King Alfred's English: A History of the Language We Speak and Why We Should Be Glad We Do by White Laurie J

Author:White, Laurie J. [White, Laurie J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: The Shorter Word Press
Published: 2012-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

Johannes Gutenberg

John Wycliffe and his followers labored long hours copying the Bible into English by hand. What Wycliffe had needed so badly was a way to mass-produce his English Bibles. But Wycliffe died while book production methods remained the same.

Then in 1456 a German by the name of Johannes Gutenberg invented a thing called movable type and the first printing press was born. Just as the invention of the computer has changed our communications forever, so the invention of the printing press totally transformed communications for the world of that era. Handwritten books were rare and expensive, but printed books were affordable even to the middle class. So almost overnight books began to appear everywhere and everyone wanted books, books, and more books.

Besides hand copying, the only other process for producing a book at that time was by using large wooden blocks. Each block would have all the letters of a page individually carved into it, and then the block was used like a giant stamp as it was swabbed in ink and pressed onto a page. Wooden blocks were time consuming to carve (to say the least) and, once carved, could only be used to reproduce that individual page of the book. A new block had to be hand-carved for each page. This process was an improvement on hand copying in some ways, but books produced by woodblocks were still tedious to produce and, therefore, still so expensive that very few could afford them.

With the advent of the printing press, the process of getting letters on a page was radically changed by Gutenberg’s chief improvement: recyclable letters known as movable type. Movable type consisted of individual letters made of metal that could be moved around and, therefore, could be completely reordered to form a brand new page. Setting the type for a page one tiny letter at a time might sound a bit tedious itself, but it was absolutely nothing compared to copying by hand or carving every individual letter in a woodblock. Once a page was set in movable type, the printer could print as many copies as he desired then simply move the letters around to print the next page of the book. Thus, on and on he could go, printing away page after page after clean, crisp, beautiful, new page. This was no mere improvement. This was a revolution.

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