Gutenberg and Today's Media Change
Stephan Fiissel
I. Johannes Gutenberg and the Impact of his Invention
he year 2000 is the 600th fictional birthday of Johannes Gutenberg. Even so,
its celebrations had already started one year earlier when a board of American journalists elected the inventor of mass communication as "Man of the
Millennium."1 In the explanation of this decision it was emphasized that without Gutenberg's invention Columbus could not have found the sea route to
India, Martin Luther could not have been so efficacious in spreading his theses, and Shakespeare would have never gained the tremendous popularity of
his and even today's times. Yet, history is never found to develop one-dimensionally but through the correlation of several events. Thus, it seems inevitable
to ask whether a change of media is capable of provoking any intellectual,
cultural, and political changes. Although it was already 30 years ago that this
question was raised by Elizabeth Eisenstein2 who had claimed the printing
press as an agent of change, it seems that only Gutenberg's 600th anniversary
had to come to make book historians join in this discussion. However, they
have rightly turned away from looking at Gutenberg's discovery itself but
started to evaluate the effects it has on the world history of man's communication. 3 This new approach involves research on the development of papermaking in China in the 2nd century A.D., that only twelve hundred years later had
reached Central Europe, the technique of printing from woodblocks, that had
been known in China since the 7th century but only travelled to Europe by the
early 15th century, the technical developments of bell casters and turners (screw
press), and--last but not least--innovations in the financial world and trading
business. It becomes obvious that Gutenberg's achievements lie in his capability of gathering expertise in different technologies and various technical and
artistic disciplines and synthesizing this knowledge into a new and independent reproduction technique that ultimately had prepared the ground for the
mass production of books, magazines, and newspapers.
T
Address for Communications: Prof. Dr. Stephan Fiissel, Institut fiir Buchwissenschaft, Johannes Gutenberg
Institut, University of Mainz, Welderweg 18, D-55099, Mainz, Germany
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Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 2001
The history of early printing only came about through a fruitful interaction
between the development of new technologies and the unfolding of new ideas.
The spirit of Humanism had started in Italy in the 14th century and from there
expanded rapidly over the whole of Europe. In their firm belief in man's
ability to learn, Humanists believed that through the great wisdoms of the
classical authors they could educate their contemporaries, particularly in the
ethics. Thus, their motto "ad fontes" (back to the sources) was not in the least
turned backwards but through its positive and didactic aspects directed forwards. 4
An apparent indication of intellectual changes was the founding of universities such as in Prague in 1348, Leipzig in 1407, and Mainz 1477; for the first
time the laity had the chance to attain formal education independently of or in
addition to monastic schooling. Ultimately, this reformation was the prerequisite for the rise of the early modern society of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation and its many principalities. The Humanists had quickly recognized the genuine possibilities of printing and used it in their particular interest. But the Church too intelligently forbore the impact of the new medium, as
for example Bishop Nicholas of Cues acclaimed the advantage of printing
identical liturgical texts to standardize the liturgical service. As the largest
administrative authority of late medieval times the Church used the printing
press to have letters of indulgence printed in large editions of many thousand
copies.5
The study of titles of early printed books reveals a great popularity of the
long-time standards of the hand-printing period, such as the Bible, the Latin
grammar book of Aelius Donatus, and anthologies of classical authors. In fact,
it took about 30 years until the new medium had developed a book of its own
character, with respect to that, for example, it opened to a title page, its pages
were numbered, and it contained the new texts of the Humanists and new
editions of the classical authors. Through the invention of Gutenberg it had
become possible to circulate knowledge in books of large editions that were
even of a similar beauty as the manuscripts of the finest scriptoria. Rightly so
did Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in the 18 th century coin the aphorism that
"mehr als das Blei in den Kugeln, hat das Blei in den Setzkasten die Welt
verandert" (rather than the lead of the bullets has the lead in the type cases of
the printers changed the world). Although Latin remained the scholarly language for quite some time longer, the vernacular languages were given greater
prominence since the end of the 16th century. Newspapers, magazines, broadsheets, and pamphlets provided general information and ultimately gave birth
to public opinion and created a forum for the reformation of the Church and
the society. For some 350 years Gutenberg's inventions remained unchanged
in their major technical principles. Only the industrialization and mechanization in the 19th century prepared the way for the spreading of the printing
craft. 6
At the beginning of the 19tb century, the cylinder press of Friedrich K6nig
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5
and Andreas Friedrich Bauer was quickly improved through the introduction
of papers of endless lengths. These developments allowed not only significantly higher output speeds but also the use of unskilled and thus less expensive workers. By the end of the 19th century the development of monotype and
linotype accelerated the traditional slow process of typesetting. But not until
the second half of this century did the achievements of offset printing as a flatbed printing process replace letterpress as the principal medium for the printing of books and the intaglio printing for the printing of copperplate illustrations. Yet clearly, the most important innovation in printing was the development of phototypesetting only about 30 years ago that replaced the metal type
with films or sensitized papers and the casting unit with a light source.
