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Printing press? Big deal! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Five
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
0:16
Speaker 1: there's Jerry out there, our ethereal ephemeral producer, and this
0:21
Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know, which um for this edition.
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Speaker 1: I feel like we should be playing like harpsichord or
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Speaker 1: something like that in the background when we start. You
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Speaker 1: want to do that? Should we gus see it up
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Speaker 1: a little? Yeah? Jerry knows what she's She knows her
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Speaker 1: way around an old harpsichord, so maybe maybe she can
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Speaker 1: do that for us. I wonder if we have a
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Speaker 1: message break stinger that's harpsichord. Oh, that's a great question,
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Speaker 1: because we've been getting I mean, we've gotten great ones
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Speaker 1: all along, but sometimes they're just showing up. I'm like,
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Speaker 1: where did this come from? I don't even recognize this
0:53
Speaker 1: one's great stuff? Yeah, and too, you know, for those
0:56
Speaker 1: of you who don't know, those are made by listeners. Yeah,
0:58
Speaker 1: submitted out of the goodness of their hearts for yep
1:02
Speaker 1: to say. Here you go, guys, I hope you enjoy it.
1:05
Speaker 1: You can use it all you want. It's very sweet.
1:08
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the printing press, and um, we're
1:11
Speaker 1: talking about the invention of the printing press, and the
1:13
Speaker 1: printing press itself is basically synonymous with a man named
1:18
Speaker 1: Johann Gutenberg. Johannes we just got right out of the
1:23
Speaker 1: gate man. I'm going with Johann Gutenberg, or as the
1:28
Speaker 1: rest of us in the world call him Gutenberg, let's
1:32
Speaker 1: call him Steve Gutenberg gut Buck. Okay, okay. So, Um
1:38
Speaker 1: Gutenberg is traditionally credited with inventing the printing press, and
1:43
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes, he did invent the printing press.
1:46
Speaker 1: But um, as our friend ed Grabanowski goes with great
1:48
Speaker 1: pains to point out, he did not invent it out
1:51
Speaker 1: a whole cloth, as apparently some people believe that that
1:55
Speaker 1: it was just a pile of lumber and an idea
1:59
Speaker 1: for him that he that he put together. Like every
2:02
Speaker 1: inventor whoever invented anything, he he built on different concepts
2:08
Speaker 1: that have been worked out over centuries. Um. The thing
2:11
Speaker 1: is is, like that's not to detract from his accomplishment
2:14
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Like what he did literally change
2:16
Speaker 1: the world, as we'll see in some amazing ways, but
2:19
Speaker 1: he helped provide the first information age and got really
2:23
Speaker 1: kind of screwed over in the bargain. Yeah, I mean
2:27
Speaker 1: it's kind of a familiar story at this point, right, sadly, yes, man,
2:31
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of sick of that. I wish which
2:34
Speaker 1: one of stealing, of building on others, or of yeah,
2:40
Speaker 1: the second one. No, I understand building on the work
2:42
Speaker 1: of others. That's the other thing, too, is I don't
2:44
Speaker 1: think Guttenberg ever said like, no, I invented all of
2:48
Speaker 1: this without any help. We don't have any indication he
2:50
Speaker 1: was like that at all. That just kind of got
2:52
Speaker 1: hung on him over the years. By sixth graders, we
2:54
Speaker 1: built on the work of Adam Curry. We didn't he
2:58
Speaker 1: still at it? Did you know that he's still podcasting?
3:01
Speaker 1: I'm almost a million percent sure, which is really sure?
3:05
Speaker 1: And did he really have the first one? I don't
3:08
Speaker 1: know if he had the first, but he's credited with
3:10
Speaker 1: having the first. Very interesting. He's definitely still active on
3:14
Speaker 1: social media, for sure. So for the printing press, if
3:18
Speaker 1: if we jump back in the old way back machine
3:20
Speaker 1: and we we breathe past Adam Curry, there, Hi, Adam, Hey, Adam,
3:32
Speaker 1: Look at his hair, just waving that very nice. Uh.
3:35
Speaker 1: We would go back and see people carving up these
3:39
Speaker 1: things into would uh and then they would um. It's
3:44
Speaker 1: sort of like a stamp you would get for a
3:46
Speaker 1: kid these days, or if you you know, you go
3:48
Speaker 1: to a stamp shop and you want to get a
3:49
Speaker 1: stamp with your address or whatever for an adult. Yeah,
3:52
Speaker 1: Like we got a stamp made. Emily got a stamp
3:54
Speaker 1: made of our house when we finally finished renovating our house,
3:59
Speaker 1: which we've never used. Our our friend so that you
4:04
Speaker 1: haven't used. So is it a picture of your your house? Yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, it looks like a little woodcut. But
4:09
Speaker 1: it's not like we send people letters and stamp that
4:11
Speaker 1: or any man. I gotta tell you, I would like
4:14
Speaker 1: to see that on a Christmas card envelope. You know.
4:16
Speaker 1: You know she did give me, and boy, I'm going
4:18
Speaker 1: to use it one days. Uh. You know how they
4:20
Speaker 1: would melt wax and seal the envelope with a little stamp.
4:24
Speaker 1: She got me one of those little kits for Christmas
4:25
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Nice and you still haven't used it. Now,
4:28
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to write you a letter
4:30
Speaker 1: on some vellum. Thank you. I'm gonna stamp my house
4:33
Speaker 1: on it. I'm gonna wax, seal it and with and uh,
4:36
Speaker 1: then put on some red lipstick huh, and then tinkle
4:39
Speaker 1: on the whole thing, give it a kiss, and then
4:41
Speaker 1: be on it. Um. We we have a stamp too,
4:43
Speaker 1: but it's um has our address stamped on. Our friends
4:47
Speaker 1: Lorrel and Brandon gave it to us. Yeah, I mean
4:49
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense, right, and we have
4:51
Speaker 1: used that one before. But I want to see this stamp,
4:53
Speaker 1: this whole Christmas card would tinkle on it and vellum
4:56
Speaker 1: and wax. I can't wait to see it. All right,
4:58
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. So a wood cut and a long
5:02
Speaker 1: way of saying it looks sort of like one of
5:03
Speaker 1: these stamps. It's cut out, um, out of a wood block.
5:07
Speaker 1: And then you take paper or vellum or something or
5:09
Speaker 1: whatever you want to print it on, rub it down
5:12
Speaker 1: with some ink, and then press it down. And they
5:15
Speaker 1: had a thing back in the day in Europe in
5:17
Speaker 1: the fourteen hundreds called block books that were made from
5:20
Speaker 1: these wood cuts. They were you know, ten to pages long,
5:25
Speaker 1: and they kind of look like comic books if you
5:27
Speaker 1: look them up. They have a little bit of artwork,
5:28
Speaker 1: a little bit of text. Medieval comic books. Yeah, it's
5:31
Speaker 1: like comic books without any of the fun because they
5:34
Speaker 1: had some sort of moral message attached to it. Usually right,
5:37
Speaker 1: it was like a jack Chick tract or something. But
5:40
Speaker 1: they were a big deal in Europe in the fourteen hundreds,
5:43
Speaker 1: and they thought that they invented something. But of course
5:46
Speaker 1: the Chinese were like, excuse me, We've been doing this
5:50
Speaker 1: stuff for hundreds of years. Yeah, and and I think
5:53
Speaker 1: as far back as nine No. Eight sixty eight c.
6:00
Speaker 1: Which is a while ago, more than a thousand years about.
