Talk:Johannes Gutenberg

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[edit] Archive

Discussions upto beginning of October 2006 archived in Talk:Johannes Gutenberg\archive-2006oct - mukerjee (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Mukerjee, about half of what you archived was what I'd call "current" discussion; that is, our discussion of the big changes you started here just about 30 days ago. It will be hard to anyone coming to the discussion at this point to know much of what we're talking about with this much removed. Dicklyon 06:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I know, but then not much was being removed. But I've put back October.

[edit] Cultural depictions of Johannes Gutenberg

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 18:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up and changes by Mukerjee Oct 18

A number of changes were made and the article was considerably cleaned up on Oct 18:

  • The claims of printing in Korea and China, largely unreferenced were referenced with extensive quotations
  • The Biography section which was only a paragraph with other fragments scattered elsewhere was cleaned up (but still needs work).
  • The contributions of Gutenberg as the father of the printing press and a leading catalyst of the Renaissance have been under challenge from a number of quarters, this was presented with documentation
  • The possibility that East-West traffic over the two preceding centuries of the Mongol Empire may have led to some knowledge in Europe of movable type was introduced
  • A number of sentences and structures (such as the unwieldy initial paragraphs) were copyedited ruthlessly, merged with other fragments, and cleaned up.

User Dicklyon reverts with the comment: too much of a change to do without discussion. This is not a criteria in Wikipedia, where ruthless editing is consistently encouraged.

Please justify in what way these changes are inappropriate and merge them by putting in extensive work instead of just a revert.

I am reverting back to the new version which certainly reads better, and has far better referencing and citations than the present version. Please give your reasons here; please do not blindly revert; edit the text to merge the elements you don't agree with. It does not make sense to keep the older inferior version that people are working with still. Mukerjee 05:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Such an extensive edit that throws out the stable work of many editors over many months, with no chance for incremental review and collaboration, is just too disruptive and disrespectful, in my opinion. But I'll let someone else decide now whether to revert you again. I recommend a revert, followed by you re-integrating changes piece by piece, with time between for reactions and negotiations. Dicklyon 06:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
p.s. We don't need weasle words in the lead. If it is verfiably true that "Even within Europe, there are those who claim that Laurens Janszoon Coster of Holland may have used movable types earlier," then you have to say WHO makes such a claim, and give a verifiable reference for it. The things I have read about Coster did NOT say that anyone actually claims or believes that, only that it was a local legend for a while. Dicklyon 06:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I understand your angst at having many microscopic changes gone. But the so-called "stable" version read rather poorly, and at least the English and the flow is a lot cleaner. There were repeated references (e.g. two consecutive parags referred to his family in Biog; the A&E award had two references, etc), there were poor constructs,

and of course, the referencing was admittedly poor. So please try to look at the whole picture. Wikipedia says it right up front - edit the page only if you don't mind others "ruthlessly" editing your text. As for the weasel word issue, this is what the current version reads (pls see the Biography section) - these were edits that were made before your comment here:

His business partner was Johann Fust who was more of a banker than a printer, but a 1568 history by Hadrianus Junius of Holland claims that the basic idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster around 1940 and may have brought some of his equipment to Mainz. Eventually Gutenberg lost money and most of his press was sold to Fust to meet debts.
In this instance, "even" acts to demote the significance of the previous statement, and may indeed be considered a weasel word. If you feel it is inappropriate, edit it away by all means.
While I did add many facts that take something away from the legend of Gutenberg, if you feel these are inappropriate, please edit it with your references and counter-claims. I also did a LOT of work copyediting it, which is bum-work, and if you feel it does not read better now, go ahead edit it the way you see fit!!
also, to the best of my knowledge, it is not weasle, but weasel.Mukerjee 06:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] questions and other points.

  1. Perhaps some of the perennial discussion on this and related pages would be allievated by an article, Printing in China and Korea. there is enough for an article, and it's a subject fork, not a POV fork, and the split would match most people's interest in one or the other. There's obviously two different traditions, tho there may be links. The very disagreement of the editors here is evidence that there is more than one POV.
  2. The controversy over whether G. was the true inventor has been going on since the 15th century. Strongly asserting there is only one justifiable position is not evidence. The copntroversy, in fact, is such a major subject of intellecual history, that it could merit its own article. (btw, from what I know, I do think the key figure was Gutenberg. The verb in the last sentence was "think."
  3. If it comes to WP policy, it encourages bold editing, but it discourages large changes where there is unsettled argument without prior discussion. Here's the place to discuss.
  4. Can someone give an explanation to the date of 1447 of Gutenberg doing just what?
  5. LC & BM do not call the 1455 copy a preliminary edition or different from the 1456.
  6. wasn't there an indulgence (or 2) printed by Gutenberg in 1456 (Scheide Library & I think the Morgan)
  7. and how about the work by Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Paul Needham mentioned above on how he may not have actually cast his type in areusable metal mold. There's a good BBC discussion now at: http://www.open2.net/home/view?entityID=15601&jsp=themed_learning%2Fexpanding_viewer&sessionID=-1161237951933&entityName=object

& http://www.printinghistory.org/htm/news/national/needham.htm, and various other lectures to be found in Google.

