The First Printing Presses:
Johannes Gutenberg’s Technological Revolution and Its Global Consequences Automatic translate

Human history knows moments when time seems to accelerate, and the familiar way of life is irreversibly changed by a single technology. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century was precisely such an event. The printing press proved to be more than just a mechanical means of reproducing text. The advent of movable type and the press transformed the structure of thought, the methods of storing knowledge, and the ways in which people interacted. Until then, knowledge had been elite and sacred, locked away in monastic libraries. After the launch of the press in Mainz, information began to become a publicly accessible resource, triggering social, religious, and scientific shifts of tectonic proportions.

The era of manuscript writing and its limitations

To fully grasp the scale of this revolution, one must look to the world before the advent of printing. Books were created by hand. The copying process was incredibly labor-intensive and slow. A monk in a scriptorium could spend a year creating a single copy of the Bible. This made a book a luxury item, comparable in cost to a fine house or a vineyard. The primary material was parchment — specially cured animal skin. A single voluminous book required a herd of calves, which drove the cost skyrocketing.

The limited number of books affected the reliability of knowledge. Copyists inevitably made mistakes. A typo in one copy carried over into the next, accumulating new inaccuracies. Texts mutated. A scholar in Paris might read a treatise by Aristotle that differed significantly from the version available to a scholar in Bologna. The lack of a standardized text hindered the development of science and theology. Knowledge was unstable, fluid, and unreliable.

The second limitation was accessibility. Libraries chained books to their shelves. This was a literal defense against theft, but it also served as a metaphor: knowledge was chained to a specific location. To read a specific work, a scholar had to undertake a long and dangerous journey. Academic mobility was not a whim, but a harsh necessity.

Asian pioneers and the barriers of woodblock printing

Europe wasn’t the first to embrace the idea of ​​mechanically reproducing text. China and Korea were centuries ahead of the West. Woodblock printing, or xylography, flourished in Asia as early as the 8th century. Craftsmen carved text and images onto a wooden panel, applied ink, and pressed the paper. The famous "Diamond Sutra," dating from 868, is proof of the high skill of Chinese printers.

Movable type also existed. The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng created ceramic type as early as the 11th century. Later, metal type began to be used in Korea. The book "Jikchi," printed in 1377 at Heungdeoksa Temple in Korea, is the oldest surviving document created using movable metal type.

However, in Asia, this technology did not spark an information revolution similar to the European one. The reason lies in linguistics. The Chinese script is hieroglyphic, containing thousands of characters. Typesetting a single page required enormous registers with thousands of slots. Finding the right character took so much time that carving an entire page in wood was often faster. The European alphabet, with its two or three dozen letters, was ideal for typesetting. The technology awaited a suitable linguistic environment.

The Secret of the Mainz Jeweler

Johannes Gutenberg was not a copyist or a librarian. He came from a patrician family and was trained in goldsmithing, goldsmithing, and mirror work. These skills proved crucial. Gutenberg viewed letters not as calligraphic designs, but as metal components that needed to be crafted with micron precision.

Gutenberg’s most important invention wasn’t the press itself, or even the idea of ​​movable type. The heart of his technology was the hand-casting apparatus. This small device consisted of two sliding parts. It allowed him to cast letters of varying widths (a narrow "i" or a wide "W") while maintaining a uniform height and depth. Without this invention, the type would have been uneven, and the type would have crumbled under the pressure.

The process of creating a typeface began with a punch. The craftsman would carve a mirror image of the letter onto the end of a steel rod. This required incredible steadiness, as any mistake in the steel was irreparable. Then, the hardened punch would strike a soft copper plate, creating a matrix — a recessed form of the letter. The matrix would be inserted into the bottom of a casting apparatus, molten metal would be poured in, and the finished type would emerge. Thousands of identical letters could be cast from a single matrix.