6:04
Speaker 1: Plus the Diamond Sutra, which was a buddhist Um text,
6:10
Speaker 1: was the first known printed book, and they printed it
6:12
Speaker 1: like you just described, where each page was a wood
6:15
Speaker 1: carving in negative chuck in negative, because if you made
6:20
Speaker 1: it in in the positive when you put the paper
6:22
Speaker 1: on it with the ink, it would be in reverse
6:24
Speaker 1: when you looked at it on the page. So you
6:26
Speaker 1: had to carve each page like that in negative. So
6:29
Speaker 1: it was a really difficult process, but it worked. It
6:33
Speaker 1: was useful. It was a lot easier once you got
6:35
Speaker 1: those blocks carved for a page. Then it was to
6:38
Speaker 1: transcribe entire books and texts by hand, which is what
6:41
Speaker 1: they've done up to that point and still continue to
6:43
Speaker 1: do for a very long time. Yeah. So when I
6:45
Speaker 1: saw the Diamond Sutra, just obviously the word sutra stood
6:49
Speaker 1: out to me because of the Kama Sutra, and I really,
6:52
Speaker 1: of course, and I didn't even I realized I didn't
6:55
Speaker 1: even know what that word meant. And it's just it's
6:57
Speaker 1: a collection of observations basically, he said, Oh, I mean
7:00
Speaker 1: cook book. Well, it could be. It's a collection of
7:04
Speaker 1: observations in a book or a pamphlet. And I think
7:06
Speaker 1: we really missed a diamond opportunity for our book title
7:11
Speaker 1: by not calling it like the Stuff you Should Know Sutra. Yeah. Well,
7:14
Speaker 1: hey if this one, if this one goes even passingly
7:18
Speaker 1: well ourselves passingly, well we'll probably have a second chance.
7:21
Speaker 1: You can pre order that thing, by the way, the
7:24
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, No, boy, you could pre pre
7:27
Speaker 1: order that one, right. I'm getting limber as we speak
7:29
Speaker 1: to try to get that one done. Right. Yeah, you
7:31
Speaker 1: can preorder our book, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting
7:35
Speaker 1: stuff Sutra. Thanks. You should have just had comma comma sutra,
7:40
Speaker 1: get it right. I like that? So that was one
7:44
Speaker 1: in eight six eight CE like you said. Then in
7:46
Speaker 1: seventy one b C. There was another one called did
7:48
Speaker 1: you mention that one? The Trippy Taka? Not yet? That
7:51
Speaker 1: was another Buddhist text that was ce C E. Oh
7:56
Speaker 1: it is, so they got wrong here, Yeah, all right,
8:00
Speaker 1: so the whole thing starts about eleven years ago. Okay,
8:03
Speaker 1: well that makes more sense. Yeah, but that's the one
8:06
Speaker 1: that had I think a hundred and thirty thousand would
8:10
Speaker 1: block carvings. Yeah, that's insane. That means not only that
8:15
Speaker 1: somebody carved that, but somebody kept that like at their house.
8:18
Speaker 1: Imagine living around a hundred and thirty thousand wood block carvings,
8:22
Speaker 1: and you would be like, I need to reprint page
8:24
Speaker 1: eight thirty two, and then having you to go find
8:27
Speaker 1: the wood block carving for page eight thirty two and
8:30
Speaker 1: just it just sounds like a nightmare. I'd be like,
8:32
Speaker 1: I don't I don't care about reading or literacy or
8:35
Speaker 1: moving humanity forward at this point. Maybe it was the house.
8:39
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. You just blew my mind right out of
8:42
Speaker 1: the top of my head. So there was some more
8:45
Speaker 1: experimentation going on after this in China and Korea, UM
8:49
Speaker 1: and some big and they were using like little wood
8:51
Speaker 1: or ceramic or metal blocks to make individual characters for
8:55
Speaker 1: the first time. And this was a big kind of
8:57
Speaker 1: pushed forward towards what we all though as what would
9:01
Speaker 1: eventually be the Gutenberg Press. Is individual letters are in
9:04
Speaker 1: their case characters instead of just doing each page as
9:08
Speaker 1: a separate woodcut. Yeah. What's awesome is there is a
9:10
Speaker 1: commoner in China named B. Shang who um is thought
9:15
Speaker 1: to have come up with movable type, where rather than
9:18
Speaker 1: you know, carving a woodblock for each page, you have letters,
9:21
Speaker 1: individual letters carved out and you can arrange them just
9:24
Speaker 1: so anyway you want, and then once you print that page,
9:26
Speaker 1: you can arrange them in a different way to print
9:28
Speaker 1: the next page. And that is a huge innovation for sure.
9:31
Speaker 1: And again note that this guy came up with this
9:33
Speaker 1: in about ten forty one CE, so a good four
9:37
Speaker 1: hundred years before Guttenberg was working. What does Ed keep saying, BC,
9:42
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think he really likes the sound
9:44
Speaker 1: of it, all right, fair enough, it's definitely see either.
9:48
Speaker 1: Uh no, I'm not doubting that. I'm just I was
9:50
Speaker 1: thinking too. I was like, gosh, what if he was right?
9:53
Speaker 1: What if all this had started a good thousand years earlier,
9:56
Speaker 1: Like how much further along would we be right now?
9:59
Speaker 1: Because it held Yeah if this had happened three thousand
10:02
Speaker 1: years ago rather than one thousand years ago. Yeah, because
10:05
Speaker 1: here's the little spoiler. Printing books is a big deal.
10:11
Speaker 1: Like some say that religion and democracy and I mean
10:15
Speaker 1: just sort of the advancement of humanity was was this?
10:18
Speaker 1: It was key to advancing all those things. Do you
10:21
Speaker 1: know who says that us people who are right us. Yeah,
10:27
Speaker 1: I definitely am on board with that because, yeah, the
10:29
Speaker 1: for the best way you can put it, it was
10:30
Speaker 1: the first information age that got launched by Guttenberg, by
10:34
Speaker 1: gut Buck. So that's I keep saying that because it's
10:37
Speaker 1: Steve Guttenberg's handle on Twitter. Oh is it really okay?
10:41
Speaker 1: Steve gut Is it really? He is the nicest guy too.
10:45
Speaker 1: I haven't Uh yeah, I haven't. I haven't checked in
10:48
Speaker 1: on his feed for a very long time, but um,
10:51
Speaker 1: years back, he used to be like all up in
10:53
Speaker 1: our feed, and um he was just so nice, Happy
10:57
Speaker 1: Friday everybody kind of stuff, like every Fridays. Just a
11:01
Speaker 1: super nice guy. So I'm assuming nothing's gone horribly wrong
11:05
Speaker 1: with him and that he's still just as nice as
11:07
Speaker 1: he was a few years ago. Well, I highly recommend
11:09
Speaker 1: you know, I've always um promoted the Great Great Stars
11:13
Speaker 1: TV show Party Down one of my favorite shows of
11:15
Speaker 1: all time, and Goots has a great, great, great episode
11:20
Speaker 1: and it seems like that's who he is, and he's
11:22
Speaker 1: a super nice guy in that episode because he um,
11:26
Speaker 1: you know, it's about a catering company. There were a
11:29
Speaker 1: bunch of like writers and actors and stuff doing catering
11:31
Speaker 1: work and he hires them to come over to his
11:33
Speaker 1: house for his birthday. There there at the house when
11:37
Speaker 1: he pulls in and he's like, oh man, we ended
11:40
Speaker 1: up having a surprise party for me and I've forgot
11:42
Speaker 1: So he's just like, why don't you guys just come
11:44
Speaker 1: and then we'll be the party. Right, But you could
11:47
Speaker 1: really get the idea that that's who Goods is as
11:49
Speaker 1: a person. You know, it's great as you've definitely definitely
11:52
Speaker 1: told that story before on the podcast, which means like
11:56
Speaker 1: we've gotten to this point where we're amassing, like we're
11:58
Speaker 1: building a standalone universe where like when Steve Gooberg appears,
12:03
Speaker 1: this story pops up as well around him. You know
12:05
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, like, Oh, I knew, I told it.
12:07
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember when though, What when would he have
12:09
Speaker 1: come up? I don't remember, but I'm sure we talked
12:12
Speaker 1: also about what a great guy he is on Twitter
12:14
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff, like like we have a
12:17
Speaker 1: character like a simil acrome of or simil acro of
12:22
Speaker 1: Steve Guttenberg that lives in our podcast universe, and he's
12:25
Speaker 1: very less multifaceted than I'm sure he is in real life,
12:29
Speaker 1: but in our universe's nice guy on Twitter, had a
12:33
Speaker 1: great episode of Party Down. That's all you need to
12:35
Speaker 1: know about Steve Goomberg. I know we haven't even gotten
12:37
Speaker 1: into police Catty. Do we do a show on Police Academy?