  1. The discussion in the 1911 EB under Typography is basic reading, if a little on the long side, and puts the treatment here to shame.
  2. ditto the bibliography at http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/references.html

DGG 07:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

  • As for larger issues, I agree to some degree. I edited the article again to remove any "strong" views - rectified some points that might qualify. The initial sentence: "he was believed to have invented X, but it already existed..." is an edit of the earlier sentence, it is substantially correct; there are still textbooks with this creditation. As for a separate article on printing in Korea/China the existing article on Printing already goes a good way, perhaps some more inputs there may be needed. Any reference to this aspect here is only in the context of whether G was possibly influenced by this asian invention or whether it was a completely independent re-invention. This is relevant to the larger than life legend behind Gutenberg, which appears to be crumbling in recent times.
I also found no evidence for 1447 - it was there before. I just cleaned it up and made it a link ;-). My best info on this dates it about 4-5 years before the first bible, i.e. around 1450.
The "fair" in the biography also needs a reference badly...
I also merged two conflicting statements about the antecedents of his printing press - the article said it was derived from both a heavier binding press, and also the wine presses... needs a reference as well!!
Why don't you add the BBC link - the point about the mould being non-reusable is quite interesting, but more relevant is the position (as is true of all inventions) that it was a gradual process, not something that Gutenberg engineered suddenly. A good place would be after the Fabbiani comment, which also needs more substance btw. Perhaps that comment should also be shifted down to near the Legacy area, which needs to be consolidated considerably. Mukerjee 11:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comments and remaining qys.

type I--minor

  1. Presses--there were many kinds of presses around, for wine, for bookbinding. for olices, for cloth printing perhaps? This needs checking by someone who knows, but my ignorant a priori guess is that for a rectangular press, it wouldn't have been wine or oil. Can be left ambiguous till we find some more real evidence--I prefer to rely on secondary sources that know ore than I do.
  2. I will put in Needham's work. Are there any good refs for Fabbiani?
  3. the Paris "edition" seems a ghost--I need to check at a real library.
  4. there were indulgences mentioned earlier in the commentary; they are real, & critical to the history. I'll put them in
  5. Donatus. a/c the 1911 EB, there seem to be a number of copies & editions of various dates. I need to look further, and learn more, but it is almost certainly not as simple as given here.
  6. This qy of his ethnicity has attracted some scholarly attention, & does belong.
  7. The Golden section belongs in the article on the Gutenberg Bible, not here.
  8. which fair?

type II, larger:

  1. The disproportionate length of the Asian influence section here makes it obvious to me that it should go elsewhere--especially as it concerns the invention of printing & movable type, not Gutenberg's work per se. But Needham & his collaborators are generally a very good source--for the Chinese history, at least. It seems to be discussed at every possible page on this & related topics. I'm thinking of the best way to bring it together.
  2. On the other hand, the discussion of his life needs a good deal of additional material.
  3. I am not all that happy with general descriptions of Gutenberg as a catalyst, beyond saying the obvious. There's an immense amount of evidence, but it probably material belongs somewhere in the history of printing in europe,

DGG 22:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New agenda?

The recent re-write may have some improvements, but the way it filled the lead with scepticism instead of positive statements about Gutenberg seems like it is based on a whole new agenda. I certainly agree that the article needs to respect the Korean history, and needs to represent skeptical viewpoints, but that's not what the lead should be about.

Furthermore, there is now a large reliance on a web ref by Thomas Christensen, apparently self-published on his own blog site. This doesn't seem like it meets the usual standards of WP:V and such. There are lots of authoritative biographies and other things on Gutenberg; this article shouldn't need to rely on a 2006 web page.

Dicklyon 06:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Tom Christensen here (on a foreign machine and not remembering my log-in, sorry). I haven't used Wikipedia Talk much, so apologies if I don't do this quite right:
To begin, I was not the person who referenced my work on Korean movable metal type printing in this wikipedia article, and I just learned of it through a visitor to my site. In fact, it appears that some of what I did was referenced without attribution, but I am am not writing to complain about that. What I do want to do is to respond to user Dicklyon who dismisses my article in his post above as "self-published on his own blog." This is not altogether untrue, but it is certainly misleading. The piece was reviewed and accepted for publication by "Arts of Asia," which is a highly respected scholarly publication in the field of Asian art and culture. Because they will not bring it into print until perhaps next summer, I asked the editors if they would object to my posting it on my own website (not blog), and they agreed. (I used this web forum to get further feedback from people with knowledge in the subject.) So it's not as if this was a slapdash piece that was put up without any scholarly review, as Dicklyon seems to imply (there is a comment about the Arts of Asia publication commitment on my website, if Dicklyon had cared to check before rushing to judgment). Furthermore, the essay is extensively footnoted, so nearly all of my references can be checked if anyone cares to do so. Many come from the research library of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, where I have been the director of publications for a number of years (and where examples of the Korean printing in question have been exhibited). It's ironic that Dicklyon thinks my article does not "meet the usual standards" of Wikipedia since it is probably among the most responsibly vetted content on this page.
-- TC
Hey, Tom, it's great to hear from you. I hope you'll understand that I meant no disrespect for your work, and made no judgements on it; and yes I did check and saw that your site said it had been accepted for publication next year, but that was not material to my objection. The edits I was complaining about made such a severe change of tone to the Gutenberg article, justified by snippets of your findings, out of context in my opinion, that I felt they were unjustified, or at least badly written and badly place in terms of impact on the Gutenberg article, such that referring to your not-yet-published work did not live up to the Wikipedia:Verifiability requirements of such a radical change. I'd love to hear your opinion on the article changes that were made, so that at least we know if you agree with them, based on your own expertise in this field. To the extent that they are accepted vetted points, we should strive to incorporate them appropriately here and in the printing in East Asia article. Alternatively, to the extent that you've found out and published new things, we should really wait until they are published, and get a chance for scholarly reactions perhaps, before we accept them as WP:V. Dicklyon 00:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Dicklyon. I'm sorry if I was being oversensitive. I agree that this article, based on its title, should be about Gutenberg and not about Asian printing except as it is or may be pertinent to him. (One thing about Gutenberg is that he is both an individual person and a symbol of the revolution in European printing. Usually when he's mentioned it's more as the symbol than as the man (cf. McLuhan). I'm not sure how or if the article should address this. I admit I was a little pressed for time and haven't really studied the entry or its history. I'll try to have a closer look as soon as I get a chance. Thanks again for your reply, -- T.
No problem, Tom. I do sometimes stir up more argument than I intend to, so I've had sensitivity training suggested for me. And did you just say "Asian printing"? How broad of you... ;^) Dicklyon 03:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Haha, good catch on "Asian printing." --TC
There may be other new agendas, but what I listed above is an attempt to center this article on Gutenberg, and expand it where it needs expansion. As for removal of arrant irrelevance, yes. Maybe its unusual, but I go about it slowly if it serems to have been there a long time. DGG 04:42, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. My query was primarily about Mukerjee's changes that injected a rather severely sceptical tone into the lead. Enough so that I initially just reverted the whole thing as too disruptive. So I'm trying to see what others think of this new direction, even as I try to tone it down a little. He makes a lot of points that he attributes to "current scholarly re-assessment" which means Christensen's self-published blog; six references to it, colored by his own interpretation, too. To me, this sounds like sever POV, not WP:V. Dicklyon 06:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Fortunately for myself, I have not been involved in the earlier discussion & controversy & want to approach it afresh DGG 07:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what earlier discussion or controversy there might have been. I'm referring to Mukerjee's big edits of Oct. 18 immediately before you stepped in. He has added a lot of seriously sceptical tone, intended to minimize any credit given to Gutenberg and the influence of European printing, and justified it with 6 references to a new unpublished blog by Christensen. But, if nobody much cares, I'm not going to make it my issue either. I did a little to tone it down, but some help restoring a more neutral perspective, based on verifiable good sources, would be appreciated. Dicklyon 16:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I've now removed a few more of the revisionist opinions of Christensen. If his ideas get reviewed and published and have time for a reaction in the community of Gutenberg scholars we can consider putting some back. Dicklyon 17:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
We'll get there. Any idea of the title of an article on Far East Printing,?
  • History of printing in the Far East? (is "Far East" culturally acceptable?)
  • History of printing in China and Korea
  • History of printing in China, Korea, and Japan (was there any in Japan?)