The Alchemy of Alloy and the Chemistry of Ink

Gutenberg’s metallurgical knowledge allowed him to solve the problem of shrinkage. Ordinary lead shrinks as it cools. Type cast from pure lead would change shape and lose its crisp outline. Gutenberg developed an alloy that is still used in printing today. He added antimony and tin to lead. Antimony has a remarkable property: it expands slightly as it solidifies. This compensated for the shrinkage of lead and allowed the metal to tightly fill the smallest details of the matrix. The tin added fluidity and anticorrosive properties to the alloy.

The second problem concerned ink. Scribes’ inks were water-based. They soaked into parchment or paper perfectly, but dripped off the oily metal surface. Gutenberg needed a substance that would adhere to the metal type and then transfer cleanly to the paper under pressure.

The solution was a paint based on drying oil (boiled linseed oil) with added soot and resins. It was a thick, viscous paste, more like glue than liquid. This paint applied evenly to metal and produced a deep, glossy black on paper that remained unfaded for centuries. The pages of Gutenberg’s Bible still impress with the richness of their tones.

Pressure mechanics

The printing press itself was an adaptation of the screw press, which had been used for centuries in winemaking and olive oil production. The design was robust and simple: a solid wooden frame, a screw with a lever, and a flat plate (crucible). However, Gutenberg made significant improvements. He added a movable carriage, which allowed the plate with the type to be quickly advanced, inked, and retracted.

The most important element was the tympanum and frashket system. The tympanum was a parchment-covered frame onto which a sheet of paper was placed. The frashket — a second frame with cut-out windows for text — was placed on top. It protected the blank margins of the paper from accidental ink spills. This system allowed for precise positioning of the sheet, which was critical for double-sided printing. The lines on the front had to precisely align with the lines on the back, otherwise the text would show through and interfere with reading.

The Bible in 42 lines

The first large-scale project was the famous 42-line Bible. Work on it began in the early 1450s. This was not simply a printed text, but an attempt to prove that a mechanical book could be as beautiful as a handwritten one. Gutenberg imitated the Gothic typeface used by German monks. He created hundreds of variations of type, including ligatures (joined letters) and abbreviations to achieve perfectly straight text borders without large spaces between words.

The print run was approximately 180 copies: most on paper, some on parchment. The logistics of the project were colossal. Tons of paper imported from Italy and thousands of animal skins were required. The workshop employed numerous typesetters and printers. Despite mechanization, the process remained expensive. Illustrations and capital letters were still hand-drawn by rubricators after printing. The buyer received a "semi-finished product" that had to be given to a binder and artist for finalization.

The financial burden proved unbearable. Gutenberg borrowed enormous sums from the merchant Johann Fust. As the work neared completion, Fust demanded repayment. Gutenberg was unable to pay and lost the lawsuit. The printing house and the finished Bible print run passed to Fust and his son-in-law, Peter Scheffer, a former apprentice of Gutenberg’s. They reaped the commercial benefits of the invention, though the name of the true creator will forever remain etched in history.

Spread of Fire: Incunabula

The first books printed before 1501 are called incunabula (from the Latin for "cradle"). Initially, the technology was guarded as a secret, but maintaining such knowledge was impossible. In 1462, Mainz was sacked by the troops of Archbishop Adolf of Nassau. The printing presses were destroyed, and the craftsmen fled across Europe, taking with them the secrets of punches and matrices.

This event triggered an explosive expansion. German printers appeared in Italy. Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz founded the first printing press in a Benedictine monastery in Subiaco, then moved to Rome. But Venice became the true capital of printing. Situated at the crossroads of trade routes, the merchant city possessed capital and access to markets.

Venetian typographers quickly realized that the Gothic typeface, convenient for Germans, was poorly received by Italian humanists, accustomed to a more rounded script. The Frenchman Nicolas Janson, working in Venice, created the Antiqua, a typeface that became a benchmark for clarity and proportion. His letters imitated Roman inscriptions. This represented a shift away from imitating manuscripts toward creating a distinctive aesthetic for the printed page.

Aldus Manutius and the Birth of the Pocket Book

By the end of the 15th century, books were still bulky folios, read while lying flat on a table. Aldus Manutius, a humanist and publisher from Venice, revolutionized the format. He began publishing books in a smaller size — in octavo (one eighth of a sheet). Such books could be carried in a pocket or bag. Reading ceased to be a sedentary activity.

