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Show I Page 7 SOUTH SALT LAKE NEWS Thursday, October Trouble- - maker I He is Johannes Gutenberg, the man who invented movable type. Gutenberg had a hunch it would make a printers work easier if type could be used over and over again in various combinations. Before his time, printers carved entire texts on large blocks of wood. Gutenberg, experimenting, sawed up one of these blocks into individual letter - units. His idea worked. It made printing a great deal easier. But the ruckus it was to cause would have astounded this humble and devout German craftsman. For movable type not only simplified printing, it made possible for the first time the distribution of ideas to large numbers of people. Under the interchange of ideas, serfs became restless, national states developed, and feudalism crumbled. Revolutionary trouble-maker- s such as Voltaire, Tom Paine, and a group of uncouth pamphleteers in England took ideas directly to the people. They found print was the ideal way to express complex thoughts. It was true then, and it is true today. Printing made possible modern newspapers. Good newspapers always make trouble. Theyre trouble to officials who want to carry on the publics business in secret. Theyre trouble to anyone with entrenched authority. Theyre often troublesome to those whose private lives become suddenly caught up in the public business. But the work that newspapers do has become a basic link in our political process. Thats something for you to think about during Na- tional Newspaper Week Oct. 6 12, 1968. -- NEWSPAPERS...THE INDEPENDENT MEDIUM J NATIONAL OCTOBER NEWSPAPER WEEK 10, 1968 |