It's really a separate & impt topic and if nobody here can do it, I will learn enough to bring the stuff together at least. The general qy of cultural interchange during the Mongol period is something I'd like to know more about. DGG 05:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I like History of printing in China and Korea, since I haven't heard about Japan being involved early. I suppose you could just say Asia, which have plenty of scope for Mongols, too. I think there's enough material in the references works already to make a decent article. Feel free to start one and I'm sure others will contribute. Dicklyon 05:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Tom Christensen here again (I commented above in this section). Sorry, when I get home I will find out what my log-in should be -- I'm obviously not trying to be anonymous. There is basic confusion about Asia and Asian printing evidenced here. Yes, there was early printing in Japan, perhaps as early as in China and Korea (I didn't write about it in my article because it was tangential to my topic.) What makes Korea especially interesting is that their movable type was cast metal as opposed to the mostly wood type of China, and it was a more established and significant part of their total printing tradition.
Please don't call this region the "Far East." It should be called "East Asia," which includes all three of these cultural areas. (The Mongol homeland, by the way, was in Central Asia but their empire stretched all the way from East Asia (as far as the Korean peninsula) to Persia and West Asia, and indeed even to Europe.) Also, please don't just say "Asia," which is almost worse, since it lumps three-fifths of the world's population together in one giant basket. Please recognize the enormous diversity of this giant region. There was no printing whatsoever in India or Southeast Asia, and to fail to recognize the different traditions of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia approaches being offensive to a majority of the world's population.
Finally, may I add that I hope that when someone writes an article about printing in East Asia they will not simply plagiarize my research and writing.
Thanks, Tom
Who could do it better? Do you really want to leave it to us :) As mentioned earlier, I intend to start such a page with the 2 paragraphs here and a new section for Japan, since you mention it. Of course I will not plagiarize your writing, but i will certainly draw on your research. DGG 05:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, DGG. I'll be happy to contribute what I can. You folks have been very tolerate of my whining! I'm impressed by the serious attitude and cooperative spirit I'm seeing here. --Tom
Hello everyone - wow! I keep low a few days and Wikipedia has unearthed Tom Christensen himself... Glad to see that I seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest. Actually at a document processing conference some years back I had heard some discussion of how Gutenberg's reputation as the inventor of reusable metal type may be more legend than substance - but then this was beer talk. Then I recently saw Tom's article (in the context of a novel on Genghis Khan that I had just read, the Blue Wolf by Frederic Dion) - and I thought the Gutenberg article should say some of this. Then I found the lead page very poorly written and scattered, so I put in many changes, and dare say I considerably improved the flow at least... Sorry if I stepped on any toes in the process, but if there are elements in the Gutenberg story that are more myth than history, it needs to be highlighted.
I just put in some changes in the article - put back a quote I had initially from Tom - don't know what version you saw but at least in the page I had edited, the concluding parts were largely from your text. As for the lead, I found the opening line saying "popularly considered to have invented" and then it went on for two paragraphs before bringing in the primacy of the Korean invention. I just put the same lines in the first para where they can appear in the context of "popularly considered".
And sorry Tom if you feel that there was plagiarism - don't know which version you saw, but the version I had edited had explicits quotes (which is back now), and where it used your material (it was the bulk of the middle part), I had cited you SIX times - abcdef - at various points. Of course there were other aspects too - e.g. the Tsien and Sohn quotations were from your article, and in a scholarly treatise I would not have quoted these without reading the original source, but they do satisfy the Wikipedia notion of verifiability - that others can verify this source, and your article was certainly trustworthy as a pre-print of a journal article. And it was quite a good read as well... Please do replace the web reference with the journal edition as soon as it comes out!
As for the article on "history of printing in the far east" - I do not find any article on "history of printing" per se... and maybe the basic history of printing in general is not completely separate from the history of printing in the far east. If there are additional aspects, e.g. cultural impact, social issues, developments post 1400s etc, or if the article becomes too bulky in describing the Chinese/Korean inventions, a second article on printing in the far east specifically would also be a good thing. However, without an article on "history of printing" per se, it may be premature to start one on the history of printing in China separately ...
Indeed, the existing article on printing already has a good kernel of this history. Perhaps it is the spread of printing in Europe that deserves a separate article on "Effect of Printing in Europe". The existing article on printing press already does some of that. That article is already tagged to be possibly merged with the article on printing, and this section could be expanded to become the article on the effect of printing in Europe, which is an important topic separate from the history of printing.
I also cleaned up a direct webpage link on this page - I will request users to please follow wikipedia citation norms now that this article is using them - see Wikipedia:Citation templates for guidelines... Mukerjee 08:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Mukerjee, you've done it again. A huge wide-ranging edit of all sections, each edit apparently designed to make sure that Gutenberg doesn't get much if any credit for his invention. Some of your edits may be OK, but if you'll make them section-by-section and give others a chance to participate, we can likely converge better. I reverted the lot because it was impossible to see what all to consider based on the huge diff. Try again, piece by piece, and let's see where we get. And try to write a summary that says what you've done, rather than burying a huge change of direction under an innocuous-sounding summary. OK? Dicklyon 04:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] come on

