You’re nine years old, imprisoned under the tyrannical rule of the despots who call themselves your parents. Thumbing your nose at their draconian “lights out at 9 p.m.” edict, you furtively grab the flashlight under your bed. Rise up, comrade! There are adventures to be had, mysteries to be solved, and merry to be made! Nothing will keep you from this clandestine meeting — nay, nothing at all. Flashlight on and bedcovers drawn, you quietly turn the first page …
And so it begins — your eternal love of the written word.
Sure, there were some rocky times when you questioned the endurance of such a romance — especially the years you were forced to study pedantic, professorial tomes while cramming for college exams — but looking back, you know you wouldn’t change a thing. You and books — whether in their traditional, pulp-to-paper format or the more modern digital tablet — were simply meant to be.
Of course, none of this would have been possible had it not been for the innovative genius of one man: Johannes Gutenberg.
Raised in 15th century Germany, Gutenberg was a jack of all trades: goldsmith, blacksmith, printer and publisher. Somewhere around the year 1440, he was struck with the idea of fusing existing technologies — including moveable type and oil-based ink — with his own creation: a printing press based on the agriculturally-oriented screw press. The rest — quite literally — was history.
By 1600 — just 160 years after Gutenberg invented the printing press — no less than 40,000 works of all kinds had been published, resulting in roughly nine million volumes from more than 100 presses*.
The very first form of mass media, Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the dissemination of information and ideas. In addition to what we typically think of as the “Three Rs” — reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic — it also brought about the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. To this day, the entire media industry — be it the traditional daily print newspaper or an online news site — is still referred as “the press.”
Not bad for one man tinkering around in his tool shed.
* Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life ~ Jacques Barzun
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