OCR Text |
Show tomorrow FRANK PARKER REVOLUTION' . . . learning Five hundred years ago a single sin-gle invention turned the world upside up-side down. In the year 1410, as nearly as historians can figure it, Johannes Gutenberg set up a printing- press in Mainz, Germany, Ger-many, and began printing sheets of paper and books from movable type. The exact date is not important, nor does it make much difference whether it was Gutenberg or a Fleming named Coster who actually actu-ally invented the new process of making many copies of a single manuscript and all of them exactly ex-actly alike. Whoever did it, and whenever, it was perhaps the greatest revolution in human history. his-tory. Consider. Up to that time practically prac-tically nobody knew how to read. Only the wealthy could afford to own books, and they usually had to hire men of learning to read them for them. The only educated edu-cated persons were priests of the Church, and not all of them could read. King John, famous because he granted the rights of freedom to the English people, at the points of the swords of the barons bar-ons at Runnymede, could not write his own name but had to make his mark on Magna Charta. When books began to be printed print-ed instead of written by hand, everybody who sought to learn could have access to the learnings of the whole world. ((LERICS . . . superiority The first books printed were religious books. Gutenberg's first important volume was the Bible, in Latin. The reason was mainly that the only folk who could write manuscripts were the clergy, and the language of the church was Latin. Before printing, hundreds of young priests were employed to make copies of manuscripts and it was never certain that any two copies were alike. The first printing print-ing types were copied from the lettering of those clerical manuscripts. manu-scripts. We get the work "clerk," which the English pronounce "dark," from the Latin word "clericus," meaning priest. Anybody who could read or write must be a priest. When printing came into use and anybody could learn to read the ancient exemption was abolished, abol-ished, but those who could read and write were, and still are, called "clerks." Perhaps the most important social effect of the invention in-vention of printing was that it ended the superiority of the priesthood over the ordinary man. EVOLUTION . . . presses Before Gutenberg, or whoever it was began to print on paper, many preliminary steps had been taken. Somebody had invented paper, probably the Chinese. Nobody No-body knows just when paper was introduced into Europe, but it was brought by Arab traders from the Orient, maybe around the year 1,000. Up to then the writers of books had used parchment or vellum, vel-lum, made of animal skins scraped thin. The ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus, which was thin sheets cut from the hard skin of reeds and flattened out. Gutenberg's crude hand press was made of wood, and three hundred hun-dred years later Benjamin Franklin Frank-lin was printing his Pennsylvania Gazette on a wooden press almost exactly like it. The Earl of Stanhope Stan-hope built the first iron printing Dress about 17 80, and 30 years later the first power presses were designed for the London Times. NEWSPAPERS . . . progress It took nearly 200 years after Printing was invented for enough People to learn to read so that it was worth anybody's while to Publish a newspaper. Most of the editors and publishers of the early Papers went to jail for printing news the government didn't like. After another 150 years the prin-clple prin-clple of the freedom of the press as established,- more people could read, but the cost of paper, made from rags, was so high that few could afford to buy news-Papers. news-Papers. The year before I was born in " home town of Stockbridge, Mass., th0 first cile;lp paper, made from, wood pulp, was manufactured. manufac-tured. That invention speedily cut the cost of newspapers and hooks. I was a boy in my 'teens when Ottmar Mergenthaler invented in-vented the first practical typecasting type-casting machine, which cut costs (Continued on Page Two) i Today and Tomorrow (Continued from Page One) of printed matter still further. Those two inventions, in one man's lifetime, have given us the modern newspaper. ! I've been a printer since I was nivcrsary of the first printing done in what is now the United Slates, by Stephen Daye of Boston. Bos-ton. It was 250 years ago, In 1690, that the first paper mill was sturtod in this country, and 150 years ago that tho most famous fa-mous of all American prlnloi-B, Benjamin Franklin, died. When Gutenberg was starting his first press, In 14 10, there was born in England a baby who was to wrile the I'hst book to be printed in tho English language just emerging from lis Norman-French Norman-French swaddling clolhcis. Ills name was OconYcy Chaucer, whose "Canterbury Tales" marked the beginning or minium English literature. 12 and got out my own little paper on a hand press. I've been making my living as a newspaper newspa-per man for close to 5 0 years. But for Gutenberg's invention 500 years ago 1 might today be a j cleric copying manuscripts in a monastery. Certainly I would bo living in a world vastly different from that which existed before : printing. A.i i:i!s.i;ies . . . si This year of 10-10 is certainly a year of great anniversaries. The 500th anniversary of printing, It. Is also tho 400th anniversary of thu setting up 0f the first printing print-ing press on tho American continent, conti-nent, by tho Spanish missionaries in Mexico, and it is the .'tooth an- |