I do not think that is Mukerjee's intent. I see he put it back, and I did start fixing it up a little, and will continue to, if only the two of you stop reverting! Fix it bit by bit, and we can discuss it as we go. I would have done just the same if the last version was by someone else. Reverting does not help, and neither do major disconnected changes. But, Mukerjee, the Asian material belongs here only as a short paragraph and a reference to a real article. Don't hide it in here. nobody would look for it here. There is major work needed, to write a real biography rather than this sketch, and I am not going to do it while the articles keeps reversing itself.

It is more likely that the printing press article will be expanded than merged,at least if we can find somebody to do the 19th and 20th centuries. At the moment, the best article on history of Printing is History of Typography. conceivably it's too ambitious, and then we can separate out some of it--but all histories & other books about printing do combine the information about the production of the type itself and the information about the type face. Just as the facts must reflect the scholarly consensus, so must the organization. And thereis one very obvious thing--to anyone at all who might read the article--the article is entitled Gutenberg, and can and should include a description of the work he did as well as the life. It should not have 50% of the content about the work earlier people did elsewhere in the world. Even had he devised his methods under the tutelege of a wandering Korean printer, the account of printing in Korea would not belong.

I'm looking at the content and I'm going to keep looking at the content and only that. I'd do the article on Asia tonight, but I'm giving a lecture on the use of WP tomorrow. DGG 06:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thee is a good deal of criticism of WP just now about this sort of thing.

NO, I did NOT put my version back. I just put back one section since dicklyon wanted to see it section by section. I was really mad with Dicklyon's comment and his ownership stance on the Gutenberg article. Perhaps we should really not feel this type of ownership, but now that i am much saner today, I can empathize with it - we all know how it comes, and it is an infallible part of human nature.
How it went, and how it goes with a lot of wikipedia edits, is that I made some small changes first. Then I found the references all screwed up (there was a bracket wrong). Then I re-read a references that DGG and I had discussed earlier, and I put in some more substance from that source and another one - I dug that out of a 2003 conf paper by HS Baird on document image analysis where he talks about the Princeton work and I put in the original reference. I worked for about two hours on the article, and I daresay the result was considerably improved.
But besides, this I also cleaned up the legacy section which I thought was quite overhauled. It is back to a set of disorganized sentences that it used to be - thanks to dicklyon - and i'll let others work on it. Sometimes reverts just reveal laziness, and an unwillingness to work, hopefully this is not the case here.
As for the lead, any reader would question why the korea reference comes four paragraphs after "popularly considered the inventor". I had only a small change here which I have NOT reverted; let someone else do it incrementally.
Dicklyon says my changes were "designed to make sure that Gutenberg doesn't get much if any credit for his invention." If he wants to glorify Gutenberg, let him find some sources which identify his exact invention, and let these contributions be pinpointed more precisely. I would be happy to know where in W does it say that changes can't be too huge - this can't be a reason really, can it?
Like with most inventions, what I feel is that no single person invented printing, it was a series of small changes, and it seems Gutenberg's legend needs a bit of revision, and that is what I meant by "current scholarship". It is work by other people, and I am just putting up pointers from their work.