12:40
Speaker 1: So that probably would have made sense. I don't think
12:43
Speaker 1: we have. If we have, I must have been blacked
12:45
Speaker 1: out or something. Alright, So printing press is advancing forward.
12:50
Speaker 1: Go to Korea in twelve thirty four, and you're going
12:54
Speaker 1: to find a man named Show Young Wee who was
12:57
Speaker 1: commissioned to do uh some more boot is text. A
13:00
Speaker 1: lot of this was Buddhist text. Well yeah, if you'll
13:02
Speaker 1: notice religious texts help push this whole thing forward from
13:06
Speaker 1: different religions, even yeah, like that Bible that Guttenberg would
13:10
Speaker 1: make stunts. Sorry, so this one was really really long,
13:14
Speaker 1: and he was using this movable print that had already
13:18
Speaker 1: been around, but this time he was making these letters
13:21
Speaker 1: for metal um, kind of using what the technique they
13:24
Speaker 1: did for coin minting, which had been going on for
13:26
Speaker 1: a while. Set him in a frame, lined them all up,
13:29
Speaker 1: coded them with ink, and pressed them. And if you think, hey,
13:33
Speaker 1: that sounds like a printing press, you would be exactly right.
13:36
Speaker 1: You're right, fella, for sure. That's that's basically what Guttenberg
13:40
Speaker 1: came up with. He had a couple of extra innovations,
13:42
Speaker 1: for sure, that are definitely credited to him directly, but
13:47
Speaker 1: that general idea had been around for a couple of
13:49
Speaker 1: hundred years at least before he started printing his own
13:54
Speaker 1: stuff using this machine of his invention. Now, again, this
13:58
Speaker 1: is not detract at all from Guttenberg. He put together
14:01
Speaker 1: a lot of disparate ideas, and there's also a lot
14:03
Speaker 1: of debate whether he would have known about the Korean
14:07
Speaker 1: or Chinese advancements in printing um. If so, maybe it
14:12
Speaker 1: was the Mongols that spread it west, but they're not
14:15
Speaker 1: entirely certain there's no smoking gun, so it's possible he
14:18
Speaker 1: also thought of it himself, just by being involved in
14:21
Speaker 1: it and thinking about it, or maybe he heard about
14:24
Speaker 1: some other stuff and refined it into his own thing. Regardless,
14:27
Speaker 1: he came up with the printing press, and the Chinese
14:30
Speaker 1: and the Koreans are not credited with that for actually
14:33
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. And the upshot of all of
14:36
Speaker 1: it is that it didn't ever really take off in
14:38
Speaker 1: China or Korea. Um, even though it was invented there,
14:42
Speaker 1: it didn't become widespread or widely used, and it certainly
14:45
Speaker 1: didn't create an information age revolution. Well, how's this for cliffhanger.
14:50
Speaker 1: We'll take a little break and we'll tell you a
14:52
Speaker 1: couple more reasons why it never took off in Asia
14:55
Speaker 1: right after this, alright, Chuck, I can't take this any longer.
15:19
Speaker 1: To tell us, tell us why it never took off
15:22
Speaker 1: in Asia. Well, some some reasons that just make a
15:24
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Um. They are they have very complex
15:28
Speaker 1: characters with their language, and they have, you know, up
15:33
Speaker 1: to tens of thousands of characters with different pronunciations, different
15:38
Speaker 1: phone ms, different syllables, and you can't. You just can't
15:42
Speaker 1: do it. You can't have that many little tiny blocks,
15:46
Speaker 1: much less multiples of those if you want to print
15:48
Speaker 1: a page, you know, because it's not like you can
15:50
Speaker 1: move them around. And then keeping up with all these
15:54
Speaker 1: was literally one of the big problems. Like they made
15:56
Speaker 1: these big I think there was a man named Wang
15:59
Speaker 1: Wang Zen who use these revolving tables to access these
16:03
Speaker 1: big racks of letters. But it was kind of like
16:05
Speaker 1: what you were talking about with the house made of
16:08
Speaker 1: woodblocks of hundred and thirty thousand wood cuts. It's like,
16:12
Speaker 1: you you just can't keep up with that many. So
16:14
Speaker 1: it wasn't practical. And then Guttenberg comes along, He's like,
16:17
Speaker 1: we only have twenty six letters, so this is pretty
16:20
Speaker 1: this is pretty dumbed down as a language goes. Yeah,
16:22
Speaker 1: because I mean even if you do you know, capitals
16:25
Speaker 1: and lower case, that's still just what fifty two and
16:29
Speaker 1: throwing some punctuation, Yeah, some punctuation makes some doubles because
16:33
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna use E a lot more times
16:35
Speaker 1: than one per page, so you need to make some
16:38
Speaker 1: backup copies of them. He made about three hundred in
16:41
Speaker 1: the end, right, That's what I saw Yeah, three hundred um,
16:45
Speaker 1: different characters, spaces, punctuation um, upper case, lower case, and
16:51
Speaker 1: that that's all he needed. So the three hundred verses
16:54
Speaker 1: tens of thousands um. Number one is this easier to make,
16:58
Speaker 1: but number two it's he's year to keep up with two.
17:01
Speaker 1: So um. Guttenberg just happened to be working in just
17:05
Speaker 1: the right language for a movable type printing press to
17:08
Speaker 1: really make sense. Should we talk about this guy? Yeah,
17:12
Speaker 1: because I like him. He's he's um. He had a
17:15
Speaker 1: bit of a hustle to him, and I like and
17:18
Speaker 1: he's also one of histories kind of hard luck guys
17:21
Speaker 1: in a way, even though I mean, you know, his
17:23
Speaker 1: name is legendary, so you can't put a price on that.
17:27
Speaker 1: I'm sure he would have liked to have put a
17:28
Speaker 1: price on that, so it I just want to say,
17:31
Speaker 1: from what I saw, it is very much up for
17:33
Speaker 1: debate whether he actually was financially ruined in the end
17:37
Speaker 1: that he was doing fine. Because one thing we got
17:40
Speaker 1: to tell everybody chuck out of the gate is Guttenberg
17:44
Speaker 1: was born at a time where his father was a patrician.
17:47
Speaker 1: He was an aristocrat in Um in Germany. Mains is
17:51
Speaker 1: it mains Minz Germany. Um, So he was, you know, notable,
17:57
Speaker 1: but this wasn't a time where people of that class,
18:00
Speaker 1: you know, he wasn't like a king or anything like yet,
18:03
Speaker 1: so there was not a lot of documentation of his birth.
18:05
Speaker 1: Were not entirely certain when he was born. His early
18:08
Speaker 1: life has kind of lost to history too, because he
18:11
Speaker 1: was just kind of a nobody until he invented the
18:13
Speaker 1: printing press. But the thing is, when he invented the
18:16
Speaker 1: printing press, it was so revolutionary and so obvious how
18:20
Speaker 1: revolutionary it was out of the gate that within a
18:23
Speaker 1: decade or two of his death, historians were studying and
18:26
Speaker 1: documenting his life. So there's a surprising amount of stuff
18:30
Speaker 1: that was documented about him that's preserved still. But the
18:34
Speaker 1: stuff that we do have is almost entirely his work.
18:38
Speaker 1: And then court records when he was dragged into court
18:41
Speaker 1: by creditors and investors. Yeah, so you said he had
18:44
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hustle, um, I think ed says.
18:48
Speaker 1: They referred to him charitably as having entrepreneurial flair. It's
18:52
Speaker 1: another word of saying he had a bit of a
18:54
Speaker 1: hustle to him, and he would get in He was
18:56
Speaker 1: always trying to make a buck, always had some sort
18:58
Speaker 1: of scheme in the works, and which means he had
19:02
Speaker 1: investors a lot of times and a lot of times
19:04
Speaker 1: he might not come through. So as a result, he
19:07
Speaker 1: was taken to court a lot, like you said, and
19:09
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to build this guy's life out
19:11
Speaker 1: of court records, but we are able to construct a
19:14
Speaker 1: little bit of it because of him being hauled in
19:17
Speaker 1: there and being sued time and time again, and most notably,
19:20
Speaker 1: were able to kind of piece together the printing press
19:24
Speaker 1: that he invented, what he invented, what he knew when
19:26
Speaker 1: from these court records, because all of these um these
19:30
Speaker 1: lawsuits basically were over his work. They were between investors
19:35
Speaker 1: in his work and him. And the thing is is,
19:38
Speaker 1: like I don't have the impression that he was a
19:40
Speaker 1: hustler in the sense that he was a con man
19:43
Speaker 1: or shark or anything like that. He he had very
19:47
Speaker 1: high aspirations. He also had these smarts to figure out
19:51
Speaker 1: how to achieve these aspirations. He just didn't have the
19:54
Speaker 1: money to achieve these aspirations, so he needed outside help.
