for money which used a mix of plate and movable type). The transition from wood to bronze metal type might have independent in Korea, though. They even had a pretty extensive printing industry as far as we can tell but it was fully controlled by the state/emperor and non official printing was illegal. I'm certainly not an expert but at least in China's case the type of inks they used didn't really work well with metal or even ceramic type which probably made the process relatively inefficient. Butyeah, Guttenberg invented a new alloy, ink, moulding method which made the process much cheaper and more effective.
  - christkv 2y ago
    I think it coincided with a growing demand of reading material as the merchant class expanded.
- pjc50 2y ago
  The Gutenberg museum itself has an exhibition of Korean movable type. See also https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2021/06/145_311325.html https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2021/06/145_311325.... : both Hanzi and Hangeul.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  I think at this point we understand that 'inventing' or 'discovering' means coming up with the solution/discovery that took off in modern culture/usage in a way that shaped our current world.
bane 2y ago
To add to this, there are some specific characteristics or acceptable practices within European alphabets (by the time that computers were invented) that helped. - The total number of characters needing representation is small. In the most limited case, you can get by with just the majuscule (upper case) characters. This means you can represent all letters in just a few bits. Representing all upper + lower + numbers + basic punctuation for almost any single language in Europe, even non-latinate languages is possible in just 7 or 8 bits! - The glyphs are linearized in a consistent direction. So data storage to display logic is very simple. This is opposed to languages like Korean where characters are assembled into syllables and text can flow left to right horizontally or right to left vertically. - Most European languages have both print and cursive forms. By the 20th century it was acceptable to use the disconnected print form, which made display logic much simpler (just copy the 8x8 bitmap in ROM to the screen). But importantly, special semi-ornamental characters, like ligatures, were acceptable to separate. - A more or less universal base-10 number system meant that we only needed to include 10 digits in the character set. Arithmetic only requires a handful of symbols. So you can include a pretty big subset of math in your character encoding. This is opposed to other systems that use distinct characters in ways similar to Roman numerals (e.g. Chinese numerals which also have financial and lay versions of counting). - Punctuation and simple arithmetic characters had been basically boiled down to about a dozen glyphs. - If you use 8-bits for your character encoding, you have so much space you can also include pretty much every character variant needed for all Latin using languages, allowing you to hit an addressable market of billions of people with the same 16k ROM.

by Maken 2y ago

smegger001 2y ago

>which already had problems adapting to the printing press as i recall the printing press was developed in the East first. Each page was essentially a wood cut and pressed on to the page, the major innovation that Gutenberg in the west had was movable type more than the press.

qwytw 2y ago
> was movable type And even then, Chinese had already used movable type ~400 years before Guttenberg, possibly even for "serial numbers" on printed banknotes. The oldest surviving book printed with movable type was published in the late 1370s in Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jikji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jikji. Even woodblock printing, while it was seemingly know in Europe or at least the Byzantine Empire since the 11-13th centuries only became heavily commercialized and widespread around the same time as Gutenberg's press pretty much in parallel with it (for playing cards, illustrated books etc.). There was something special about Europe in the 1400s. I'm not downplaying his skills/ingenuity but Gutenberg's greatest achievement was doing what he did at the right time and place. It seems there wasn't enough demand for books/printed materials that would have justified the needed investments anywhere else.
- wrp 2y ago
  Another thing about the development of movable type. I've heard that Gutenberg's main contribution was the development of an alloy that made metal type feasible, and that the (earlier) Korean solution was to use ceramic type.
  - qwytw 2y ago
    They also tried bronze and copper as well (mainly for money which used a mix of plate and movable type). The transition from wood to bronze metal type might have independent in Korea, though. They even had a pretty extensive printing industry as far as we can tell but it was fully controlled by the state/emperor and non official printing was illegal. I'm certainly not an expert but at least in China's case the type of inks they used didn't really work well with metal or even ceramic type which probably made the process relatively inefficient. Butyeah, Guttenberg invented a new alloy, ink, moulding method which made the process much cheaper and more effective.
- christkv 2y ago
  I think it coincided with a growing demand of reading material as the merchant class expanded.
pjc50 2y ago
The Gutenberg museum itself has an exhibition of Korean movable type. See also https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2021/06/145_311325.html https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2021/06/145_311325.... : both Hanzi and Hangeul.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
I think at this point we understand that 'inventing' or 'discovering' means coming up with the solution/discovery that took off in modern culture/usage in a way that shaped our current world.

bane 2y ago

To add to this, there are some specific characteristics or acceptable practices within European alphabets (by the time that computers were invented) that helped. - The total number of characters needing representation is small. In the most limited case, you can get by with just the majuscule (upper case) characters. This means you can represent all letters in just a few bits. Representing all upper + lower + numbers + basic punctuation for almost any single language in Europe, even non-latinate languages is possible in just 7 or 8 bits! - The glyphs are linearized in a consistent direction. So data storage to display logic is very simple. This is opposed to languages like Korean where characters are assembled into syllables and text can flow left to right horizontally or right to left vertically. - Most European languages have both print and cursive forms. By the 20th century it was acceptable to use the disconnected print form, which made display logic much simpler (just copy the 8x8 bitmap in ROM to the screen). But importantly, special semi-ornamental characters, like ligatures, were acceptable to separate. - A more or less universal base-10 number system meant that we only needed to include 10 digits in the character set. Arithmetic only requires a handful of symbols. So you can include a pretty big subset of math in your character encoding. This is opposed to other systems that use distinct characters in ways similar to Roman numerals (e.g. Chinese numerals which also have financial and lay versions of counting). - Punctuation and simple arithmetic characters had been basically boiled down to about a dozen glyphs. - If you use 8-bits for your character encoding, you have so much space you can also include pretty much every character variant needed for all Latin using languages, allowing you to hit an addressable market of billions of people with the same 16k ROM.