As for the asian material, what I had re-inserted was a quote from Tom's article - which says how it is possible that G may have heard of movable types because of the connections during the mongol empire ... in fact, it belongs more in this article than some other details perhaps... I am moving the song quote on how he made movable types to printing press and removing it from here, and putting back the quote from Tom here.
And DGG - As for these types of bickering on WP - perhaps we should tell the world that these are actually very positive. What it says is that
  • a) there is a lot of passion, and
  • b) there is no single truth, no yes and no answers - its all gray, all the way.
Unless one feels passionately (as Dicklyon clearly does, and perhaps DGG and I have started to become), we would not be here fighting on these issues, which a year from now, will seem so childish and petty! Mukerjee 09:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
M, thanks for doing the one section instead of the whole thing. I do feel strongly that it is inappropriate to make such abrupt changes of direction in an article. I don't feel much ownership of this one, since I didn't even have much to do with writing it, but I did feel that it was need in protection when you showed up and completely threw out all that had been done in a favor a whole new POV. So slow down and let's work it out. And certainly not base a new direction on as-yet-unpublished sources. Dicklyon 15:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, they can be very positive. The sign that they're not positive is when one person does a revert, or when personal remarks about motivation are made. There are some subjects where this is inevitable, and sensible people avoid them. But I have even in a few months seen quite a number of pages where a series of incompatible changes has reduced the page to a short bland entry, and others where it produces a page of jumbled parts, all put in by different people.
I did not feel it necessary to insert quotations praising Gutenberg, or commenting how his work was of the greates importance to modern Western civilization. I will, since you are skeptical, but any book on the general subject will have them. Edison was not the first to develop a practical electric lighting system. Darwin was not the first to speculate on evolution. In each case it was the individual genius in developing the system which makes for the historical importance. Almost every element in Gutenberg's invention had been used in Europe before, though probably not type-casting, however he may have done it. But it was he who printed the 42 line Bible, and that is the key cultural event.
Everyone's legacy needs readjustment in subsequent centuries, but usually the core remains, as it does here. The earlier parallel development in East Asia was of great importance to those civilizations as well, and a great demonstration of successful human ingenuity in dealing with what one might have though intractable material (the Chinese characters). it is worth its own discussion, but not in an article about Gutenberg. (We can discuss separately its relevance to the article on the general history of typography.) "May have heard" is not proof of influence, especially if that is the strongest statement a scholarly specialist can make, but on his authority warrants a reference and a paragraph.

I know how to word the above in a positive way, and I will, probably next week, if the article is not dismembered by then. Comments that Gutenberg does not deserve credit for the invention of printing in Europe can be inserted, if you can find them, which I doubt. Check my wording in that sentence. DGG 16:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] time & mss.

By Gutenberg's time, in the Rennaisance, books were written by professional scribes; it was earlier, in the Middle Ages, that only monks had the skill. A contemporary manuscript, the Great Bible of Mainz, took just about a year.DGG 04:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] 2 vols

Gutenberg did not bind the vols, which for centuries remained a separate trade. The salary of a clerk for 3 yrs is not an amazingly low price, however lower it may have been than a ms. copy. The data speaks for itself.~~

Good catch about the volumes; that explains why the ref I found didn't say. And thanks also for cleaning up the POV comment. Dicklyon 04:29, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, there are a ton of sites and books talking about a 1455 two-volume Bible. I agree that he didn't bind them, but did he turn them out with the intention that they be bound as two volumes? Who has a good reference on this? Dicklyon 04:44, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
It will be rather hard to tell what he expected, and such information should go on the page for the bible itself. This is Gutenberg. DGG 07:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Article

The article seems to read rather well and is reasonably documented. Perhaps with a little more work, we could take it to the Featured category level? mukerjee (talk) 23:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I do not think it is quite ready yet--the strictly biographical section is much too concise for such an important figure. Alas, I havent the time to work on it till January. DGG 07:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I've got several books on Gutenberg, and there's clearly a lot known about his life, times, and work. This article, on the other hand, is heavy on the open questions instead of the part that's known. The TOC, being heavy on questions, doesn't make it look very encyclopedic. It mentions Korea and China about as many times as Mainz, which seems a bit off. Dicklyon 08:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
As a start, I deleted the description of typecasting in Korea, since it is already in the History of typography in East Asia article. Perhaps the rest of the section belongs there as well, where it can be developed at length. DGG 09:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC).
The discussion is relevant since it shows that the casting technology used in Korea was essentially the same as was used in Europe. Therefore it is the same technology, and was not a different one. This needs to be said re: Gutenberg. mukerjee (talk) 15:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
If that is the purpose, it seems to say the opposite. Whatever Gutenberg may have used, he didn't use sand. I'd suggest you might want to remove it, since the description is already on the HTEA page. DGG 04:31, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries

Mukerjee, please use more meaningful edit summaries. You frequently make big changes under the guise of adding a link or some such innocuous-sounding summary. You took out the correct info about the original of his name, but acknowledged it in a different edit summary, making it hard to figure out and repair. Help us out here, please. Dicklyon 16:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Dear Dicklyon, thank you very much for keeping me out of the "us" who are "here". I feel cold.
Look, let us not fall prey to this "us" vs "them" thinking. We are all working to improve the article. If one has read up some things, and if it comprises a good bit of research, one writes it up. One can't say all that one has done in the edit comment. If you find the writing poor, if you find the research faulty, please say so. I found three different references to "Gutenberg" as his mother's family name. But I was a bit doubtful, which I mentioned on the edit summary. Perhaps your reference is more accurate on this, certainly it is giving the facts right. But the language of the revert is rather poor, you could have kept the language at least don't you think, instead of reverting it?
Please think slightly long term - why take this ownership attitude - it would seem to me that if someone is taking pains and editing the article, and doing research, she should be welcomed. Instead, I see that you are putting up an "us" vs. "them" pose... I have edited this article and added a lot of content and perhaps improved readability also considerably. Certainly the article is far more readable than it was when I started working on it. If you feel some things are not good for the article, by all means edit it. If you feel some things others do are good, it also won't kill you if you admit it here in the discussion pages.
We are all working here because of our vanities. Please give some space to the others.mukerjee (talk) 15:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I fail to understand your bizarre interpretation of my request. Dicklyon 16:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] peace

Mukerjee, it is possible that you may have your preferences set to mark all edited as Minor by default. You've been marking even major edits that way, and I'm sure is wasn't intentional. In any case, it is clearer to keep discussions here than in the edit summary.

It is not relevant to our work who improved the article the most, or in what sequence edits were made. The number of edits is so great by now that it can only be regarded as it should be, a community project. Anyone who wants to, privately, consider himself the major contributor is welcome, but such sentiments or the accusation of an individual having such sentiments do not belong here.