19:58
Speaker 1: His big problem is far as investors go, from what
20:01
Speaker 1: I can tell is that he was a perfectionist. So
20:04
Speaker 1: rather than just figure out how to invent the movable
20:06
Speaker 1: type printing press, which he did, he also tried to
20:09
Speaker 1: figure out one that could also print in red on
20:12
Speaker 1: a different set, or using copper engraving to create um
20:16
Speaker 1: different types of of type. Some stuff that like details
20:19
Speaker 1: that were like kind of unnecessary, but made this transform
20:24
Speaker 1: this thing from you know, an amazing piece of work
20:27
Speaker 1: to a masterpiece. And the time it took to be
20:31
Speaker 1: that much of a perfectionist made him run into creditors
20:35
Speaker 1: and investors that were not that patient. Yeah, And his
20:38
Speaker 1: first sort of tinkering with pressing anything, it seems because
20:42
Speaker 1: of again a lawsuit was in Strasbourg when he lived
20:46
Speaker 1: there in around fourteen thirty eight, is that ce and
20:53
Speaker 1: he would, uh, he had this plan to produce these
20:56
Speaker 1: trinkets for people going on religious pilgrimage is more than one. Yeah,
21:03
Speaker 1: So he had these tools that he could stamp out
21:06
Speaker 1: these trinkets and press these things, and so he he
21:09
Speaker 1: sort of had an idea at least of how this
21:11
Speaker 1: kind of technology worked as far as cutting something, stamping
21:15
Speaker 1: and pressing it. And there's some indication, Chuck, that he
21:18
Speaker 1: was already figuring out the rough contours, if not more
21:22
Speaker 1: detailed than that of his printing press in Strasbourg. Because
21:25
Speaker 1: that first court case um was by the family of
21:30
Speaker 1: some creditors who who took him to court because they
21:33
Speaker 1: wanted in on some secret work he was keeping from
21:37
Speaker 1: them um um and being investors in him, they were saying, well,
21:42
Speaker 1: you know, if you're doing work on the side, we
21:43
Speaker 1: should have a piece of that too. And that's where
21:46
Speaker 1: some historians are like, this, actually what they're describing here
21:48
Speaker 1: is part of the printing press because of debate. Still, well,
21:52
Speaker 1: I mean it was ten years later if that was
21:54
Speaker 1: in around four and by the time he got back
21:59
Speaker 1: to minds in fort teen forty eight, he borrowed some
22:02
Speaker 1: money from his cousin to do like a real printing business.
22:06
Speaker 1: So it's I mean, I think you could be right.
22:08
Speaker 1: It's very likely those people knew that he was in
22:11
Speaker 1: the back room with his plan to print books and
22:14
Speaker 1: they wanted some of that action, right, But he's like, no, dud,
22:17
Speaker 1: you you you in on the ground floor of the
22:20
Speaker 1: trinket business. This is a whole different, world changing business.
22:23
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to cough up some more dough. And
22:25
Speaker 1: they said nine yeah, they did say nine. And he said,
22:29
Speaker 1: all right, well, I'm gonna invent this thing, or I'm
22:31
Speaker 1: gonna cobble together a bunch of other people's work in
22:34
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense that you can, you know,
22:37
Speaker 1: make massive amounts of books that look good and that
22:40
Speaker 1: you can sell and make money on. And the Bible
22:43
Speaker 1: was a pretty obvious choice for the first big, big project.
22:48
Speaker 1: But he was like, the Bible is a lot to undertake. Um.
22:52
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen a Gutenberg Bible, they're they're huge,
22:55
Speaker 1: They're not there's two volumes. Yeah, there's not like these
22:58
Speaker 1: little handheld Bibles. They're very large arge and I didn't
23:01
Speaker 1: get an exact measurement, but you can see when someone
23:03
Speaker 1: holds it. It's a big, big book. It's like a
23:05
Speaker 1: big fat coffee table book. Eleven by eight mm hmm.
23:10
Speaker 1: They seem a little wider than that. But thirty six
23:15
Speaker 1: that's as high as I'm going. So he said, uh,
23:19
Speaker 1: one dollar. He said that I'm gonna I'm gonna not
23:22
Speaker 1: start with the Bible. Too much to bite off. It's
23:24
Speaker 1: a little doll um. So I'm gonna start out with
23:28
Speaker 1: some other stuff. I'm gonna print some um, some pamphlets.
23:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if I can sell these things. I'm
23:33
Speaker 1: gonna see how good they look. And h he did.
23:37
Speaker 1: He printed a grammar book, um was one of the
23:39
Speaker 1: first things. This is from another lawsuit by a Roman
23:43
Speaker 1: writer and it was a popular book, which was again
23:46
Speaker 1: it's a smart thing that he did. Is is basically
23:49
Speaker 1: taking like what would be a bestseller at the time
23:51
Speaker 1: and seeing if he could mass produce it instead of
23:54
Speaker 1: block book as a regular printed book. Right. So he
23:58
Speaker 1: was also doing broad cheese Wi your kind like early newspapers,
24:01
Speaker 1: which they had a pretty We should do one on
24:03
Speaker 1: newspapers because the early life newspapers were these broadsheets, and
24:07
Speaker 1: sailors would buy them, read them and then take them
24:10
Speaker 1: into town at the next port and they would be
24:13
Speaker 1: sold to those people who who most people weren't literate
24:17
Speaker 1: at the time, so they would hire somebody who could
24:19
Speaker 1: read in town to read the news out at like
24:21
Speaker 1: the local tavern or something. And we both have experience
24:25
Speaker 1: with newspapers. Sure, man, um, I would like to do
24:28
Speaker 1: newspapers one day. Let's do it. Oh totally, that sounds
24:31
Speaker 1: like a two parter to me, okay, so um he
24:34
Speaker 1: basically the upshot of all this. And I think that's
24:36
Speaker 1: the second time I've said that. I never say that. Um.
24:39
Speaker 1: I always want to like deliberately make everything much slower
24:42
Speaker 1: than that, the upshot of something like you want. Just
24:47
Speaker 1: like you said, as much as we talk about Guttenberg
24:50
Speaker 1: and party down, you know what's sad, I'm an unreliable
24:54
Speaker 1: narrator in my own life. Oh man, what a great quote.
24:57
Speaker 1: So Um. The the overall general point of what we've
25:02
Speaker 1: been saying for this moment is that he kind of
25:06
Speaker 1: broke his teeth on some slightly easier projects to kind
25:09
Speaker 1: of figure out the ins and outs and everything. And
25:12
Speaker 1: then when he was finally ready to do the Bible,
25:14
Speaker 1: he apparently was well aware that this was going to
25:17
Speaker 1: be a masterpiece. He had figured it out and he
25:20
Speaker 1: was ready to bite it off, and he started work
25:23
Speaker 1: on the Guttenberg Bible, also known as the Gutenberg Bible
25:27
Speaker 1: and also known as the forty two line Bible because
25:31
Speaker 1: that's how many lines he had per page. Um. And
25:35
Speaker 1: even at forty two lines per page, which was more
25:39
Speaker 1: lines because he lowered the space in between lines to
25:42
Speaker 1: fit more lines per page, it was still something like
25:45
Speaker 1: twelve hundred and eighty six pages um over two volumes.
25:49
Speaker 1: That's a lot. But the kind of bear that in mind.
