Chapter Five - Printing Comes to Europe

With the creation of the written language humanity now had the means to store information, giving them the power to document knowledge and information and retrieve it at any later date. This gave things such as books, high value in every day life. The demand for books had become so high, it by passed the supply and kept on growing. The reason it was so hard to acquire a book was the means that were used to create such a thing. "A simple two-hundred-page book required four or five months' of labor by a scribe, and the twenty-five sheepskins needed for the parchment were even more expensive than the labor." Says Megg. This time and money spend in a single book made the cost and worth so high it was impossible to own a book unless you were a noble. This pushed inventors to find a more effect and cost effective means of creating books. The first real attempt at creating an effect means was the wood block print. Each image and lettering is cut from the same block of wood and printed as a complete word and picture unit. Playing cards and religious prints were really the early forms of this type of printing, and it was this same playing card that pushed the still illiterate culture in a new direction - teaching the ignorant recogition, sequencing, and logical deduction.. The 'game of the kings' was now something played by the lower class. However, the first really known prints with a fuction dealing with communication was the religious devotional prints.

Now with the more effecent printing with woodblocks, and the introduction of paper into europe, the demand for books continued to grow. However the mechanization of a book by production by something like movable type was something printers began to take a look at. But it was Gutenberg, living in Strasbourg in exile that changed all that. The key to his invention was the type mold, used for casting the individual letters. Each character had to be parallel in every direction and the exact same height. The chapter closes by discussing another methoid of copper plate printing.

My only real question is how long did it take to make a whole book, how many years? And how did people normally learn how to read, if not in school?

Terms from the Chapter:
Xyography - relief printing from a raised surface (Asia)
Typography - printing with independent, movable, and reusable raised letter forms on wood or metal
Watermark - translucent emblem produced by pressure from a raised design on the mold on paper