If it wasn’t for Johannes Gutenberg I wouldn’t be writing this post. In fact, if it wasn’t for Tim Berners-Lee, I wouldn’t be writing it either.
So who’s Top Dog? Who’s the Big Kahuna? The Head Honcho?
Let’s have a look shall we?
Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable wooden type printing press in 1436. (Progressing later to metal type.) Known imaginatively as: The Gutenberg Press.
Before I get a plethora of comments saying: Yeah, but the Chinese invented clay movable type 400 years earlier…
Yes they did. And the clue is in the word- “clay”.
Johannes Gutenberg
Now what’s so special about that? I hear you coo.
Well, it meant that books could be massed produced cheaply. Which lead to mass literacy. Which lead to peasants like my forefathers having the opportunity to better themselves. (Which they never bothered their arses to do.)
The Gutenberg Press is one of the greatest inventions of the modern era. Producing a veritable revolution in the fostering, development and dissemination of the arts, sciences and religion. (Okay, maybe the last one wasn’t such a good idea.)
Books were no longer the sole domain of royalty, church and aristocracy.
The masses had the opportunity to learn. To have their own ideas. And to contribute ideas.
So, if you’re reading this, (and you’re not a member of the royal family), you probably have Johannes Gutenberg to thank for enabling you to do so.
Gutenberg Press
Next up, Sir Tim Berners-Lee father of the World Wide Web, upon which you are reading this post.
Tim Berners-Lee
As most of you probably know, TB-L invented the first internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN in 1989.
And you’ll probably all agree, that the WWW is one of the single greatest inventions ever to be bestowed upon humankind.
A PC
If Gutenberg help spread mass literacy, then Berners-Lee has helped spread mass learning.
No longer are we bound by publishers as to what we can and cannot find out. Whether that be across the road at number 22, or across the world at, er… number 23.
Accessing hitherto inaccessible information. The sharing of information instantly. Communicating with people in real time that would otherwise take hours, days or weeks.
What Gutenberg did in 600 ish years, TB-L has achieved in 20.
It is mind-boggling to comprehend the effect the World Wide Web has had in empowering the everyday man, woman and child in their quest for knowledge.
Obviously, there had to be a few other people in the chain such as, Alan Turing – the father of Computer Science and John Atanasoff, the inventor of the first computer, before TB-L could begin to cognize WWW.
But, I doubt that any of these illustrious men would have achieved what they have, had it not been for Johannes Gutenberg.
Some may say the invention of language and writing are of far greater import than merely having the means in which to transcribe them. What good would a book be without words in which to put them?
Og: What’s that?
Ug: It’s a book.
Og: What’s in it?
Ug: Nothing.
Og: What use is that?
Ug: It’s a sketch book.
Beat.
Og: Hang on a minute, me auld hairy sabre-toothed tiger slayer, what are we doing ‘ere?
Ug: Er… I dunno. Chatting?
Og: Exactly! Chatting.
Og: Now, what if you write our, er… “chats” in your little sketch book?
Ug: Then it wouldn’t be a sketch book. It’d be a “chat” book.
Og: Maybe we could have some kind of “picture” for our words?
Ug: A pictogram?
Og: More of a… symbol really. You know, instead of you drawing a woolly mammoth we could have a “wooooord” for it instead. Coz, let’s face it, you can’t draw for shit. I’ve seen the mess you made of the cave.
Ug: You mean a consistent set of phoneme symbols arranged in an alphabet for the translation and dissemination of information?
Og: Yeah, that as well.
And lo, writing was invented.
I digress.
So… who wins between Gutenberg and Berners-Lee?
Berners-Lee may have driven humankind further, but it was Gutenberg who bought the petrol.
Which leads me to another life-changing invention – the lawnmower.
David Milligan-Croft
K’innell Dave, your posts are getting better and better. Have you stopped drinking???
Thank you, kind Sir.
The trick is to drink more.
Thanks for the input, John. It is a tricky one. I think JG too. If we hadn’t had him, we wouldn’t have had TB-L. We’d all still be ploughing fields and doffing our caps to the squire. (While he was reading his hand-scribed book.)
Well. As an ex-compositor, I have an affinity with type so Gutenberg gets my vote. Though T B-L did give us the WWW, which is the future, so maybe he should get my vote. Damn it all, when all is said an done, I am still a type man at heart, I love the feel of it even the smell of it, and to watch a Monotype caster in action is a thing of beauty, mechanical beauty, but beauty non-the-less, so JG gets my vote.
@ John Taylor:
Mechanical beauty is the most wonderful kind … I’m constantly amazed by watching old machinery whirring around doing simple things in complex ways. The apparent finickiness of gears, pinions, cranks and bell arms. The smooth power of pistons, the sublime grandeur of a huge beam engine moving tons of cast iron like oiled silk. A puff of steam here and there just adds to the sense of a living creature at work.
brilliant stuff… keep up the good work.. and humour
Cheers, Andy. Much appreciated.
There’s a newer post on Droga5 Sydney. What neck of the woods are you in?
Art Director at an internet /online TV company
Apologies in advance as this is like you saying to me: I met an English bloke once, do you know him. But… I have a friend called Markham Smith (copywriter) who worked out in Sydney in the early noughties. Don’t s’pose you came across him did you?
Sorry…. I don’t recall him.
I was mainly working in print based design company in the 1990’s with minimal input from specialist writers (a waste of a good resource source I know)