25:53
Speaker 1: What we're talking about when we talk about this project eventually,
25:56
Speaker 1: is that he was creating twelve hundred and eighty six
25:59
Speaker 1: page bible. Okay, yeah, one at a time. Yeah, one
26:04
Speaker 1: page at a time. That is so, which we'll figure
26:07
Speaker 1: in here in a second. So he starts to work,
26:09
Speaker 1: he knows that he I mean, before he starts, he
26:11
Speaker 1: knows that he's gonna be able to charge a lot
26:13
Speaker 1: for these things. And he knows he's gonna need to
26:16
Speaker 1: crank them out um as quickly as he can. So
26:20
Speaker 1: he's gonna need more space, he's gonna need more presses,
26:22
Speaker 1: he's gonna need a lot of ink and and other
26:25
Speaker 1: little dude ads and spawn divots that it takes to
26:27
Speaker 1: make one of these. And he's gonna need people. You know,
26:30
Speaker 1: he's gonna need some assistance. He can't do it all
26:32
Speaker 1: by himself. Because here's where that comes back. You can
26:35
Speaker 1: only it's not like he would print out a bible,
26:38
Speaker 1: and he's like, I got one go sell this thing
26:41
Speaker 1: and we can continue to fund our little project. Here.
26:43
Speaker 1: You gotta print out one page at a time, over
26:47
Speaker 1: and over and over and over, and then print out
26:49
Speaker 1: page two over and over and over or two and
26:52
Speaker 1: whatever the reverse side is. And eventually you're gonna be
26:56
Speaker 1: able to start putting them together in bound form, and
27:00
Speaker 1: only then can you start actually making money, right, right,
27:04
Speaker 1: So he he was Also that was another thing that
27:06
Speaker 1: he doesn't get credited for enough, I think, is that
27:08
Speaker 1: he figured out like how to um do a rough
27:11
Speaker 1: primitive version of an assembly line. Basically he was he
27:15
Speaker 1: was mass producing these books out of the gate. That
27:17
Speaker 1: was the point. You're you're mass producing it, not doing
27:20
Speaker 1: it one page at a time, like you were saying,
27:22
Speaker 1: like the old block books used to be. Right. So
27:25
Speaker 1: he gets four presses going at a time, later went
27:29
Speaker 1: up to I think six, and because of all this
27:32
Speaker 1: upfront money that he needs to keep this going until
27:35
Speaker 1: he can sell them and turner profit was uh, he
27:38
Speaker 1: needed like always, he needed some dough. He he wasn't
27:41
Speaker 1: just he didn't have his pockets lined with money. So
27:44
Speaker 1: he had to go to a guy. And that's this
27:47
Speaker 1: guy's name was Johann fust Hm. And and because he
27:52
Speaker 1: calculated he would need about two years and because before
27:55
Speaker 1: he could start selling. Yeah, the whole project, he figured
27:58
Speaker 1: out was going to be about two years. This print
28:01
Speaker 1: run of Bibles is going to take him two years
28:03
Speaker 1: to do. So he needed to be able to pay
28:04
Speaker 1: everybody he needed money for all the supplies, all the materials.
28:07
Speaker 1: He needed to be able to survive for two years
28:09
Speaker 1: because he would not be able to sell one single
28:11
Speaker 1: Bible until all of them were done. None of them
28:14
Speaker 1: were going to be done until all of them were done.
28:16
Speaker 1: That's just the way the process worked out, right. So Foost,
28:20
Speaker 1: I think saw the writing on the wall, knew it
28:23
Speaker 1: was gonna be expensive, but knew that he was going
28:26
Speaker 1: to probably be able to make a lot of money.
28:28
Speaker 1: And who knows, I don't know this Foost guy from Adam,
28:32
Speaker 1: but maybe in the back of his head he also thought,
28:35
Speaker 1: you know what, I might also be able to just
28:38
Speaker 1: sue this guy at some point and take control of
28:41
Speaker 1: these printing presses because this guy didn't have a pot
28:44
Speaker 1: to urinate in and he's not gonna have any money.
28:47
Speaker 1: So and that's exactly what happened. He ended up um
28:51
Speaker 1: having no assets other than these presses. And when he
28:53
Speaker 1: got sued and lost, and I don't even know what
28:56
Speaker 1: he got sued for was it for taking too long? Yes, yes,
29:01
Speaker 1: that makes the whole thing that much worse that he
29:03
Speaker 1: was sued basically like I was saying, for being a perfectionist.
29:08
Speaker 1: And technically Guttenberg could have gotten the Bible out before
29:14
Speaker 1: Foost sued him. Um, but again he was Yeah, just
29:19
Speaker 1: a slightly less masterful version that would have just knocked everyone.
29:23
Speaker 1: So had just the same amount of an impact on
29:25
Speaker 1: the world. I don't think the world would have been
29:27
Speaker 1: changed really any um had he had he gotten him
29:32
Speaker 1: out in a time when Foost was was willing to
29:35
Speaker 1: not sue him, but he wasn't prepared to do that.
29:38
Speaker 1: He was he was an artist. He was an artist.
29:40
Speaker 1: He had the soul of an artist. So he just
29:42
Speaker 1: kept going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole to
29:44
Speaker 1: try to make this thing more and more perfect and elaborate.
29:47
Speaker 1: And Foost said enough, and the court actually sided with Foost.
29:50
Speaker 1: So Foost line him eight hundred guilden or golden um,
29:55
Speaker 1: which at the time was about the the price of
30:00
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Eight houses. That's what we're going with.
30:03
Speaker 1: We'll see in a second it will make sense. But
30:05
Speaker 1: let's say eight average cost houses. Um, that's how much
30:10
Speaker 1: he lent him, Then he did it again. He lent
30:11
Speaker 1: him another eight hundred golden, and so he was into
30:14
Speaker 1: him for sixteen hundred golden. Would have easily been able
30:17
Speaker 1: to pay that back when he Foost. Foost sued him.
30:21
Speaker 1: The court said, not only do you owe him sixteen
30:23
Speaker 1: hundred golden, you owe him in interest. We're gonna say
30:26
Speaker 1: to get this, about two thousand and twenty golden is
30:30
Speaker 1: what he ended up having to pay Foost. Now, did
30:33
Speaker 1: he sue him because, uh, he was that far over schedule?
30:39
Speaker 1: The only because he told him it would take two years.
30:42
Speaker 1: Did it take like six or something? I saw that
30:44
Speaker 1: from the court records. They believe that he was done
30:48
Speaker 1: by fourteen fifty five, and I believe he started in
30:52
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty three, so he was probably right on schedule.
30:56
Speaker 1: I have the impression that Foost was a bit of
30:58
Speaker 1: an impatient sure squad well, and also get the feeling
31:02
Speaker 1: that that Guttenberg probably didn't dot his eyes and cross
31:06
Speaker 1: his teas contractually. Maybe not, maybe not. I could see
31:11
Speaker 1: that too. You got to bake in a little bit
31:12
Speaker 1: of over over time there, you know for sure. But
31:16
Speaker 1: I think I think he may have been roughly on schedule,
31:19
Speaker 1: because because by fourteen fifty two he had created the Bible.
31:24
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing. Here's the other reason why
31:26
Speaker 1: Foosh suing him was a bit of a screwjob or
31:28
Speaker 1: a huge screw job. Um. And by screwjob, I mean
31:31
Speaker 1: like the act of a screwdriver screwing a screw into
31:35
Speaker 1: a slab of wood that the screw doesn't want to
31:37
Speaker 1: go into that wood. It wants to stay free. That
31:40
Speaker 1: kind of kids. So um, the reason why, why why
31:44
Speaker 1: it really stunk that Foos sued him, is because he
31:48
Speaker 1: got the Bible's done. The Bible. The Bible run was completed,
31:52
Speaker 1: and Foosh still sued him. And still one Um, if
31:55
Speaker 1: I had been foosed in, the investor would have been like, okay, fine,
31:58
Speaker 1: you finished. Um, maybe pay me more or something like that.
32:01
Speaker 1: But that was not the case. Yeah, and who knows
32:03
Speaker 1: what's going on back then? He could have bribed a
32:06
Speaker 1: judge who got a piece of the action. You know.
