What took so long?

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July 2nd, 2014 at 3:07:41 PM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 346
Posts: 12545
The basics of the printing press are very simple. Essentially you do a negative of a page, smear some ink on it and press it on a paper. Voila: one printed page.

Why did it take thousands of years from the inception of writting to the development of printing?

Consider, the ancients knew a reversed image of a letter or symbol would print a correct version of it. There were signet rings and seals in Roman times. Hell, coins were struck, from reversed designs which included letters, since long before an undistinguished tribe in Palatium incorporated iteslf into the city of Rome. Molds, which are also inverted models in three dimensions, existed for sculpture and pottery even longer.

Why didn't anyone think to extend any of these well-known techniques at all?

It boggles the mind.

I mean, everything was there: writing, reversed images for making right-side images, ink, papyrus and parchment. All of it was there for millennia. What took so long?

It also makes one think: what other revolutionary developments have been hiding in plain sight for decades, centuries, or even millenia?
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July 2nd, 2014 at 3:19:43 PM permalink
Evenbob
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 146
Posts: 25010
Things are invented as the need arises. Necessity
is the mother of invention, as it were. Everything
looks easy once somebody else has done all the
heavy lifting. Edison got asked for the rest of his
life why it took him 3000 failed light bulb filiments
before he hit on carbon as the one that worked.
His standard answer was you have find everything
that doesn't work before you find the thing that
does.

Standing on the shoulders of giants is no joke.
Inventing something out of thin air, with nobody
or no book to turn to, is an unbelievable feat.
If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose.
July 2nd, 2014 at 3:23:58 PM permalink
rxwine
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 188
Posts: 18556
Weren't the masses illiterate in a lot of places?

No reason to print a lot of copies. That's my guess.

Also, maybe there was some protectionist feelings about being in charge of texts. Maybe it was job preservation. Ask the scribe, and he will read it for you. So, that made him more important.
You believe in an invisible god, and dismiss people who say they are trans? Really?
July 2nd, 2014 at 3:46:27 PM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 346
Posts: 12545
Quote: rxwine
Weren't the masses illiterate in a lot of places?


Yes. And they were still illiterate in pretty much the same proportion by the time of Herr Gutenberg.

Quote:
No reason to print a lot of copies. That's my guess.


It depends on the time period. Copyists have existed since ancientest times, too. Orders, laws, declarations and such issued by a Roman emperor were copied and distributed throughout the Empire. For large cities, multiple copies might be needed. A printing press would have been invaluable then.

Anyone with a modest knowledge of history or literatures knows there are a lot of works, and I mean a huge lot, which have been lost. We know they existed only because they are referenced by ohter authors, or because some authors claimed to ahve written x number of texts or poems. Had any ancient Greek or Roman or Carthaginian mint worker thought a little more, many of those lost books would have survived.
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July 2nd, 2014 at 4:18:16 PM permalink
Evenbob
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 146
Posts: 25010
Quote: rxwine
Weren't the masses illiterate in a lot of places?
.


The masses were 99% illiterate, there were
no schools and no need to read and write
anyway. Universities started in Europe in
the 12th and 13th centuries that rich kids
went to. They turned out lawyers and doctors
and clerics, mostly. It was in that time period
that a printing press became necessary and
so it was invented.
If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose.
July 2nd, 2014 at 11:44:15 PM permalink
Fleastiff
Member since: Oct 27, 2012
Threads: 62
Posts: 7831
Although broadsheets were printed about Lexington and Concord and appropriately devoted two lines to every Black death and only one line to every death of a White person, most of the news of the battles was passed in song at taverns and town squares.

Sure pamphleteers were active but taverns and coffee shops were vocal places.

Scriveners had functions but so too do our copy machines.
July 3rd, 2014 at 7:01:04 AM permalink
odiousgambit
Member since: Oct 28, 2012
Threads: 153
Posts: 5030
I don't think it is anti-Roman-Catholic to say so ... perhaps anti-church-of-the-time ... but one of the reasons the Protestant movement got started was over whether lay people should be able to read the Bible. The Church said no, stay illiterate and we will tell you what to think.

The printing press did grow out of this movement, I have been led to believe. The movement wanted people to read the Bible, and they needed more Bibles. Perhaps I am the victim of Protestant propaganda as Wikipedia does not seem to tell this exact same story [g]

Wikipedia does say the Chinese were working with something around 1041 and 1048 AD vis a vis Gutenburg in 1450.
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July 3rd, 2014 at 12:05:05 PM permalink
Evenbob
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 146
Posts: 25010
Quote: odiousgambit

The printing press did grow out of this movement, I have been led to believe. .


Chicken or the egg. The Bible was the first thing
printed so the movement grew out of that. Or
the movement caused the PP to be invented.
It came about because it was time, that's the
reason for most inventions.

If it was up to the Catholics, they'd still have the
Bible all to themselves. I'm sure Fr Gamble will
say we're wrong, the Church never had a strangle-
hold on education. Whatever..
If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose.
July 18th, 2014 at 9:49:44 AM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 346
Posts: 12545
What about electricity?

I'm going through the History of Science 1700-1900 (Roughtly from just after Newton to just before Einstein), and it's amazing how electricity changed things in the sciences and then in technology, and how long it took, too.

The ancients knew of electricity. At least they knew something was up. A Greek philosopher, whose name escapes me, showed that rubbing a piece of amber on wool made the amber attract light-weight things like feathers. That was static electricity. The very name electricity goes back to this era, as it derives from "elektron," the ancient Greek word for "amber."

Yet instead of furhtre development, there things stood for over 2,000 years. Imagine if the ancients had been able to make use of it. Imagine crude lightbulbs or even arc lights by the time Romulus and Remus were laying the foundations of a city in Latium.
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July 18th, 2014 at 11:15:31 AM permalink
boymimbo
Member since: Mar 25, 2013
Threads: 5
Posts: 732
Static electricity is a far cry from alternating and direct current.

The ancients knew nothing of conductors or wires. There was no technology to create copper wires, and certain no capability to create batteries. There was really no use for electricity either; it was known for a long time that water falling could provide power and generating needs (but not electricity).
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