It has, over time, been improved a good deal. Perhaps it could be improved further by filling in the relatively sparse sections (on Gutenberg's life, and his business transactions) rather than by resuming old fights.

Well said. I certainly never felt any ownership of this article, nor have I been a major contributor until recently. Most of my recent work has only been in reaction to what I see as major changes designed to recast the history of the inventor of printing with movable type, as we know it, as little more than a copier and a drunk. Dicklyon 04:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed material on invention of woodblock printing

Gutenberg was not the inventer of block printing in Europe, or even the first user of the technique in Europe, so information about the East Asian development of block printing & its influence is not relevant here. It is highly relevant elsewhere--see the ongoing discussion on the suggested merge of the block printing and woodblock printing pages, a move which I support.

[edit] removed details on Korean sandcasting

Gutenberg was apparently the inventor of movable type printing in Europe, so information about the possible East Asian influences on this technique is relevant. Since the details of the East Asian techniques were different, they should be discussed, but not here. This is the page about Gutenberg, not the page about movable type.


But Gutenberg is known for introducing moveable type to Europe. So whatever the guy said, as long as it is documented with a reputable source, then it is relevant. — intranetusa 21:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General comment & Village Pump

There is no need for the invention of woodblock printing and its possible diffusion to be discussed everywhere the technique is mentioned. There is no need for the details of Korean sand-casting to be discussed where the method is not sand-casting. All this has been discussed quite sufficiently, and I think there is almost universal agreement, at least here. This is the article on Gutenberg. I think and hope everyone editing Gutenberg realises they are editing Gutenberg, and not the history of printing technology in general.

The general question of how to deal with printing in East Asia is being discussed on the Villiage pump, atWikipedia:Village pump in the policy section, at the initiative of Mukerjee-- beginning on the 15th, three days ago, but I have only now seen it. I suggest others interesting in this topic to look & comment there, because the discussion may not represent all of our concerns, as it is based only on one editor's view.DGG 04:16, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I support Mukerjee's comment on the village pump (policies) page. Histories of technologies should not be Europe-centric or western-centric just because this is the English-language wikipedia. And maybe if we got the typography article generalized to the whole history he wouldn't be so inclined to use the Gutenberg article as a place to put it. Thanks for your work on this article. Dicklyon 04:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
As an alternative, why not call it history of typography in europe? I see no reason why you think accommodating this point will help anywhere else, even here. It has not before--it has been inserted at every possible place. DGG 05:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
In any case, I thank you for your (temporary) support and will confine myself to Gutenberg and ignore the nonsense elsewhere in this section. And of course, to continuing to question where there are no facts anywhere in WPDGG 05:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I would also support your suggested alternative (call it European or western, as distinct from Asian or eastern, or whatever the right subdivision is), if integrating the western and eastern typo histories is awkward. I don't know if it will help here, just wishful thinking on my part. Dicklyon 05:48, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV in Lead

To my mind, the present lead:

Johannes Gutenberg... invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.

is ambiguous and misleading. The primary interpretation is:

there is a technology of printing with movable type, which is ONLY european, and this was invented by JG. (as in "Luis Alberti invented the Haitian music of Merengue).

Clearly this is false. Perhaps what was meant in this rewrite is:

there is an "European technology of of printing with movable type" which is separate from other technologies, and this was invented.

But this position is also not tenable; the technology of movable types and printing was there elsewhere, in largely similar form.

Also, the earlier wording had "often considered to have invented" - which was far more nuanced. The certainty of "invented" is belied by the evidence in the article itself. So what was the justification for removing this phrase?

Furthermore, the second sentence does not flow from the first, there seems to be little reason for that juxtaposition.

Given that we are writing an encyclopedia, this type of misleading writing, and that too in the lead, should be avoided at all cost. In fact, given the clarity of the earlier text (before Nov 10 or so), the fact that it was re-written in this inept way makes me feel that it may have been coloured by NPOV/systemic bias.

As for the Asian influence on JG, why is it that both Dicklyon and DGG are after this section, pruning, hacking, renaming, and dismembering it constantly, if there is no NPOV involved? I agree that it needs some re-editing if one of the other history articles gets stabilized, but that is yet to happen. So the current changes by DGG completely eviscerates the context, leaving one last quote hanging in mid-air like the bone of an argument that lost its way.

How will the reader, presumably unaccustomed to even a remote possibility that there may have been some interaction with Korea on movable types, realize it unless presented with some more substance than there is in the article now? For instance, the references to two centuries of trade ties and the Uighur link - indeed, all the arguments that may support this conjecture - have been removed. Even if there is another stable place where the reader can find this information (and there isn't as of now), much of the argument needs to be here, in this hypothesis, to hint at this possibility, which I am sure you will agree, is an important one and it concerns Gutenberg. If you feel it should be reduced, please do so keeping the argument intact.

Please, folks, if we are to do this together, let's not simply keep reverting or deleting whole sweeps of text. mukerjee (talk) 01:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we disagree on the facts, just on the nuances. I think your second interpretation is more or less what was intended, and I'm unclear on exactly what you find untenable about it. The long-accepted view, only slightly contradicted by more recent research and speculation that you've turned up, is that Gutenberg was the inventor of the technology of printing with movable type as practiced in Europe, independent of any similar technology that might have been practiced in east Asia. It seems to me a radical POV to write it in such a way as to strip him of all that, even if he did have some influence from the east. User:Dickylon:Dickylon (added)

[edit] scope, once again

The last change was to leave in the material about Guitenberg, and remove the rest. This is the article about Giutenberg, and it seemed obvious to me, but let me give the details:

This is not the article on the history of printing or the history of typography, whether in Europe or Asia. It is about the man and his work. It shpuld cover what he did, and what its significance was. It does include the incluences on him, but only the part of the prior history that did in fact influence him. The earlier development of block printing in Asia did not influence him, because even if it did influence the European development of block printing, for which there are assertions but no data, he did not learn it from there but from other European block printers. Thus the development of block printing goes into the article on block printing. He clearly did not learn the detailed technology of movable type from anyone, because neither the standard method or the newly-demonstrated method are known elsewhere before him, and as Mukerjee has shown, the Korean and Chinese methods were different.
But perhaps he got the idea from Asia. Once more there is no data, but just assertions. But the assertions are significant, and thus there should be a section referring to them, and so there is, the section now numbered section 5. I did not write the text for that section, I kept what others had written and It refers elsewhere to a more detailed discussion. What more can be wanted? If the reader wants to see the route by which he might have been influenced, the reader can look at the more detailed articles and decide for himself whether the material there is convincing. That is NPOV. It's also common sense--the critical piece of written or archeological evidence may yet be discovered. If any intermediate person or artifact is ever found, then it might be discusses whether it belongs here or elsewhere--if it deals with the East Asian methods being known in Central Asia, it would still not be direct--there being several very different cultures between which transmission would hneed to occur.

(Compare this with inventions which are known to be transmitted, such as paper. As discussed there, there are many artifacts and documents and examples for every step of the process, all the way to the general use in northern Europe. Compare the transmission of numerals, of games such as chess, of gunpowder, of rice. All these have real intermediaries.)

Since POV was raised, I will discuss it frankly. Dicklyon and I come from different areas of work entirely, but I do not know his background. My own intellectual tradition is derived from Western Europe, but my ethnic tradition is not. I find it quite satisfying that Europe does not have the monopoly on human creativity and ingenuity. I also find it very satisfying that inventions and creativity can come to many individuals. But there is, after all, reason to give greatrer emphasis on European printing, quite independently of the technology: the very different cultural effects--it produced an intellectual revolution in Europe, but not in the Far East.
Where I see POV problems is to discuss the Asian invention of movable type both where it is relevant and where it is not. The discussion on the VP page suggested that the Chinese invention should be mentioned as part of articles on the Western invention, and it already was, and so it remains, & should remain.

The article on History of typography should be retitled, and I will propose it there, to see if others also want to do it. I think it better to retitle it rather than to combine it, mainly because of the length--it is already a very long article. I think the first sentence is exact: there is an European technology of printing from movable type, it differs from the Asian technogy for doing this, and Gutenberg did invent it. He obviously did not invent all the components, for example paper, or the use of engraving tools. Bias would be if the sentence read, Gutenberg was the inventor of printing from movable type.

I suggest that it might assist the general improvements in this series of articles to let the Gutenberg page be about Gutenberg. DGG 04:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm just a middle-age white guy of American/European extraction. But I love history, and like to see it done right. Therefore, I'm really glad we got the Korean connection into the article, and mentioned the possibility of its influence. But that's about enough, because the other part of getting the history right is to give sufficient credit for the incredible step that this inventor took. A lot of scholars have studied Gutenberg for centuries and written lots of books on him. I've only read a couple, but they pretty much do call him the inventor even when they mention other possible influences. This is the preponderant verifiable and reliable view that we need to follow; that doesn't mean we exclude other verifiable scholarly opinions, just that we don't weight them out of proportion; that goes double for not-yet-published new research that the scholarly community has not even had a chance to react to yet. Dicklyon 06:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Woodcut analogy needs work

- Coming from the quieter waters of printmaking, where DGG has been making enquiries recently, I don't understand this passage:

"In 2004, Italian professor Bruno Fabbiani claimed that examination of the 42-line Bible revealed an overlapping of letters, suggesting that Gutenberg did not in fact use movable type (individual cast characters) but rather used whole plates made from a system somewhat like a modern typewriter, whereby the letters were stamped successively into the plate and printed much as a woodcut would have been".

- a woodcut is a relief print; you take a block of wood & carve away the "white" to leave the only "black" at the original surface (as with a piece of type). If you "stamp" the letters "into the plate" you have an intaglio process, requiring quite different printing. Although the intaglio process of engraving was in use in Germany by 1430-odd, I can't think this is what is meant. Nor would it seem practical to stamp the letters through a thin plate, so they are in relief on the back of the plate. Do you mean a cast was taken of an intaglio plate, to give a relief mould? If so you should say so.

You might look at metalcut also; there have been suggestions in the past that some of these were casts (not covered in article, in Hind) but this seems to have been rejected long ago.

Please also link to woodcut when sorted out Johnbod 21:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If you read about what Fabbiani claims, it's hard to think up any plausible interpretation of it. He seems to be just one nut looking for attention. Dicklyon 00:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not the editors here who have explained the method--our description is based on the Discovery Channel transcript, and WP is not responsible if it wouldn't work. The only reason for including it at all is the notability of the source; readers might reasonably expect to find something on it in an encyclopedia. DGG 01:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

- I have had a look round the internet & all i can find see seems based on very short press-releases. But I don't think you can leave it as it is, because that is actively confusing/misleading over how woodcut works. I did see 1 blog that suggested Fabbiani was talking about stamping to make moulds, which would no doubt be feasible, if hardly worth the trouble. I think if you don't want to get to the bottom of it you should drop the woodcut reference (which is not in any of the fabbiani material i have seen) - people are confused enough about printmaking techniques as it is Johnbod 03:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC) Johnbod 03:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] additional changes

  1. longer quote from christensen
  2. Master of the Playing Cards deserves an article in its own right--will do soon
  3. Fabianni reduced
  4. sequence further adjusted following Mukerjee's start.

DGG 06:49, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

One more:
  1. Gutenberg may have used sand casting, according to Needham, so this part is not a difference with the Asian methods.