32:09
Speaker 1: I mean not speculation, but I'm just saying, it's not
32:11
Speaker 1: like today when our court system is just so perfect
32:14
Speaker 1: in every way, right, wall, let's run exclusively by artificial intelligence.
32:20
Speaker 1: So um ed was kind enough to cobble together if
32:23
Speaker 1: you just sort of fun facts about that Bible run. Uh.
32:26
Speaker 1: He printed a hundred and eighty of these things, initially
32:29
Speaker 1: sold all of them, of course. Uh today there are
32:32
Speaker 1: forty nine of them still around, which um ed points
32:36
Speaker 1: out and and I agree, is a really great UM
32:39
Speaker 1: survival percentage for something that old UM forty nine out
32:44
Speaker 1: of a hundred and eighty. And that just sort of
32:46
Speaker 1: pinpoints UM or or just puts a point in the
32:49
Speaker 1: fact that puts a pin in what am I trying
32:51
Speaker 1: to say, really drives home the fact that these things
32:55
Speaker 1: were very cherished and taken care of from the beginning. UM.
32:59
Speaker 1: I went to see how much he could buy one
33:00
Speaker 1: of these four Oh yeah, what'd you find? Well? Eight
33:03
Speaker 1: seven was the last one I saw at auction. UM.
33:06
Speaker 1: There maybe one since then, but in seven it went
33:09
Speaker 1: for five point four million, So that was one one volume.
33:13
Speaker 1: A complete set hasn't been auctioned since nineteen seventy eight,
33:16
Speaker 1: for two point two million in nineteen seventy eight dollars.
33:19
Speaker 1: From what I saw, if you were you get the
33:22
Speaker 1: New Old Testament only or something if you're lucky, but
33:26
Speaker 1: if the complete copy they think would be UM thirty
33:29
Speaker 1: five million today. I think it went to auction. That
33:32
Speaker 1: makes sense, it's about right. But so so he made
33:36
Speaker 1: two he made two versions. He made one like a
33:38
Speaker 1: regular version on paper and it sold for twenty golden,
33:43
Speaker 1: and he made a vellum one on calf skin for
33:46
Speaker 1: fifty golden. I mean forty five of those. So allow
33:49
Speaker 1: me to figure these calculations real quick. Okay, boy, here
33:52
Speaker 1: we go. So remember I'm going to get this right right.
33:58
Speaker 1: So there's this historian named Andrew Petigree who says that
34:02
Speaker 1: a house in Mainz Mines would have cost up to
34:06
Speaker 1: a hundred golden a house. So the total that he
34:11
Speaker 1: could have made selling this is these bibles is hundred
34:14
Speaker 1: and eighty print run of bibles is fifty golden. It
34:19
Speaker 1: is let's say, at a hundred golden a piece. That's
34:21
Speaker 1: forty nine and a half houses. Don't ask about the
34:24
Speaker 1: half of a house, but let's say today's dollars that
34:26
Speaker 1: we're saying that a house is two hundred thousand dollars
34:29
Speaker 1: per house. Okay, so two hundred thousand dollars times forty
34:33
Speaker 1: nine and a half houses means that he made off
34:36
Speaker 1: of these hundred and eighty bibles almost ten million dollars. Oh,
34:41
Speaker 1: I can't wait for the correction. It's right, dude, I
34:44
Speaker 1: I am definitely right. And so here's the other thing too.
34:47
Speaker 1: So Um, when Foost sues him and gets that twenty
34:51
Speaker 1: like two, gets that judgment of two thousand golden against him, Um,
34:56
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, well, that ruined Guttenberg and
35:00
Speaker 1: he died a pauper. If that Bible runs sold out,
35:04
Speaker 1: he still would have had more than half of that
35:06
Speaker 1: nearly ten million dollars left over after paying Foost. So
35:10
Speaker 1: it's very much unclear that that he was a pauper
35:13
Speaker 1: or not. The the overall point of what I've been
35:17
Speaker 1: saying up to this moment is this upshot. It's that, Um.
35:22
Speaker 1: That was the word you could have used earlier too,
35:25
Speaker 1: when you were looking for a word upshot, what it worked.
35:29
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to encourage the use of that though.
35:31
Speaker 1: But the the the the upshot of his that Foost
35:36
Speaker 1: got his hands on Guttenberg's printing press right after that
35:40
Speaker 1: that run of Bibles was made, or his six printing presses.
35:44
Speaker 1: Rather he and his and his printing assistant Um, who
35:49
Speaker 1: was actually Foost's son in law, that he got the whole,
35:53
Speaker 1: the whole, she bank, all this plates everything. You know.
35:56
Speaker 1: My favorite thing about your math stuff is what I
36:00
Speaker 1: know the second that you start that there are thousands
36:03
Speaker 1: of people math math busters, if you will that just
36:08
Speaker 1: immediately get out their pencil and pad and to see
36:11
Speaker 1: if they can prove you wrong. That is fantastic. Yeah,
36:15
Speaker 1: it is a game, and I always win. All right,
36:18
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take another break. Okay, we're gonna tally
36:21
Speaker 1: up your math uh wins and losses, and we're going
36:25
Speaker 1: to talk about how this thing actually worked right after this.
36:48
Speaker 1: So I think we came up chuck with the the
36:51
Speaker 1: that I've won every math contest I've I've initiated everyone. Okay, alright,
36:57
Speaker 1: so shall we talk about the Guttenberg Press. Yes, well,
37:02
Speaker 1: you got your individual letters, okay, al right, so if
37:06
Speaker 1: you're gonna we we said he ended up making three
37:08
Speaker 1: hundred of these things, so you're gonna need all these
37:10
Speaker 1: little individual letters carved. Uh, they're carved into steel using
37:15
Speaker 1: these little files, and these are the master letters, and
37:18
Speaker 1: then they punch those into soft metal um, most likely copper,
37:24
Speaker 1: and then the impression in the copper is formed into
37:27
Speaker 1: a mold and then you're gonna pour molten metal. And
37:30
Speaker 1: what I saw was that one thing that Gutenberg definitely
37:34
Speaker 1: invented with this hand casting instrument where they actually uh,
37:38
Speaker 1: where you would actually pour this this molten metal. I
37:41
Speaker 1: think he used lead tin and uh antimony whatever that is.
37:45
Speaker 1: That was an alloy that he invented, even like add
37:48
Speaker 1: that to his list. Yeah, so he invented some stuff.
37:50
Speaker 1: But this is how you would actually make the individual
37:53
Speaker 1: letters was by this early process. Right. So the one
37:57
Speaker 1: thing that's still up for debate, supposedly is whether he
38:00
Speaker 1: invented or used that punch matrix thing where you punched
38:03
Speaker 1: the letter into a softer metal. It's they're not entirely certain,
38:06
Speaker 1: but yes, he definitely was casting letters with alloy of
38:10
Speaker 1: his own making um, and apparently it cooled like the
38:14
Speaker 1: moment like you just poured it in closed the mold
38:17
Speaker 1: and opened it and it would be cool enough to
38:18
Speaker 1: dump out on the table and start filing down. Because
38:21
Speaker 1: that was the other thing too, You had to file
38:22
Speaker 1: down every letter to make sure that they were uniform.
38:25
Speaker 1: And he even went, this is an example of how
38:28
Speaker 1: how um, how detailed he got. He even was like, oh, well,
38:32
Speaker 1: this this f has a lot of space between, you know,
38:36
Speaker 1: on either side of it. So he filed down the
38:38
Speaker 1: sides of all the fs after testing it a few times,
38:40
Speaker 1: to make basically curning. He was. He was. He figured
38:44
Speaker 1: out curning right out of the gate um, the first
38:46
Speaker 1: time anyone had ever really created the printing press. There
38:49
Speaker 1: was also curning, just the spacing between letters. Like, if
38:54
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a bunch of letters strung far apart,
38:57
Speaker 1: it looks really weird. Curning is out of that. That's hot.