To save space in small books, Manutius commissioned the engraver Francesco Griffo to create a new typeface — cursive. The slanted letters, imitating the fluent handwriting of clerks, were narrower and took up less space per line. Thus was born the famous "Aldine" series, the forerunner of modern paperback editions. Manutius also standardized punctuation. It was thanks to him that the comma and semicolon acquired their modern appearance and function.

Economic redistribution and the decline of guilds

The spread of presses dealt a crushing blow to the guild system of copyists. Professional scriptoria tried to resist, lobbying for printing bans, but the cost-effectiveness of the machines was on their side. The price of a book dropped dramatically. Whereas previously a manuscript cost a fortune, a printed book was now within reach of a wealthy citizen, lawyer, doctor, or student.

A new industry emerged. Printing was a complex capitalist enterprise, requiring investment in equipment, paper, and wages for skilled workers. The figure of the publisher emerged — an entrepreneur who selected manuscripts, financed the printing, and organized distribution. Book fairs, particularly in Frankfurt, became centers of intellectual exchange in Europe.

Authorship began to gain weight. In the era of manuscripts, the author’s name was often lost. The printed title page, which, incidentally, also didn’t appear immediately, assigned a work to a specific person. The first privileges emerged — the precursors of copyright — when rulers granted a printer the exclusive right to publish a specific book for several years.

Reformation: Media War

В начале XVI века печатный пресс показал свою политическую и идеологическую мощь. Мартин Лютер, начавший Реформацию, виртуозно использовал возможности тиражирования. Его “95 тезисов” за считанные недели разлетелись по всей Германии. Лютер писал не на латыни, а на немецком, обращаясь к народу.

Печатники поняли, что споры о вере приносят прибыль. Трактаты, памфлеты, карикатуры печатались огромными тиражами. Это была первая в истории медийная война. Католическая церковь не сразу осознала опасность. Она привыкла к медленным диспутам внутри университетов. Печатный станок вынес богословский спор на рыночную площадь. Скорость реакции стала решающим фактором. Сторонники Лютера отвечали на выпады оппонентов новыми памфлетами быстрее, чем гонцы успевали доставить письма в Рим.

Перевод Библии на немецкий язык, выполненный Лютером, унифицировал немецкие диалекты. Печатная версия зафиксировала грамматику и лексику, создав единый литературный стандарт. То же самое происходило в Англии с изданиями Уильяма Кэкстона и Библией короля Якова. Печатный пресс стал инструментом национального строительства, формируя единые языковые пространства из лоскутного одеяла местных говоров.

Научная революция и точность образа

Влияние печати на науку часто недооценивают, сводя все к распространению текстов. Но для естественных наук важнее было распространение изображений. В ботанике, анатомии, астрономии точность рисунка имеет первостепенное значение. При ручном копировании анатомического атласа переписчик, не будучи врачом, неизбежно искажал детали. Через десять копий печень превращалась в бесформенное пятно.

Технология гравюры, совмещённая с набором, позволила тиражировать абсолютно идентичные схемы. Андреас Везалий в своём труде “О строении человеческого тела” (1543) использовал детальные гравюры, которые видели все читатели одинаково. Астрономы могли сравнивать звёздные карты. Инженеры изучали чертёжи машин. Появилась возможность верификации данных. Учёный в Лондоне мог взять книгу, посмотреть на схему растения и пойти в сад, чтобы проверить соответствие. Это заложило фундамент эмпирической науки.

Николай Коперник опубликовал “О вращении небесных сфер” в том же году, что и Везалий. Без печатного станка его теория могла бы затеряться в архивах, как многие смелые идеи прошлого. Печать дала возможность идеям пережить своих авторов и найти последователей в других странах.

Архитектура книги и навигация в знании

С появлением массовой книги изменилась и её внутренняя структура. Рукописи часто представляли собой сплошной поток текста. Печатники, стремясь сделать товар удобным для покупателя, изобрели инструменты навигации. Появилась нумерация страниц (пагинация). Это кажется мелочью, но без неё невозможно сделать предметный указатель или оглавление.

