The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [51]
It may be that the typecasting technique then spread to Europe with the Arab traders. Korean typecasting methods were certainly almost identical to those introduced by Gutenberg, whose father was in fact a member of the Mainz fellowship of coiners.
In Europe, prior to Gutenberg, there are references to attempts at artificial writing being made in Bruges, Bologna and Avignon, and it is possible that Gutenberg was preceded by a Dutchman called Coster or an unknown Englishman. Be that as it may, the Koreans’ interest in Chinese culture and their failure to adopt the new alphabet prevented the use and spread of the world’s first movable typeface for two hundred years.
The reason for the late appearance of the technique in the West may be related to the number of developments which had to take place before printing could succeed. These included advances in metallurgy, new experiments with inks and oils, the production of paper, and the availability of eye-glasses. Also significant would have been the mounting economic pressure for more written material and dissatisfaction with the over-costly scriptoria, as well as the generally rising standards of education which accompanied economic recovery after the Black Death.
A Chinese paper banknote issued between 1368 and 1399, under the first Ming Emperor.
A page from the Mainz Psalter of 1457, printed by Gutenberg’s ex-partners, using his new typeface. Note the retention of the scribal abbreviations (lines above letters, for example,) to which readers would have been accustomed.
Once introduced, however, the speed with which printing propagated itself throughout Europe suggests a market ready and willing to use it. From Mainz it reached Cologne in 1464, Basel in 1466, Rome in 1467, Venice 1469, Paris, Nuremberg and Utrecht 1470, Milan, Naples and Florence 1471, Augsburg 1472, Lyons, Valencia and Budapest 1473, Cracow and Bruges 1474, Lübeck and Breslau 1475, Westminster and Rostock 1476, Geneva, Palermo and Messina 1478, London 1480, Antwerp and Leipzig 1481 and Stockholm 1483.
It should be noted that almost without exception these were not university cities. They were centres of business, the sites of royal courts or the headquarters of banking organisations. By the end of the fifteenth century there were 73 presses in Italy, 51 in Germany, 39 in France, 25 in Spain, 15 in the Low Countries and 8 in Switzerland. In the first fifty years eight million books were printed.
The price of the new books was of crucial significance in the spread of the new commodity. In 1483 the Ripola Press in Florence had charged three florins a sheet for setting up and printing Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. A scribe would have charged one florin for a single copy. The Ripola Press produced one thousand and twenty-five.
Not everybody took to the press with the same eagerness. Joachim Furst, Gutenberg’s financial backer, went to Paris with twelve copies of the Bible but was chased out by the book trade guilds, who took him to court. Their view was that so many identical books could only exist with the help of the devil.
The print shop of the sixteenth century. On the right, paper arrives, the type is inked, the pages are printed then stacked by the office boy. On the left, compositors prepare new texts and the proof-reader checks a page.
The new printing shops have been variously described as a mixture of sweatshop, boarding house and research institute. They brought together members of society strange to each other. The craftsman rubbed shoulders with the academic and the businessman. Besides attracting scholars and artists, the shops were sanctuaries for foreign translators, emigres and refugees in general, who came to offer their esoteric talents.
Printing shops were, above all, centres for a new kind of intellectual and cultural exchange. Existing outside the framework of the guild system, they were free of