The end of Gutenberg's invention finally came about in 1972 when, unnoticed from the public, the members of the "Verein der Schriftgiet~erei" (association of typefounding) unanimously decided on the dissolution of their association. 7 The current digital revolution is about to supersede metal type, films,
and soon even paper. But what remains of Gutenberg and his initiation of the
spreading of information that ultimately had produced a media revolution
with tremendous effects on the knowledge of the "common" man? This question will now lead us to the discussion on the impact of recent technical changes
on today's societies.
II. G u t e n b e r g
Goes Electronic
1. Digital Printing Processes: with a particular view on the German
printing industry
Gutenberg's invention was built on the central idea of composing any written text of the smallest text units possible, that is, the 24 letters of the old Latin
alphabet. Similarly but carrying Gutenberg's idea a good bit further, in modem digital composition and printing processes these letters are reduced to
only two electric impulses in the form of binary codes. Digital printing has the
following characteristics:
- - printing from exclusively digital data
- - printing directly from the database
- - no use of films or sensitized papers
--
creating the image by transferring it dot by dot onto the printing
surface.
The digitized data is directly transferred from the database onto an erasable
printing cylinder and further, without using any carrier, onto the printing
surface. The performance of preparing the data and illustrating and scanning
the work is exclusively carried out on a front-end processor.
At the time of this writing, electro-photography is the most successful of all
printing systems available. Its technology that is applied in laser printers and
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Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 2001
photocopiers is centred on a photo-semiconductor that immediately loses its
conductivity when in the dark. A cylinder that is covered with a semiconductor of that kind is statically charged through corona radiation to the effect that
it obtains an even electric charge. This charge is fully retained as long as the
cylinder is kept in the dark. But as soon as it is touched by a laser beam that is
used to transfer the image to be printed from the database onto the cylinder, it
will release its charge. This results in a latent image of charge on the cylinder
that next is colored with an electromagnetic toner that only adheres to the
charged areas. Finally, this image is either fixed on the cylinder and then
printed onto the printing surface (direct process) or first printed onto the printing surface and then fixed through pressure or heat (indirect process). In either
process the cylinder needs to be cleaned and discharged again before printing
the next image.
What appears at first sight to be a work-intensive process proves to be very
advanced, particularly for small and sophisticated orders. It needs to be remembered that this process requires none of the intermediate operations of the
earlier printing processes, as there is the typesetting or photocomposition and
the making of stereos and films that had to be transferred onto the printing
cylinder. Hence, the electro-photography allows one to far more easily interrupt the printing process to introduce changes to the text or layout of individual pages.
Yet, the electro-photography benefits mostly from a very efficient and economical working process. As the data is immediately used as provided from
the customer, the risk of introducing mistakes into the final printed work with
each further operation is eliminated. The total costs of production are significantly reduced for no films and printing plates are required. This makes the
printing of even small editions profitable. In contrast to the traditional offset
printing, the break-even-point comes with editions of at least 1,000 copies. The
smaller editions largely save on storage and relieve the problem of calculating
the number of printed copies as small editions can be quickly reprinted. The
data can be easily recorded and kept for later use, whether with or without
changes. As mentioned before, the electro-photography makes it possible to
interrupt the printing process to alter and, for example, individualize a page of
a loose-leaf file for different users. Last but not least, the process gives publishers the chance to split a job and allot it to different printers. In fact, this
procedure is already in practice amongst large publishing houses for which it
is far quicker and cheaper to mail or transmit data than printed works.
The quality of digital printing has still not reached the standards of offset
printing and its output is still smaller than of a large offset printing machine.
Yet, at editions of under 1,000 copies the digital printing proves more profitable than the offset printing. Therefore, as editions of particularly technical
and scientific works are increasingly and drastically getting smaller worldwide (e.g. in the US every other edition comprises less than 1,000 copies, in
Germany scientific monographs and magazines are usually printed in editions
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of 400-600 copies), it is to be expected that digital printing will be established
in this sector of the book market and thus save the publishing of works in
print.