The advent of alphabetical indexes changed the way we read. It was no longer necessary to read a book cover to cover to find the information we needed. The book became a reference tool. The title page became the publication’s advertising window, announcing the title, author, and printing house address. Paragraphs, headings, and footers — this entire interface, familiar to us today, was honed in the first hundred years of the press’s existence.

Censorship and thought control

The authorities quickly realized that the printing press was a double-edged sword. It could serve the crown and the church by printing decrees and prayer books, but it could also spread heresy and rebellion. A system of censorship arose. In 1559, the Vatican issued the first "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" (Index of Forbidden Books). Books were burned, printers were fined and expelled.

A licensing system was introduced in France and England. Opening a printing press required royal permission. In England, printing was limited to London and the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Stationers’ Company received a monopoly on printing and the authority to seek out and destroy underground presses. Nevertheless, the flow of information was unstoppable. Underground literature was printed in Holland and smuggled into neighboring countries.

From craft to industry

The design of Gutenberg’s wooden press remained virtually unchanged for three and a half centuries, with only minor changes. Productivity was approximately 200-250 impressions per hour with two operators. This was fast compared to a copyist, but slow for the growing appetites of 19th-century society.

The end of the hand press era came with the Industrial Revolution. In 1800, Lord Stanhope created an all-metal press that allowed for larger sheet sizes to be printed with less effort. And in 1814, Friedrich Koenig introduced a steam-powered printing press, which was installed at The Times newspaper. Productivity soared to 1,100 impressions per hour. Mechanization reached a new level: cylinders replaced flat plates, and paper began to be fed from rolls.

However, it was those first three centuries, the era of hand-set type and the creaking wooden screw, that shaped modern civilization. The thinking of "typographic man," as Marshall McLuhan called him, became linear, logical, and classificatory. Nation-states, reformed religion, modern science, and literature — all these are the creations of lead type and black oil paint.

The Role of Paper in the Success Equation

When discussing the press, the medium is often forgotten. Without cheap paper, Gutenberg’s technology would have suffocated. Paper came to Europe via Arab Spain and Italy. The first paper mills ran on rags. Old linen was ground into a pulp, scooped out in sieves, and dried.

The Black Death epidemic in the mid-14th century, as cynical as it may sound, contributed to the development of papermaking. The declining population left behind a huge amount of unwanted clothing and linen. Prices for rags fell, and paper production became profitable. By the time the press was invented, Europe already had a well-established papermaking industry. Parchment remained for especially ceremonial documents, but everyday information migrated to paper.

The relationship between paper and the press created a synergy. The press required more paper, so mills expanded. More paper lowered prices, so printing houses printed more. This cycle of cheaper information continued until the advent of the internet.

Typography as an art and a science

The aesthetics of the printed page evolved alongside technology. In the 16th century, the French printers of the Estienne dynasty perfected the art of the book. They combined Greek fonts, exquisite ornamentation, and impeccable layout. Christophe Plantin in Antwerp created a gigantic publishing concern, producing the famous Polyglot — the Bible in five languages.

Each region developed its own style. Holland was famous for its miniature editions and maps (atlases by Mercator and Ortelius). England long lagged behind in the quality of printing, but excelled in the volume of political pamphlets. In the 18th century, Baskerville introduced the fashion for fonts with strong contrasts between thin and thick strokes, requiring smooth, "hot" paper.

Type ceased to be simply a carrier of meaning. It became a tool for emotional impact. Bold headlines screamed sensational news, while elegant italics invited poetic contemplation. The visual language of the printed page taught readers to navigate the hierarchy of information: what was important, what was secondary, what was commentary.

Consolidation of knowledge: Encyclopedism

The accumulation of printed books necessitated their systematization. Encyclopedias emerged. Of course, attempts to collect all knowledge had existed before (Pliny the Elder), but printing made it possible to update and expand these collections. The French Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert became the pinnacle of this process in the 18th century. It was a manifesto of the Enlightenment, materialized in lead and paper. Knowledge was structured alphabetically, democratizing access to science and crafts.

