2 ms·
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, ins
by WalterBright 2mo ago
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.
- ekelsen 2mo agoAnother way to phrase the question: how many copies on a Gutenberg before you're even in time with typesetting? Random online estimates suggest 4 hours to typeset a page and 200 pages an hour. So 800 copies. I think this makes my point that on a Gutenberg press printing the already typeset page still wasn't that fast.
- WalterBright 2mo ago300:1, as I wrote earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49253673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49253673 And inevitably, efforts were made to improve the efficiency of the printer.
- ekelsen 2mo agoI don't see how the reduction in price from a manuscript to a gutenberg pressed book is the same as the figure I was calculating? Anyway, feels like this is no longer a productive discussion.