So-called "printing on demand" has recently gained an increasing importance particularly for books of small editions, dissertations, scientific publication, and books that are out of print. Thus the German wholesale bookseller
Lingenbrink no longer stocks books in print that have only little demand and,
therefore, only keeps them available in electronic form for print on demand
delivery. Obviously, books that are only kept available in electronic form had
to be immediately included in the unique service of wholesale booksellers in
Germany who guarantee any bookshop to provide it with any book within
only 24 hours. After the starting phase of half a year some 60,000 books are
already sold monthly through the printing on demand system. At present a
number of German universities contemplate the idea of founding their own
publishing houses with the intention of only supplying scientific publications
for printing on demand. Because prices of these works in traditional print have
now reached a point where they cease to be affordable for the individual
consumer as well as for libraries, this process seems to be the only way possible to continue supplying them.
However, printing on demand also starts to attract the publishing of literature. In Munich, which is one of the major centers of trade book publishing in
Germany, a new publishing house, called Criminale, has opened for business
with detective stories that are out of print. Retrieved in electronic form to be
printed on demand the titles are relaunched on the market and sold through
wholesale booksellers.
In modern publishing it has become crucial that the publishing houses have
their database organized in such a way that the material can be issued on
paper, CD-ROM or via the Internet. In the German-speaking realm this manufacturing is called by the English term "cross media." Even the members of the
"Bundesverband Druck," which is Germany's largest alliance of people working in the printing industry, recognized the most recent changes in their field
this year when they decided to rename their association "Bundesverband Druck
und Medien."
As readers increasingly prefer direct access to electronic data rather than
receiving it in print form, librarians find themselves confronted with completely new jobs. Libraries worldwide are about to mount their catalogues on
the Internet so that ultimately time-consuming book searches will become history. Large libraries, however, are even one step ahead for they have already
started to make complete works available on screen. For example, the
Biblioth6que Nationale Paris has entered upon the ambitious project of digitizing about 100,000 of its most important works. Likewise, the "Project Gutenberg"
in Germany has established a goal to create an electronic database that finally
will include the most important works of world literature. 8
Not only librarians but also publishers have to rise to the challenge of the
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Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 2001
new facilities to supply texts in database form. An increasing number of scientific publications, particularly in the fields of medicine and the natural sciences, are made available on CD-ROM, the Internet and other non-print media. The publishing house Springer in Heidelberg, for example, has recently
founded the company Link9 that specializes in digitized works. Presently,
they provide 177 technical magazines, namely of natural science, on screen.
Yet, Link does not refrain from publishing its magazines also in print. In fact,
its customers subscribe to a contract that gives them the advantage of having
early access to the magazines on screen at the price of receiving them later in
print. Academic Press and Elsevier Science have also made their journals available both in print and online since January 1999. This concept could be trendsetting for the publishing industry because the Internet can deliver constantly
updated information that can be easily and quickly retrieved with the help of
numerous search engines. However, the conventional print media remain superior in providing the more solid and factual information.
As librarians now have the difficult task to sort, channel, and arrange this
new flood of digital information, publishers will have to continue to make
every effort to provide only high quality content through careful editing so
that the traditional high standards of publishing scientific and professional
literature is further guaranteed. Fortunately, it seems that successful publishing houses of the traditional printed book period endeavour to keep their good
reputation also for the material issued on CD-ROM, the Internet or other nonprint media.
2. Manuscripts on Screen
Although the Internet is inevitably associated with an excellent source of the
newest and most updated information, it also lends itself to provide interested
readers with precious collections of manuscripts and early printed books. The
Internet has called upon a completely new way of producing facsimile editions, handling the old and fragile originals more carefully. 1~ For example,
sixty of the most important manuscripts of our cultural heritage that are in the
holdings of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana can be read on screen. 11 That
means that worldwide people are given the opportunity to study manuscripts
such as Virgil's text of the 4th century and Euclid's text of the 12th century. The
qualities of the screen resolution and the printouts have become so high that
they easily satisfy the demands for scientific research work. Thus, researchers
are no longer required to travel, for example, to the Jagiellonian University in
Krakow to study the most important astronomical work of early modern times,
"De revolutionibus" of Nikolaus Kopernikus, because they can easily find it
on the University's website. Likewise, researchers or in fact everyone interested can find the complete facsimile edition of the Gutenberg-Bible B42 of the
G6ttinger Staats--und Universit/itsbibliothek on the Internet. 12 Visitors to the
website are offered the opportunity to read or study all 1286 richly illuminated
pages, to compare them, for example, with those of the edition located at the
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9
Keio University in Tokyo or to simply look at them for their beauty. Moreover,
the Internet has made it possible to quickly put the Latin Vulgata edition with
the German or English translations side by side or compare the illuminations
of the original to their copies in old model books. The electronic facsimile
editions have become important research tools for philologists, theologians,
and book historians. It is beyond doubt that the precious old books and the
new medium have thus formed an invaluable symbiosis.