The printing press created the conditions for the concept of progress. If in the manuscript era, people tried to preserve knowledge from loss, in the printing era, it became possible to accumulate and expand it. Each new generation of scholars stood on the shoulders of giants, having access to their works unchanged. Civilization shifted from a mode of preservation to a mode of development.

Gutenberg’s invention set off a chain reaction that hasn’t stopped to this day. Smartphones and computer screens are direct descendants of that first matrix and lead type. The principles of information encoding, replication, and standardization, laid down in the 15th century, formed the basis of digital code. Gutenberg didn’t just invent a printing press; he reprogrammed humanity.

William Caxton and the Dilemma of the English Language

While printing on the Continent contributed to the revival of Classical Latin, in England it became a catalyst for the formation of a national language. William Caxton, a merchant and diplomat who opened the first English printing press in Westminster in 1476, encountered linguistic chaos. The English language of the time was a patchwork of dialects. A northerner could barely understand a southerner.

Caxton described a telling incident in his preface to The Aeneid. Merchants whose ship was stuck in the Thames Estuary tried to buy food from a peasant woman. One asked for "eggs," but the woman replied that she didn’t speak French. Another merchant intervened and asked for "eyren" (the Old English word for eggs), and only then did she understand him. The printer was faced with a daunting task: which version of the word should be engraved in lead?

Caxton’s choice of the London dialect, spoken by the royal court and merchants, determined the fate of the language. The circulation of books fixed the spelling and grammar. Words subjected to Caxton’s pressure survived and became the norm, while alternative forms became known as dialectalisms. The printing press acted as a powerful filter, filtering out the variability of living speech in favor of a standard.

Antwerp’s industrial giant

In the mid-16th century, the center of printing shifted to Antwerp, where Christophe Plantin created the prototype of the modern publishing corporation. His enterprise, De Gulden Passer (Golden Compass), occupied an entire city block. At its peak, it employed 22 presses and dozens of hired workers. It was a veritable factory in the era of artisan workshops.

Plantin understood the importance of diversification. He printed everything from inexpensive prayer books and calendars to luxurious scientific treatises and herbariums. The pinnacle of his career was the Royal Bible (Biblia Polyglotta) — a monumental eight-volume edition in which the text was presented in parallel in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic.

The logistics of this project are astonishing even today. Plantin had to purchase exotic fonts, find academic proofreaders for each language, and organize supplies of specialized paper. Funding was provided by King Philip II of Spain. The project nearly ruined the printer, but cemented Antwerp’s status as the intellectual capital of Northern Europe. The Plantin-Moretus printing house survives to this day as the world’s only UNESCO-listed typography museum, where the equipment remains in the same location as it was 400 years ago.

High Tech: The Art of the Punch

The foundation of quality printing remained the typeface, and its creation was the pinnacle of precision mechanics at the time. The profession of punchcutter was the highest paid and most secret. The craftsman worked with a steel rod approximately 4-5 centimeters long. A letter had to be carved into its end as a mirror image.

Сложность заключалась не только в микроскопическом размере. Буква должна была иметь правильные пропорции, чтобы гармонично смотреться в строке. Для внутренних замкнутых пространств букв (например, овал внутри “о” или треугольник в “А”) использовали контрпуансоны — встречные штампы из закалённой стали, которыми выбивали углубления в основном пуансоне.

Клод Гарамон во Франции первым начал специализироваться исключительно на создании шрифтов, отделив это ремесло от книгопечатания. Он продавал свои матрицы другим типографам. Это был важный шаг к стандартизации: теперь книгу, напечатанную в Лионе, можно было читать с тем же комфортом, что и книгу из Парижа, так как использовался один и тот же гарнитур. Шрифты Гарамона отличались такой элегантностью и читаемостью, что их цифровые версии остаются стандартом в книгоиздании XXI века.

Медная гравюра и научная визуализация

Ксилография (гравюра на дереве) имела свои ограничения. Древесина не позволяла передавать тонкие штрихи и мелкие детали. Для нужд развивающейся науки требовалось более высокое разрешение. Решением стала гравюра на меди (офорт и резцовая гравюра).