39:01
Speaker 1: That's a high curning value. Low curning values where they're
39:04
Speaker 1: tighter together, which is what you want. Yeah. So the
39:07
Speaker 1: long and short of his this of these little blocks, though,
39:10
Speaker 1: is that you only needed to carve each one one time. Um,
39:15
Speaker 1: you had to pour a bunch of molds if you
39:16
Speaker 1: wanted a bunch of ease or as or other vowels
39:18
Speaker 1: and stuff, but yeah, that was nothing. You only had
39:21
Speaker 1: to do that carving once. File these things down until
39:24
Speaker 1: they're all uniform, and then it moves on to someone
39:27
Speaker 1: known as the compositor. Yes, the compositor or not to
39:33
Speaker 1: be confused with the eradicate tour from kids in the
39:36
Speaker 1: hall um. The compository was the person who sat there
39:39
Speaker 1: with like the manuscript right and read each line. And
39:43
Speaker 1: as they were reading each line, they were gathering the
39:45
Speaker 1: letters they needed and putting putting the letters together in
39:48
Speaker 1: like a like a handheld little rack um to basically
39:52
Speaker 1: make each line. And they would slide each line into
39:55
Speaker 1: a frame um called the form um. And you we
40:00
Speaker 1: do that just line by line until the whole form
40:03
Speaker 1: the whole frame is filled up with the lines that
40:06
Speaker 1: you're going to print a page with. Yeah, basically what
40:09
Speaker 1: they did in Korea two years earlier, except with far
40:13
Speaker 1: fewer characters. Yeah. And you get the idea that if
40:17
Speaker 1: you were a composit or working for uh, for Guttenberg,
40:21
Speaker 1: the perfectionist, it was probably a pretty nervy job because
40:26
Speaker 1: you're reading that manuscript. Any misspelling, any any misuse of punctuation, uh,
40:34
Speaker 1: that would have I'm sure there would have been heck
40:36
Speaker 1: to pay from Herr Guttenberg. So I imagine that job
40:40
Speaker 1: was just sort of um high, high tension. And Gutenberg
40:43
Speaker 1: very famously was super passive aggressive in his managerial stuff.
40:48
Speaker 1: He would just kind of wander on the shop with
40:50
Speaker 1: his coffee and say, you're gonna I'm gonna need you
40:53
Speaker 1: to work Sunday as well. Yeah. Yeah, And it was
40:58
Speaker 1: it was like you try to avoid him or whatevery,
41:00
Speaker 1: but you had the sixth sense to like pop up
41:02
Speaker 1: exactly right as you were trying to leave for the day, right,
41:05
Speaker 1: and he would and he would ask about your stapler,
41:08
Speaker 1: and he would say my red stapler. Yeah, that was
41:12
Speaker 1: that was one of the press the press men. It's
41:16
Speaker 1: just kind of kept in the basement. It was a
41:19
Speaker 1: weird time for printing. It was another weird time is
41:24
Speaker 1: going to be right now when I ask you if
41:27
Speaker 1: you understand this gobbledygook about folios, Yeah, so what right?
41:34
Speaker 1: So it's way easier to print. Yes, a logistical nightmare
41:39
Speaker 1: is another way to put it. But if you take, um,
41:43
Speaker 1: you know, one large page that's actually two pages of
41:46
Speaker 1: a book wide, and fold it, you have a folio.
41:50
Speaker 1: And supposedly Guttenberg printed these things in folios of five,
41:56
Speaker 1: so that each each little I guess the thing that
41:59
Speaker 1: they did was, um was like twenty pages. They would
42:03
Speaker 1: do twenty pages at a time for remember something like
42:07
Speaker 1: eighties six pages. They were doing this total per bible
42:11
Speaker 1: UM and and I mean that was that The key
42:14
Speaker 1: was this I know. To answer your question, No, I
42:16
Speaker 1: didn't fully understand the folios. I think there was a
42:19
Speaker 1: lot made of folios when there didn't necessarily need to
42:21
Speaker 1: be a lot made of folios. The point was that
42:25
Speaker 1: when you printed this stuff, this is very very tricky,
42:29
Speaker 1: you had to dampen the paper because if you didn't,
42:33
Speaker 1: did you like that was leaping ahead? Yeah? When when
42:38
Speaker 1: you print UM on paper using the kind of ink
42:41
Speaker 1: that he's he created another thing you created, which we'll
42:44
Speaker 1: talk about um. The paper can stick very easily unless
42:47
Speaker 1: you dampen the paper. The problem is that you gotta
42:49
Speaker 1: print on the back side too, But you can't dampen
42:52
Speaker 1: the paper again, my friend, or else you're gonna smear
42:54
Speaker 1: the ink on the other side, or it's gonna run
42:56
Speaker 1: or whatever. So they would print, They would dampen the paper,
43:00
Speaker 1: print one side, and then have to print the other side,
43:04
Speaker 1: like after the ink on the one side was dried,
43:06
Speaker 1: before the paper had dried fully, right, Which is that's
43:10
Speaker 1: gotta be tricky. You talk about nerv nous and high stress,
43:15
Speaker 1: I mean especially when you're on like a if it's
43:18
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty bibles in a ten million dollar project,
43:21
Speaker 1: I mean each page is rather expensive and valuable, so
43:26
Speaker 1: you don't want to screw up any of them, you know.
43:28
Speaker 1: So if you want to look at a press again,
43:30
Speaker 1: I would go to YouTube and see the video but
43:32
Speaker 1: actually being done. But the press has two sections. You've
43:35
Speaker 1: got this frame uh that allows the plates in the
43:39
Speaker 1: paper to align themselves, um, the carriage and then the
43:43
Speaker 1: actual press part of the press. And you set these
43:47
Speaker 1: plates onto the carriage and they're facing up and then
43:50
Speaker 1: you apply inc using these uh and when you see
43:53
Speaker 1: it on the video that it kind of looks like
43:55
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like these big giant gourds there.
43:58
Speaker 1: They have a handle and then this big round sort
44:02
Speaker 1: of drumhead looking um body and you and you stamp,
44:07
Speaker 1: you know, you roll this thing all around in the
44:09
Speaker 1: ink and then roll them around on each other to
44:11
Speaker 1: make sure that all all the INCA is really really
44:13
Speaker 1: even and it's actually goose skin, uh, these pads are.
44:17
Speaker 1: And then you, uh, you just go around and stamp
44:20
Speaker 1: these four plates. And you know, from the looks the
44:24
Speaker 1: way this guy did it, it took about maybe a
44:27
Speaker 1: minute and a half to fully ink them for a
44:30
Speaker 1: good page. And these things look kind of heavy. You know,
44:32
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of. He doesn't roll them because if
44:35
Speaker 1: you roll them you end up smearing, So he's just
44:37
Speaker 1: sort of pounding them on there. And it's a lot
44:40
Speaker 1: of work. And and all of this looks like a
44:43
Speaker 1: lot of work, even the pressing part is it takes like,
44:46
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of manual strength. Well yeah, I
44:49
Speaker 1: mean again two years to just print bibles. Yeah, so
44:53
Speaker 1: I mean it's a physical workout. Um, he uses this
44:56
Speaker 1: inc you mentioned it's an oil based varnish previ lee.
45:00
Speaker 1: For many, many hundreds of years they use water based
45:03
Speaker 1: which is just no good. Water based ink is is
45:05
Speaker 1: not what you want to do when you're printing a book. No,
45:09
Speaker 1: And that was actually another reason why it didn't catch on.
