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Show American Newspaperdom Joins in Honoring Johann Gutenberg, Who Gave the World the Invention of Printing From Movable Type r By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) THE American press during dur-ing 1940 is paying homage hom-age to Johann Gutenberg, Guten-berg, who 500 years ago in a little workshop in the free city of Strasbourg, now in Germany, invented the art that makes possible the modern mod-ern newspaper. Gutenberg's invention the discovery of a technique for casting from lead individual types bearing individual letters, let-ters, which can be arranged into lines for the printing of words and sentences makes it possible for you to read what is on this page. City-wide celebrations honoring honor-ing the father of printing, in which newspapers are actively participating, are being held during dur-ing the year 1940 throughout the western hemisphere as the result of the outstanding promotional work of Douglas C. McMurtrie, chairman of the Invention of Printing Anniversary committee for the International Association of Printing House CraftsmeN, an organization made up of 6,000 printing foremen and superintendents, superin-tendents, and leaders of other graphic arts groups. The significance of Gutenberg's invention can best be evaluated by looking backward into the world before the invention of printing. There were books before be-fore Gutenberg invented printing with movable types, but each of them had to be laboriously hand-lettered hand-lettered by a scribe or copyist. Months were required to produce a book the size of the average novel. When a scribe completed his work, ho had not the several thousand copies that make up an edition today, but only one copy to show for his efforts. The price of this single copy had to include the several years' salary for the scribe, the cost of parchment on which the book was written, and other expensive materials, plus profit. A man who owned a book in the days before Gutenberg, owned an object of curiosity to his neighbors. Bibles were so expensive ex-pensive even few churches could afford a copy. Because of the scarcity and costliness of books, there was no popular education as we know it today and many successful suc-cessful business men in the days before Gutenberg could neither read nor write. They had to call in professional scribes to perform those simple tasks for them. Inventor Born in Mainz. Johann Gutenberg, the inventor invent-or of an economical Drocess of printing, which made possible public education and the modern newspaper, was born of aristocratic aristo-cratic parents in the free city of Mainz about the year 1400. During his youth he was forced to flee Mainz and seek refuge in Strasbourg, about a hundred miles down the Rhine, because of an uprising of tradesmen and craftsmen against the aristocratic aristo-cratic families in his native city. There is evidence that Gutenberg Guten-berg was engaged in his printing experiments in Strasbourg at least as early as 1436. This fact is brought to light in testimony in a lawsuit at Strasbourg in 1439 which was occasioned over a partnership part-nership dispute. In this court case, settled in favor of Gutenberg, Guten-berg, a witness for the inventor testified that three years previous he bad been paid a sum of money "solely for what had to do with printing." When the inventor stated his printing experiments at Strasbourg, Stras-bourg, he had maiy principles and ideas at his disposal which helped assure the success of his endeavors. He had a counterpart counter-part of the printing press in the presses that had been used for centuries in vineyards for the pressing of grapes to make wine. Oil paints, which were being used by the artists of the period, would adhere to metal, and with slight adaptation, serve as printer's ink. In the year 105 A. D., the Chinese, Ts'ai Lun, invented paper, pa-per, and although it took a thousand thou-sand years for the secret of paper pa-per making to reach Europe, there were paper mills in all parts of Europe by the time of Gutenberg. Guten-berg. Payer gave the inventor an inexpensive material on which to print and did away with the expensive parchment on which had been printed the costly manuscript man-uscript books. The Chinese had also invented the process of wood block printing print-ing which was known in Europe by the time of Gutenberg. By this slow and cumbersome process proc-ess the portions of a wooden block bearing text or pictures or both, which were to appear on a p;igc were cut away. The carved face of this block was inked with water-coior ink, a sheet of paper was placed atop the inked surface sur-face jnd the text or pictures x were imprinted upon the paper by rubbing the back of the sliest ' ' ' I r - i The first printing press, such as the one used by Johann Gutenberg Guten-berg who 500 years ago invented printing as we know it today. Constructed Con-structed almost entirely of wood, the inked form was placed on the drawer-board of the press in the foreground, a sheet of paper was placed over the types and the form pushed under the press. Pressure Pres-sure was applied by the turning of the iron bar and screwing the platen, or suspended flat surface, against the paper and types. Only 300 single-page impressions a day could be printed with this press. Modern newspaper presses can turn out 38,000 complete newspapers every hour. with a padded block. It was much more practical for the Chinese, because of the thousands of symbols in their written language, lan-guage, to carve out an entire page and then dispose of it after using it, than