Техника кардинально отличалась от высокой печати. Мастер процарапывал изображение на медной пластине. Краску втирали в углубления, а поверхность очищали. Под мощным давлением влажная бумага “высасывала” краску из штрихов. Это позволяло печатать карты с мельчайшими названиями городов, анатомические атласы с прорисовкой нервных волокон и чертёжи сложных механизмов.

Однако совместить текст (высокая печать) и медную гравюру (глубокая печать) на одной странице было технически сложно. Это требовало двух прогонов через разные станки. Лист сначала печатали с текстом, оставляя пустое место, а затем пропускали через валковый пресс для печати иллюстрации. Малейшая ошибка в позиционировании приводила к браку. Именно поэтому в старинных книгах иллюстрации часто выносили на отдельные листы-вклейки.

Музыка в металле

Особым вызовом стала печать нот. Рукописные ноты были красивы, но переписывать их было долго. Венецианец Оттавиано Петруччи в 1501 году разработал метод тройного прогона. Сначала печатались нотные линейки, затем сами ноты, и наконец — текст под ними. Результат был безупречным, но невероятно дорогим и трудоёмким.

Позже Пьер Аттеньян в Париже упростил процесс. Он создал литеры, где на каждом кусочке металла была и нота, и фрагмент линейки. Это позволяло набирать музыку как обычный текст и печатать в один прогон. Линии стана получались пунктирными, слегка прерывистыми на стыках литер, но скорость производства выросла многократно. Музыкальные партитуры стали доступны любителям, что спровоцировало бум домашнего музицирования и развитие светской музыки, мадригалов и шансона.

Русская кириллица: Подвиг и изгнание

In Eastern Europe, the typographic revolution had its own specific characteristics. The printing press arrived in Moscow a century late. Ivan IV the Terrible, recognizing the need to standardize liturgical books for the centralization of power, ordered the construction of a Printing House. Deacon Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets led this undertaking.

The first precisely dated Russian book, "Apostle," was published in 1564. Fedorov was a distinguished engineer. He developed a unique method of two-color printing in a single run for capital letters and headings, a technical innovation even by European standards. His typeface imitated the Moscow semi-uncial script — a formal and austere handwriting.

However, the introduction of the technology encountered resistance. Book copyists saw the press as a threat to their livelihoods, while conservative clergy feared the corruption of sacred texts by a "soulless machine." Shortly after the first books were published, the printing house burned down. Historians still debate whether it was arson. Fedorov was forced to flee to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where he continued his work in Lviv and Ostroh, publishing the famous Ostroh Bible.

Pocket Watch News

In the 17th century, the printing press gave birth to a phenomenon that changed the political climate: the periodical press. The first newspapers (corantos) appeared in Germany and the Netherlands. They published news about wars, merchant ships, and royal decrees.

The most important shift was regularity. Readers became accustomed to receiving a portion of information weekly, and then daily. This synchronized society. People in London coffee shops or Parisian salons discussed the same news simultaneously. "Public opinion" was formed — a new force with which monarchs had to reckon.

The English Civil War of the 1640s demonstrated the power of pamphlets. The debate between Royalists and Parliamentarians was waged not only on the battlefield but also on paper. Cheap leaflets were the equivalent of modern blogs or tweets. They were crude, often containing fake news and personal attacks, but they engaged broad masses of the population, previously indifferent to public affairs, in politics.

Rationalism in the outline

The Age of Enlightenment brought a desire for mathematical precision in everything, including typography. King Louis XIV commissioned the creation of a "royal typeface" (Romain du Roi). A commission of scientists developed letters based on a strict modular grid. This represented a rejection of the imitation of the scribe’s hand in favor of engineering drawing.

In the late 18th century, Giambattista Bodoni in Italy and the Didot dynasty in France took this idea to its extreme. Their typefaces (classical serifs) featured extreme contrast: bold stems were combined with hair-thin connecting lines. Serifs evolved into thin horizontal strokes. This typeface required the highest quality paper and sophisticated presses, as the thin lines easily broke during printing. We still associate these typefaces with haute couture and glossy magazines (for example, the Vogue logo).

