Gutenberg's Information Revolution

Recently I bought a facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible at a used book store. The price was reasonable and the facsimile was nicely done. It’s in two volumes, same as the original, and somewhat reduced in size so as to keep the cost down by putting it in the range of standard binding machines. Prompted by the serendipitous purchase I’m reading a book on Gutenberg and his development of movable type. It’s important to note that he didn’t invent it. It was invented in China a couple of centuries before but never went anywhere because of the nature of the Chinese language, which has thousands of characters. Gutenberg succeeded because he had an alphabet instead.

The pieces of the puzzle already existed in Gutenberg’s time, such as the idea of a punch to make the impression of a letter, the idea of printing in general (woodblock printing was already common) and so forth. Gutenberg was able to take these elements and put them together, developing the idea of making identical copies of a text. The Bible wasn’t the first thing he printed. He published a Latin grammar text that hasn’t survived, and an indulgence, a document that people paid for to get time off from purgatory. Church fundraising hasn’t been the same since Martin Luther made the indulgence unfashionable.

As for the facsimile, it is well done. It is by Taschen, the German publisher which has mastered the art of fine facsimiles. I have also bought their facsimile of the first edition of Martin Luther’s complete German bible and it is also magnificent.

Anyone who has been awake for the last couple of decades knows that we are in the midst of tremendous societal change. We don’t know where it is going, yet. Computer technology has totally revolutionized society. The Internet has transformed the dissemination of information.

Gutenberg started the previous information revolution. By developing movable type he made the quick transmission of information possible. One good example is Martin Luther. Although the printing press was not the only factor in Luther’s meteoric rise to prominence it was a major factor. Luther unwittingly tapped into anti-Rome sentiment in the Holy Roman Empire, fueled by a rising German nationalism.

Luther’s writing spread quickly once they reached the press. Historians do not agree that Luther actually posted the 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, although if he did post them in public, that’s where it would have been. Church doors functioned as the dormitory bulletin board in medieval Europe. Nevertheless the text of the 95 theses made its way into print shops around Germany pretty quickly. The original document doesn’t exist, most likely because someone snagged it off the church door to take to the nearest printer.

Within a few years Luther’s pamphlets fueled the rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church. It didn’t start at once, and he certainly did not have that in mind when he wrote it. However, the fact that he sent the 95 theses to the Archbishop of Mainz does indicate that he intended to make a splash. A splash is what he made.

Getting back to Gutenberg, I find it ironic that I was able to purchase an affordable facsimile of this magnificent book. It is copied from a perfect vellum copy. Out of the 180 volumes Gutenberg produced, about 40 were printed on vellum/parchment, the rest were printed on paper. The vellum copies were quite expensive, and probably made their way to royal libraries and wealthy monasteries and cathedrals. The paper copies made their way around as well, and were more affordable.

I have seen three perfectly complete Gutenberg bibles--at the Widner Library at Harvard University, the Library of Congress, and at Yale University. There aren't very many around, and only about 20 are complete. The rest are one volume or another, or an incomplete volume. About a century ago a book dealer divided up a very incomplete copy and sold individual pages. You can still get a page for somewhere around $75,000-150,000. Not bad, I guess, considering the historical value and rarity. I think I'll settle for my facsimile, though.

The ironic thing about a facsimile is that with computer technology in its present state a copy can be made of any image and nobody has to set type. The object is scanned, and printed off. The photograph can be of anything, text or otherwise. And, if the images are posted on the internet anyone can look at them without holding the physical book in their hands, which in the case of this particular book  is very unlikely to happen. This is the sort of book that sits behind glass and is handled by qualified people wearing gloves.

We still profit from Gutenberg's technology. Books are now printed with computer technology, although there are small presses that will publish books printed with handset type. But we use the great grandchild of movable type daily. It's the computer keyboard. Hit a key, and the letter or symbol on the key appears on the screen. Print it out and it's on paper. One to one correspondence. Key, screen, paper.

The funny thing about Gutenberg's bible is that he made it look like a manuscript bible. That's a pretty basic human thing. If you want to sell something really new, make it look like something familiar.

The standardization of a technology can come on quickly. Take the standard letter size of paper, 8.5 " x 11". Nobody knows the origin of this paper size, but it became the standard size for paper used in typewriters in the early 1900's. I discovered this when I was in seminary, where I worked in the archives. In cataloging theses from students around 1900, I found that in the later 1890's, one or two would be typed and the rest handwritten. Then one year, most of them were typed, and the following year they were all typed. The size of the paper varied, however. With the quick spread of the typewriter the standard size of paper settled into today's standard size. So, we program our computers to produce documents that are the standard size because that's what was used with typewriters. And, we have fonts that look like something printed rather than something generated by a computer, also to look like a thing from the past.

I am sure that Gutenberg would approve of the digital revolution. He's largely responsible for it.