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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
by cheesecakegood 2mo ago
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!)
- afc 2mo agoThank 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.
- russdill 2mo agoMany of the same technologies enables woodcut presses which already existed.
- melvinroest 2mo agoWhat small hole in the wall museum was that? I might travel to it no matter where it is in the world. Sounds awesome, I'm hyped up
- cheesecakegood 2mo agoThe 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/collection https://www.thecrandall.org/collection https://youtu.be/p9ikfO0MHQE https://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.
- melvinroest 2mo agoI 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.