Janoschka magazine Linked_V3_2018

8 i n s i g h t s
Gutenberg’s first book printed using this method, the
famous forty-two line Bible, was published around 1460
in an edition of 180 copies. It sold out even before the
ink was dry on the last pages. In less than twenty-five
years, the new printing method spread all over Europe.
In the 1470s, book prices began to fall rapidly and by
1490, more than 200 printers had set up business.
Knowledge formerly concealed behind monastery walls
began to reach an unprecedented number of people.
People’s thirst for knowledge was fired by their growing
opportunities to acquire it. As they strove for information
and enlightenment, the mounting market demand broke
the former monopoly of Latin. The number of texts printed
in the vernacular increased seven-fold between 1519
and 1522 alone. This development led to both the consolidation
of national languages and the Reformation.
What is more, printing changed the whole way people
thought. While the oral tradition of the Middle Ages was
based on imagery and metaphors, the printed word
ushered in a more linear, rational way of thinking – analogous
to the rows of letters arrayed on a printing block.
The central idea of Gutenberg’s technology, namely
breaking down a text into its constituent parts, proved
to be an engine for scientific thinking and thus a cornerstone
of the Enlightenment. Book printing then took on
a pioneering role in the commercial sphere, too, where
this complex craft underwent an unprecedented degree
of mechanisation, becoming a prototype for industrial
production. Books became the first mass-produced consumer
good.
Full steam ahead:
large print
runs for newspapers
The first broadsheets, known as “newe Zeytungen”,
appeared while Gutenberg was still alive. During the
Reformation, such pamphlets provided a discussion
forum for questions of religious faith. For the first
time, public opinion was formed indirectly through
the media rather than through verbal exchange, the
first step towards our modern media society. In the
course of the seventeenth century, the broadsheets
gave way to the first periodically published newspapers,
further expanding citizens’ opportunities to
inform themselves about topics of current interest
and to discuss them publicly.
The first best-seller in
world history: the “B42”
It was a newspaper, namely, The Times of London,
that wrote the next step in printing history in 1814.
Gutenberg’s basic principles had remained unchanged
for 350 years, but as the print runs of books
and newspapers increased, the book printer Friedrich
Koenig (co-founder of Koenig & Bauer, Würzburg,
Germany) built the first cylinder printing machine,
which was no longer manually operated but steamdriven.
The speed of printing increased dramatically
to 1,000 printed pages per hour, and by the end of
the nineteenth century, the first rotary presses were
printing 20,000 sheets per hour.