3. Electronic Ink
At present, determined efforts to preserve the book in printed form for its
traditional reputation of a reliable source of information as well as its haptic
and aesthetic qualities, run parallel to endeavours to develop the Internet for
its advantage as a source of constantly updated and easily retrievable information. Yet, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., has
most recently publicized their new invention of what it calls electronic ink or
digital paper that promises to synthesize the advantages of the traditional
book and the Internet. The research team of Joseph Jacobson is working on the
concept to develop a printing surface that can be infinitely printed upon. It
was Gutenberg's invention that had made it possible to print upon a single
sheet of paper hundreds of thousands of pieces of information. The digital
paper under development will make it possible to print hundreds of thousands of pieces information onto the same sheet of paper. The technique can be
described as follows: a carrier is printed with tiny micro-encapsulated pellets
(10,000/cm2) that are filled with the electronic ink containing particles of positively charged white pigments. When the pellets are loaded with a negative
charge they appear white but when they are loaded with a positive charge
they immediately turn black. Similar to the pixels in newspaper printing, the
digital paper can be filled with any textual or graphical information, may it be
a page from a newspaper, a document or a novel. The electronic hardware can
also be printed and used with a server in a control panel or, as already feasible,
through a cellular phone system.
Indicative of its ultimate goal, Joseph Jacobson calls his project "The Last
Book. 'q3 It is his vision that in the not-too-distant future every child will be
given his or her "Last Book" that, because it has some 240 pages of digital
paper, can be infinitely filled with any desired text and it will make further
books superfluous. Even the problem of receiving information on the Internet
will be solved in only one or two years by means of broadband transmission
over cellular phone systems. As to all appearances Joseph Jacobson's invention
will trigger a new form of communication, he and his team were awarded the
Gutenberg-Prize 2000 of the International Gutenberg-Society in Mainz. 14 But
whatever the future will bring, we may already legitimately say that in the
year 2000 Johannes Gutenberg has gone electronic.
Translation: Eike B. Dfirrfeld, Mainz
Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 2001
10
Notes
1. Bowers, Barbara / Bowers, Brent / Gottlieb, Henry / Hooper Gottlieb, Agnes: 1000 years, 1000 people.
Ranking the men and women who shaped the millennium, New York, Tokyo, London 1999, p. 2.
2. Eisenstein, Elizabeth L.: The printing press as an agent of change, Cambridge 1979.
3. Fiissel, Stephan: Gutenbergforschung 1900 - 2000, in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch Vol. 75, 2000, p. 9-24.
4. Fiissel, Stephan: Gutenberg und seine Wirkung, Frankfurt a.M., Insel-Verlag 1999.
5. Eisermann, Falk / Honemann, Volker: Die ersten typographischen Einblattdrucke, in: GutenbergJahrbuch Vol. 75, 2000, p. 88-131.
6. Sttirnpel, Rolf: Die Revolutionierung der Buchherstellung in der Zeit zwischen 1830 und 1880, in:
Buchhandelsgeschichte 1987, p. B57- B66.
7. See Tafelmaier, Leonie: Der Verein der Schriftgiessereien Offenbach am Main (1903-1972), in: GutenbergJahrbuch Vol 72, 1997, p. 189-205.
8. http://www.gutenberg.net
9. http://link.springer.de
10. Fiissel, Stephan: Vom Steindruck zum Internet. Faksimiles im Medienurnbruch, in: Die Struktur medialer
Revolutionen, Frankfurt a.M.u.a. 2000, p. 134-144.
11. http://unvw.unesco.org/webworld/vatican
12. http:// www.gutenbergdigital.de
13. Jacobson, J./Comiskey,B. / Turner,C. / Albert, J. / Tsao,P.: The last book, in: IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 36, No. 3, 1997, p. 457-463; see also http://www.media.mit.edu/micromedia
14. Fiissel, Stephan: Laudatio auf den Gutenberg-Preistr/iger 2000, in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch Vol. 76, 2001, p.
2-7; Jacobson, Joseph: Printing the world, ibid., p. 8-14.