Gutenberg Printing Method Questioned

Discovery Channel ^ | 11-12-2004 | Rossella Lorenzi

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Petronski]

Paging Dan Rather!

[the invisib1e hand]

coming soon: reparations lawsuits.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Lol! That is what this reminded me of.

[50sDad]

Next thing you know, they'lll be saying Columbus wasn't the first to discover America! D@mn Revisionists!

[/SARCASM]

[Petronski]

This article is crap. Gutenberg could easily have used an IBM Selectric Executive, with proportional, movable (golf-ball) type, and . . . . aw, hell. Nevermind.

[50sDad]

Instead, Gutenberg used keys similar to those on a typewriter, according to Fabbiani.

Clearly Alien technology, stolen from the Aztechs, who invented geometry, and were black!

Seriously, is this clown saying "typesetting machine", of the type that Mark Twain went broke investing in two centuries ago, and couldn't get invented with 1800's tech, much less Medeval tech?

[muawiyah]

It's been long established that the very same 13th Century Korean noblemen invented moveable type, printed money and practical gunpowder (with rockets) but this beats all ~ Gutenberg actually invented KERNING!

This process was all but abandoned for the next 500 years until the development of photocomposition equipment.

Today kerning is commonly available with all word processing software.

Kerning was in the news recently when it was demonstrated that certain documents in the possession of Dan Rather of CBS news had been forged ~ after all, typewriters, an application of the moveable type concept, did not allow for kerning in the early 1970s.

[Zeppelin]

I've done plenty of research on Gutenberg myself (we own one of the original Gutenberg Bibles here at the University of Texas!)

What this "researcher" fails to mention is that Gutenberg would have whole words for the more common words, so he could easily place them without having to pick out every letter. He would have the Italian equivalents of our "the" and "and" and other such common words, so as to save on time. That could explain the overlaying letters. As the pictures show, you can only see two letters, so we have no idea what words they belong to.

Smells like a "researcher" just trying to grab some attention from "controversy."

[the invisib1e hand]

everyone knows that Algore invented the Gutenberg Press.

[HalfAMind]

Being a printer who learned typesetting using "foundry" type, where each letter is an individual piece of lead alloy, I can tell you it is very possible to duplicate the appearance of overlapping letters. (You can even do it using MicroSoft Word and a laser printer, Dan.) The problem is the height of the letters. If the character on the left is taller than the character next to it, it will not allow the character on the right to accept ink or make the necessary impression on the paper. I put a piece of paper next to the straight line on the right character, and it does not seem to overlap. It is an optical illusion.
Let's rewrite history once again.

[ProudVet77]

I'll reserve judgment till I hear from Buckhead.

[primeval patriot]

Using them, a character after another, a line after another, Gutenberg impressed a metal plate until he created a page and printed it.

Then he had to have created his type in reverse or used a blanket.

[primeval patriot]

Oh, wait. Never mind.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

I just discovered the Wyclif Bible, written circa 1395. It's written in Middle English, which I absolutely love. I'm already up to Chapter 16. Enjoy!

Wyclif Bible, 1395

[primeval patriot]

O.K. so he skipped moveable type and invented the offset printing plate.

[primeval patriot]

Were you a linotype operator?

[Paleo Conservative]

I just discovered the Wyclif Bible, written circa 1395. It's written in Middle English

Strange. Why is this hosted on a Russian website?

[muawiyah]

You are probably correct. One of the more interesting devices I've seen are pages of Buddha's favorite sermons which are produced by inking over a stone into which the words are carved, then pressing a piece of paper to them.

If I recall the program about that, this process was created in the 1100's or therebouts as a means of eliminating dispute over what Buddha actually said.

Printed money was done pretty much the same way but with moveable type used to provide "chops" for the current authorizing official.

What they DID NOT INVENT way back when was the Xerographically produced photo-litho offset sheet which was then used to produce a couple of reems of cutsheet information of great interest to people all over the place.

At least I don't think early printers did that, but who knows. First kerning, now offset plates? Dollars to doughnuts a guy named Schmidlapp invented the multi-stage rocket in the 1600s!