[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Petronski]

Paging Dan Rather!

[the invisib1e hand]

coming soon: reparations lawsuits.

[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."

[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.

[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.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Is that damned kerning going to expose Gutenberg, too?

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[TexasTransplant]

I thought the Chinese invented printing a couple of Centuries earlier, Chinese guy named Al Chin Gore Guy (Means stick of wood, I think)

"Marco Polo Reports, You Decide"

[perfect stranger]

Can you clear this up for us?

You were the first one I thought about with this story. LOL

[festus]

Next they'll be telling me Al Gore didn't invent the internet either.....

Sheesh.....

;-)

[SunkenCiv]

Finally, the GGG ping. Sorry for today's volume, but I'm finally able to catch up.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[escapefromboston]

Hey at least police academy was a good movie, and you can't take that away from this guy.

[Ptarmigan]

I read that Koreans were the first to invent pirnting.

[wildbill]

His invention was probably another gift of technolgy from the extraterrestials among us.

On a more serious note, the timeline juxtaposition of the printing press and the fall of Constantinople is fascinating, because the coincidence enabled the forward movement of Western civilization and the closing of the East to modernity in technology and all the arts because of the Islamic culture that was imposed.