Rather than looking for a hidden meaning in the evolution of media over the ages, as McLuhan did, it seemed useful to go back even further to understand the invention of the printing press, the context in which it was born, and the changes it brought to intellectual life.
Founder of Rapido Books
The Long History of Printing
3,000 B.C.: Papyrus marked the first progress for writing, which had been limited to clay tablets until then. The volume, made up of sheets of papyrus glued together, rolled up on itself and was not folded because of its fragility. It was usually 6 to 8 metres long and could sometimes exceed 30 metres while its height was between 30 and 40 centimetres.
Source : Cultea
200 B.C.: The codex was the first form that could be compared to the present-day book, it had sewn quires made of papyrus or parchment sheets. It had the advantage of allowing non-linear leafing, unlike the volumen which was rolled up. The codex is really the ancestor of the bound book.
Note: Reading on an electronic tablet is closer to the volumen than the codex. Paper still has the advantage of leafing through compared to the ebook reader.
7th century: It was at this time that the printing press was invented in China. Thanks to this medium, Chinese culture spread more easily in Asia, as did the Buddhist religion in Korea and then in Japan. It consisted solely of carved wooden plates, this process is called xylography.
10th century: Multi-colour printing was developed in Asia. At this time, the Turkish Empire was also printing, no doubt thanks to the skills they had acquired during their conquering incursions and trade with Asia. In the 15th century, however, the Sultan eventually banned printing, making it punishable by death on the grounds that Arabic characters were sacred. This allowed the art of the manuscript to survive in the Ottoman Empire until the beginning of the 20th century.
11th century: Thanks to trade with Asia, the production of paper began in Europe. At the same time, the first movable typefaces made of clay were used, which made it possible to speed up the layout work. There were also wooden movable typefaces at this time, which will also be used later on in typography for large-print headings on posters. The first banknotes and even the first advertisements on paper appeared at this time.
13th century: The invention of the first movable metal type in Korea.
15th century: While Gutenberg was working on his invention, the Japanese invaded Korea and discovered movable type printing techniques and created their first publishing houses in the archipelago. At the same time, some Jesuit missionaries appropriated these skills to distribute religious texts in Japan.
1450: Gutenberg opened the first book printing plant in Mainz. His genius laid in his ability to bring together all the necessary skills to operate the first mass-produced printing system.
The Inventions We Owe to Gutenberg
He was the inventor of the screw press, thanks to his knowledge of carpentry. This printing technique was a decisive improvement on the rubbing technique used by Asian printers until then. The smear was a rag pad that was pressed against the back of the sheet to transfer the ink onto the paper.
– The real stroke of genius of this inventor was the development of the punch. Thanks to his expertise in goldsmithing, he conceived the principle of the copper matrix filled with a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony to produce the movable type.
– He also developed the recipe for greasy ink, which is more suitable for the press than the Chinese ink, which is too liquid.
– It was finally Gutenberg who rationalized all the techniques necessary for the production of books and grouped them together in a single profession: master printer, someone who was both a typesetter and printer as well as a bookbinder.
– To top it all off, Gutenberg boldly embarked on the project of printing the Bible. The first 180 copies of the Bible, consisting of two volumes of 600 pages each, took three years to produce, during which time a copyist monk produced only one.
Books Were Born Out of a Growing Appetite for Knowledge
Commercial expansion and advances in knowledge have led to a continuous inflation of writing:
- At the end of the Middle Ages, universities were training more and more students and were demanding larger quantities of copies. It was the pecia, the technique of copying books in series, that encouraged the creation of the first libraries in universities;
- The development of the administration, the notary’s office and, of course, the trade led to an increase in the number of documents;
- As international trade grew, the use of bills of exchange became more and more common.
We do not appreciate enough the importance of paper in the progress of our civilization: paper has become the indisputable medium of our memory for knowledge, financial, and legal acts. Our culture is indeed a culture of writing, in which all social structures are based on the unquestionable value of printed texts. Our increasingly forgetful age would do well to remember this as it approaches uncertain shores.
Was the Printing Press a Revolution?
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris
We cannot ignore the fact that printing offered the Protestant Reformation an effective tool to shake off the moral yoke of the papacy and spread its new ideas. It also made having direct access to texts the ideal way to educate consciences. In 1517, when Lüther published his Disputation on the Power and Efficiency of Indulgences, also known as the 95 Theses, there were already more than 200 printing houses in Germany. More than 20 million books had already been printed throughout Europe, which is considerable compared to the few hundred million inhabitants living on the continent at that time, most of whom were illiterate.
There is no doubt that books are part of the foundation of our civilization. By improving literacy, printing books enabled a growing number of women and men to emerge from ignorance, and then gradually promoted the liberation of consciences. It is no coincidence that books are still at the heart of children’s education and adult training today.
The Inseparable Links Between Books and Freedom
This short historical summary allows us to measure the extent to which the publishing and printing professions are part of a long evolution, marked by chance, sometimes by failure, but also by surprising discoveries and unforeseeable transformations. As an instrument of power, writing was first seized by scribes, then was jealously guarded by the political and religious elites who were convinced that knowledge should not be shared.
The idea of human progress is inseparable from writing. We could say that books have done more to reduce ignorance than any other invention.
Ten years ago, the decline of the paper book seemed inevitable. Badly treated by the digital media, marginalized by connected tools, shaken by Amazon’s commercial methods, it proved to be particularly resilient. It has resisted the digital tsunami that was supposed to sweep it away. With a certain amount of screen fatigue beginning to show, it is conceivable that the paper medium will continue to rebound in the coming years.
In his book The Crisis of the Mind, published in 1919, Paul Valéry attempted a bold and luminous analysis of the role of the word as an activity of the mind based on trust: “Believing in the human word, spoken or written, is as indispensable to human beings as trusting in the firmness of the soil.” In these pages, which testify to a great elevation of the spirit, he granted paper extraordinary qualities: “Paper, as you know, plays the role of an accumulator and conductor; it carries not only from one man to another, but from one time to another, a highly variable charge of authenticity or credibility.”
Valéry’s conclusion sounds like a commitment by the man of letters to fight so that intelligence can still express itself: “We must preserve in our minds and in our hearts the will to be lucid, the sharpness of the intellect, the feeling of the greatness and the risk, of the extraordinary adventure in which the human race… is engaged.”
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