to work out a system sys-tem for the use of movable types. There is evidence that the Chinese had experimented with movable or individual types before the time of Gutenberg, but they had to abandon them because of the multiplicity of symbols in their language. There is no evidence that knowledge of these Chinese experiments with movable types reached Europe before the time of Gutenberg. The Latin Donatus. It is interesting to note that among the very first products of Gutenberg's printing press were 17 successive editions of the "Donatus," a Latin grammar, so called from the name of its author. au-thor. This inexpensive printed book enabled schoolboys of the early Renaissance to speak and write the language which was then the universal language among educated people in every country in Europe. Contrary to popular opinion, he completed the printing of these editions of the Latin "Donatus" before he attempted to start work on his Earliest known portrait of Gutenberg, from a copperplate engraving published in Paris in 1584. (Courtesy Ludlow Typo-graph Typo-graph company.) first famous Gutenberg Bible, which is sometimes erroneously referred to as the first printed book. What is believed to be the earliest still existent specimen of printing produced by Gutenberg Guten-berg is the fragment of a German poem on the last judgment. It was printed about 1445 and of it there is preserved for posterity only two sides of one leaf measuring measur-ing about three and one-half by five inches. Because of its subject sub-ject matter, it is known to students stu-dents of printing as the "Fragment "Frag-ment of the World Judgment." After Gutenberg had developed his experiments with printing to a stage of practicable perfection around 1440, he returned to his native city of Mainz. Following his return to Mainz, Gutenberg started making plans for production produc-tion of his first Bible. All of the wealth left him by his aristocratic aristo-cratic father had been used up on his earlier experiments and in order to carry out production of this Bible, Gutenberg was forced to make two large loans from Johann Fust, a capitalist of Mainz. In 1455, the same year in which is behoved to have been completed complet-ed the famous Bible, Fust demanded de-manded recayment of his loans, plus interest. Gutenberg was unable un-able to meet Fust's demands and as the result of a lawsuit which followed, Gutenberg was dispossessed dispos-sessed of his work shop and printing print-ing equipment and the exclusive right to his invention. Following the tragic court battle with Fust, Gutenberg is known to have set up another smaller printing shop and to have printed a Latin dictionary and at least one other edition of the Bible. The inventor, however, never prospered in this enterprise enter-prise and in his last days he was dependent on a financial pension granted him by the Archbishop of Mainz, presumably for his work in pioneering printing. After wresting the printing shop and equipment from Gutenberg, Fust took with him into partnership partner-ship a lad named Peter Schoeffer, who had been one of the scribes of the manuscript books and later one of Gutenberg's helpers. The firm of Fust and Schoeffer was an outstanding financial success and went on to produce some of the most beautiful books of the Fifteenth Fif-teenth century. Friend Claims Press. Following Gutenberg's death early in 1463, the press and equipment equip-ment in his possession at that time were claimed by a friend, Dr. Konrad Humery, who had bought them for him. No one knows where the father of printing is buried. There was a story that his body had been interred in the Church of St. Francis Fran-cis at Mainz, but a search for it several years ago proved unavailing. unavail-ing. Gutenberg's claim to the honor of being the inventor of printing with movable types has been questioned in the past and the claims of some rival contenders, based largely on legend, have been advanced. However, no competent historian today questions ques-tions the specific documentary evidence on which rests the fame of Johann Gutenberg. Although Gutenberg never received re-ceived the financial rewards of the Edisons and the Fords and many other inventors of this modern mod-ern era, he undoubtedly had the satisfaction in his last days of seeing mankind carrying on the work he had so successfully pioneered. pio-neered. In the twilight of his life he saw printers he had trained go into Italy and Switzerland to establish the first presses there. The Seventeenth century saw the rise of the most powerful modern mod-ern manifestation of Gutenberg's invention in the form of the printed print-ed newspaper. The very first printed newspaper in the world was started in Germany in 1612. A newspaper began publication in England in the year 1622. America's first printed newspaper news-paper to go beyond one date of publication was the weekly Boston Bos-ton News Letter which first saw the light of day on April 24, 1704. The 24th day of the month appears ap-pears to be a good one on which to start a newspaper for on January Jan-uary 24, 1775, there appeared Benjamin Towne's Philadelphia Evening Post, America's first daily newspaper. Towne's paper had previously been a weekly publication. From these pioneers have descended de-scended the thousands of American Ameri-can newspapers, including this one, which have had and are daily exerting such a profound influence influ-ence on the lives of everyone. Every word printed in these modern mod-ern newspapers during printing's 500th anniversary year of 1940, is a monument to the inventive genius of Johann Gutenberg. |