45:12
Speaker 1: Printing didn't catch on in in China and Korea two
45:14
Speaker 1: as they were using water based inks exclusively and it runs,
45:18
Speaker 1: its smears, it doesn't stay in place. It's just a
45:21
Speaker 1: bad jam. And that was another innovation of Guttenberg's um,
45:25
Speaker 1: which was to to use oil based ink. There was somebody,
45:30
Speaker 1: I can't remember, we've talked about it in a podcast before,
45:33
Speaker 1: but they were they were talking about how some inventor
45:36
Speaker 1: just knocked something out of the park. His first time out,
45:39
Speaker 1: and they said that it was akin to invent like
45:42
Speaker 1: it had the right brothers invented their airplane complete with
45:45
Speaker 1: UM airline miles and food trades that that came down
45:50
Speaker 1: off the back of the sea in front. It was
45:51
Speaker 1: just like this complete thing. And that's that's kind of
45:54
Speaker 1: what Gutenberg did with the printing press. He he solved
45:57
Speaker 1: all the problems all at once in his his initial invention,
46:01
Speaker 1: like he figured it all out, and as we'll see,
46:04
Speaker 1: it stayed the same for hundreds of years as a result. Yeah,
46:07
Speaker 1: So to hold the paper in place, because you know
46:09
Speaker 1: this frame is upright, and then you end up folding
46:12
Speaker 1: it down. It's held in by these pins. He's a
46:14
Speaker 1: little looked like little nail heads sticking or not nail heads,
46:17
Speaker 1: but nail pointy parts the opposite of the head. And
46:21
Speaker 1: that way, when you flip it over because you're gonna
46:23
Speaker 1: have to print that other side, it's exactly in the
46:25
Speaker 1: same spot that it was before. Another nice little, very
46:29
Speaker 1: rudimentary way of making something perfect. Uh. And then you
46:33
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier he made certain parts read this rubrication UM.
46:38
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure what they did for the Guttenberg Bible,
46:40
Speaker 1: but in the King James version. If I'm not mistaken,
46:43
Speaker 1: Jesus's words are all in red. If i'm I think
46:48
Speaker 1: I remember that being the case, But I think he
46:50
Speaker 1: just used it here for certain parts and maybe flourishes
46:53
Speaker 1: of art, and there was some hand drawn art and
46:56
Speaker 1: stuff like that as well. Well, yeah, they you went
46:58
Speaker 1: to hand drawn because they they he had so much
47:01
Speaker 1: trouble with the the red um, like going back and
47:05
Speaker 1: printing after the black was printed, printing on the same
47:07
Speaker 1: page with just the red text. It's pretty advanced, right,
47:11
Speaker 1: But they said, yeah, we'll just go do the hand
47:13
Speaker 1: lettering like like traditional least, and nobody will be mad
47:16
Speaker 1: at us for it, right, Like what do you call
47:18
Speaker 1: it when the first letter is big drop cap? Yeah,
47:21
Speaker 1: drop cap. They did those in red for sure. Uh.
47:24
Speaker 1: And then you've got your screw Uh the screw press
47:27
Speaker 1: he used. He kind of ganked from wine and great presses.
47:31
Speaker 1: And you know, once you have this think inked up,
47:34
Speaker 1: you move it over to the press and it's just
47:37
Speaker 1: a big, big armed lever. It's not like something that
47:41
Speaker 1: moves in a circle. You just kind of pull it
47:43
Speaker 1: really tough, uh, kind of one or maybe two times
47:47
Speaker 1: and then boom, you've got your printed page, you do,
47:51
Speaker 1: and and Ed points out something that I think is overlooked.
47:54
Speaker 1: But you know, and one of the other problems with
47:56
Speaker 1: Chinese and Korean printing or any kind of printing using
47:59
Speaker 1: like blocks or something like that is you're gonna get
48:02
Speaker 1: uneven pressure, so you're gonna get an uneven transfer of
48:06
Speaker 1: One of the genius things about the press about it
48:08
Speaker 1: using basically a wine press for printing, is that it
48:12
Speaker 1: applies even slow pressure at you know, increasing pressure and
48:16
Speaker 1: then decreasing pressure as you unscrew the screw, so the
48:21
Speaker 1: at the same rate, like over the whole plate, right,
48:24
Speaker 1: So there was a nice even amount of pressure that
48:27
Speaker 1: was increasingly introduced and decreasingly reduced. Um that that really
48:32
Speaker 1: kind of made this this beautiful outcome for the on
48:36
Speaker 1: the printed page. Yeah, you get when this guy in
48:38
Speaker 1: this video holds up the little printed page at the
48:41
Speaker 1: end there, you know, there's a little moment of you
48:43
Speaker 1: and going on in that room, right and like a
48:46
Speaker 1: little trickle of blood comes out of his ears. He's
48:48
Speaker 1: just gazing into the king Man. I was worried about
48:50
Speaker 1: that guy from I gotta go see that. You should
48:52
Speaker 1: check him out. So um, that's I mean, that's the
48:56
Speaker 1: printing press we we we should say, after Guttenberg into
49:00
Speaker 1: those bibles, Foost got his hands on those presses almost
49:03
Speaker 1: immediately and in very short order, I think, like less
49:08
Speaker 1: than two years released Assaulter, which is also considered a masterpiece,
49:13
Speaker 1: but Foost put his name on it. Even though Gutenberg
49:16
Speaker 1: had basically created the whole thing. He also made a
49:19
Speaker 1: business for himself creating these bibles using Gutenberg's old plates
49:24
Speaker 1: because he got his hands on all those through the court.
49:27
Speaker 1: But again, Guttenberg was certainly not lost to history. Everybody
49:31
Speaker 1: knew what he did and very quickly, you know, revered
49:34
Speaker 1: him as a hero extraordinary. But we were talking about
49:38
Speaker 1: what the Gutenberg press did for the world, and it's
49:43
Speaker 1: really tough to overstate the impact that it had on things. Yeah,
49:48
Speaker 1: I mean just think about, like you said, the first
49:50
Speaker 1: information Age, getting out information on on government and politics
49:55
Speaker 1: and democracy, and I mean just little things like how
49:59
Speaker 1: tos and you know, how to how to that there
50:02
Speaker 1: might have been a how to on how to make
50:03
Speaker 1: those nails that we talked about in the Blacksmithing episode,
50:07
Speaker 1: although I think a lot of that has passed down,
50:09
Speaker 1: but all of a sudden, you can get this out
50:11
Speaker 1: on mass and and that's the whole thing. It's like,
50:14
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, hundreds and thousands and hundreds of
50:17
Speaker 1: thousands of people could read information right, and they could
50:21
Speaker 1: learn to read too, because books were now way more
50:25
Speaker 1: affordable than they have been before. And actually, ironically enough,
50:28
Speaker 1: I ran across the history dot com article called seven
50:31
Speaker 1: ways the Printing Press changed the World by our own
50:34
Speaker 1: Dave Rubs. He went to um he he points out this,
50:38
Speaker 1: and I thought this was really important. With the printing press,
50:41
Speaker 1: that made it way easier to make way more copies
50:44
Speaker 1: of something than ever before, which also made it harder
50:47
Speaker 1: to stamp out new ideas. Whereas before, if you had
50:51
Speaker 1: some heretic who had this new idea about, you know,
50:54
Speaker 1: the earth revolving around the sun rather than the other
50:57
Speaker 1: way around, all you do is kill that person, burn
51:00
Speaker 1: about the steak, and then burn their copies of their
51:02
Speaker 1: notes along with them. In idea gone right now, that
51:06
Speaker 1: person could make a bunch of copies and disseminate them,
51:08
Speaker 1: and so this idea would be out there. You could
51:10
Speaker 1: kill that person, but their idea was going to survive
51:13
Speaker 1: because there were too many copies for you to get
51:15
Speaker 1: your hands on and stamp out. And that led to
51:18
Speaker 1: things like the Enlightenment, like the revolution in America and
51:21
Speaker 1: in France, and the birth of democracy in the West,
51:25
Speaker 1: like like all of this stuff came from that, the
51:27
Speaker 1: ability to disseminate things like never before in the legal system.
51:31
Speaker 1: It allowed judges to throw the book at people. Yeah
51:33
Speaker 1: before one book. Yeah, they wouldn't throw that one thing.
51:37
Speaker 1: They might not get it back, that's right. So wow,
51:41
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I think on that one. We
51:43
Speaker 1: should end u this episode on the Guttenberg Printing Press.
51:46
Speaker 1: Don't you Well? Since I said don't you, everybody's time
51:50
Speaker 1: for listener, ma'am alright, I'm gonna call this sweep Steaks Winner.
51:56
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52:28
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52:58
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53:04
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Speaker 1: If you ask me, yeah, and in a smart, responsible
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Speaker 1: paying off debt. Good for you. Yeah. Uh, Well, if
53:20
Speaker 1: you want us to give you a pat on the
53:21
Speaker 1: head for something you did. Email to us. You can
53:24
Speaker 1: send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
53:31
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53:33
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