The leaden price of education

Behind the scenes of intellectual triumph lay the harsh physical reality of the printing shop. The printer’s work required tremendous strength. To press the press platen and produce a clear impression, the master had to jerk the lever, using every muscle in his back. Over the course of a shift, the printer repeated this motion thousands of times. An occupational hazard was spinal curvature and paralysis on the right side of the body.

Even more terrifying was the impact of the materials. Typesetters were constantly exposed to an alloy of lead, antimony, and tin. Lead dust hung in the air, entering the lungs and on the skin. Saturnism (lead poisoning) was the scourge of the profession. Symptoms included abdominal pain, tooth loss, hand tremors, and, ultimately, insanity. Many masters died young or lost their sight due to the constant strain of working with small type by candlelight. Knowledge spread throughout the world at the cost of the health of those who propagated it.

Paper and the ecology of knowledge

The growth of printing volumes created a constant shortage of raw materials. Rags were in short supply. In the 18th century, laws prohibited burying people in linen clothing — everything had to be made into paper. A search for alternatives began. People tried making paper from straw, nettles, and even wasp nests.

It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that technology for extracting pulp from wood was developed. This removed raw material limitations, but created a new problem. Wood-based paper contained an acid that destroyed the fibers over time. Newspapers and books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries now crumble to dust, while 15th-century incunabula on rag paper remain white and durable. Librarians call this a "slow burn" destroying the cultural heritage of the industrial age.

Cartographic precision and mastery of space

Printed maps changed our perception of the world no less than texts. Handwritten maps were more like schematic drawings. Mercator’s engraved map gave sailors a reliable navigational tool. The ability to reproduce accurate maps allowed states to clearly delineate their borders. The concept of territorial sovereignty is closely linked to the ability to print a map and declare, "This is where my land ends."

Abraham Ortelius’s atlases became bestsellers. For the first time, people could put the entire world on a shelf. This shaped global thinking. Europeans began to see the planet as a single whole, accessible for exploration and, unfortunately, for colonization. The standardization of geographical names on printed maps erased many local place names, replacing them with those chosen by cartographers in Amsterdam or London.

Ephemera: Disposable Culture

The history of printing is not only the history of great books. A vast layer of culture was made up of so-called "ephemera": tickets, posters, trade labels, indulgence forms. These documents lasted only a day or a week, but they permeated people’s lives.

Printed forms bureaucratized administration. Armies, trading companies, and government agencies were able to manage vast systems thanks to standardized reporting forms. By filling out a printed form, a person became part of the administrative machine. The individuality of handwriting was replaced by a standardized column.

Almanac collections, containing calendars, agricultural advice, fair schedules, and astrological forecasts, were the most widely read genre after the Bible. For farmers, an almanac was the only source of secular information. These inexpensive books disseminated ideas on hygiene, new farming methods, and, of course, popular superstitions, which were given a new lease of life by the press.

Paradoxically, the digital revolution didn’t destroy Gutenberg’s principles, but rather elevated them to absolute perfection. A computer screen is the same as a typesetting case, only pixels have replaced metal. Typesetting programs use 15th-century terminology: "font size," "leading," "kerning." We still measure fonts in points, a system developed by typographers Pierre Fournier and François Didot.

Internet hypertext can be seen as an evolution of the table of contents and cross-references conceived by early publishers. Search engines are realizing the dream of a universal index of all knowledge, a vision sought by the creators of encyclopedias. The transition from physical to electronic media has changed the speed, but not the essence: text remains the primary code of human civilization, and its replication is the foundation of progress.

Gutenberg initiated the process of alienating information from people. Knowledge ceased to be the sage’s internal property and became an external object, a commodity, a tool. This shift allowed us to build modern science and education, but it also raised new questions: how to navigate the ocean of data and how to distinguish truth from well-printed (or digitized) lies. We still search for answers to these questions, turning the pages — whether paper or virtual.