[edit] but what I would really like to do

is to move he entire section of East Asian precursors to the p. on East Asia, supplemented by a number of other interesting quotes from Christensen and his sources, leaving only a sentence. It will be better kept together, -- Mukerjee. Please respond here, *n*o*t* in the edit summary. DGG 06:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The section "Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian development" is intended to make only those points that have a bearing on the possible influences on Gutenberg in the matter of movable type. Why does the question arise of deleting or emasculating it, given that it reflects on a very serious cross-cultural debate regarding Asian influences on Gutenberg?
If you feel the section is excessive, or makes some points that are invalid, or hurts the article in some substantial way, please edit it, by all means. If you wish to reflect some of the points in any other article (as is commonly done in Wikipedia), please also feel free. mukerjee (talk) 08:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I will adjust. but first I want to make sure we've got everything from all the related pages into the EA part, so people can read it together. Please do not think I am treating it without regard to its importance. Its hard to know what's valid here, as discussed, and we should keep everything suitable in a suitable place. Guesses by true authorities are worth including, properly cited. (Curzon is an amateur, Christensen is not.) And I'm finding more. May the day come when the EA article gets so long we have to split it. As for the balance, let's see how the article grows--now that this pt is nearer the end, the balance does look better.
I also thank Mukerjee for removing the irrelevant Jewish connection. I'm used to speculations that X was really a hidden Jew, but this was really remote.DGG 07:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] books printed

I've started working on this. There are not too many to include, if you omit the stray fragments. There's a standard reference list to them all, in German of course. There are what seem to be excellent scholarly books, but most are in German, & though I can read the list in German, I cannot manage a long academic book. There's even an academic annual periodical. The material now in about this is not clear, but I will adjust it when I can do it right--better all at once.

I've also found all sorts of relevant details that solve some of our controversies--Most of it is bibliographic details about the Bible, & will go there, but some is relevant here and elsewhere.

DGG 07:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doubt: How do we know JG was a goldsmith?

The only ref I found of him being a goldsmith is Burke, Connections, 1978, p. 101:

He first appears enrolled in the Strasbourg militia as a goldsmith member"

but this narrative is full of errors - his mother's family name is Gutenberg, his father is an official in the bishop's mint, his family returned from Strasbourg with him, etc.

Why I say this is because the Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz article, which is very careful with its facts, never mentions him as a goldsmith; indeed, no profession is ever imputed to him except of course, printer.

It would be good if we could add a more reliable reference on this important aspect. mukerjee (talk) 01:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Good catch. But get a copy of John Man's book. It seems to be the best modern biography. According to Man, Johann's father inherited a position as 'Companion of the Mint' (p.25). But Johann has not eligible for that position because his mother was a shopkeeper (p.44). He probably learned a lot about the craft of coin punching from his father, according to Man, but needed to find his own way to make money. And he was in Strasbourg, 'In the few surviving documents he is referred to variously as a goldsmith, a non-guildsman and a member of Strasbourg's upper class'. So may he did work some gold. Dicklyon 04:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I too have noticed there is no mention of being apprenticed to a goldsmith ( not was his father one, although to a certain degree the main profession of a goldsmith was that of a banker. But he seems to have learned related and perhaps more technical skills, as he is recorded as being engaged to teach someone steel engraving and jewel cutting. He seems, like Edison, to have been a very adaptable technician--which was just what was needed. DGG 07:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Engraving and gem-cutting were core skills for goldsmiths - there was no separate profession of jewellers in Germany at this time. I would have thought if JG did teach these skills that was strong evidence for his having had some goldsmithing training. The banking most often done by goldsmiths was simple "custodian" services - renting space in the strong-room. Some did more "financial services" type work, but by no means all. Money-lending was mostly seen as a separate trade. The "main profession" of most goldsmiths was being a goldsmith, which would include being a silversmith, jeweller & sometimes an engraver. Sadly the Wiki article on goldsmiths is a very poor stub. Johnbod 18:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I notice someone seems to have removed a couple of lines I put in some time ago about the woodblock printing background in Europe. The crucial point here is that the progression in Western Europe is very clearly from images block printed on cloth to images block printed on paper and only then to text block printed on paper (and this last only after JG's first books). It was thought for a long time that block-books preceded JG's printed books, but since the 1967 research on their watermarks (ref in the W-P article) this appears pretty clearly not to be the case. If this important point is not reflected I will add it again, when the editing turbulence has died down a little. Johnbod 18:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

- well I see Dickyon has reverted the edit I was really taking about, whilst I was writing the above. But please look at the Woodblock printing article; the oldest woodblock printed cloth remains are Eygptian from about 600AD. No body knows how many times this ancient and widely used process was invented. The Chinese were certainly the first to use it on paper & for text; that is all that can be said. Article still needs changes. Johnbod 18:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I reverted another big edit by Mukerjee because it had too many things I disagreed with and nothing t that looked like a net win. In particular, it starts out full of his opinions such as "This question is particularly relevant" and "it is becoming increasingly accepted that", where previously there was referenced info from Tsien. Then he throws in more questions like "Is it possible that some news..."; questions are not the best mechanism for an encyclopedic article, and we have too many already. And he deleted some of your stuff which looked appropriate. And I didn't see any of his changes that had any good point; if I missed some, I'm sure they'll come back. Dicklyon 18:32, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Increasingly accepted

Mukerjee, I've again deleted your unsupported assertion that "it is becoming increasingly accepted that European woodblock printing was derived from processes perfected in China." If you have a verifiable reference for this increasing acceptance, we can put it back, perhaps, though it is not very related to the topic of the article. Dicklyon 19:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

- I think you're right. There's absolutely no sign of "increasing acceptance" on the art history side that I have seen. Johnbod 19:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] where to put the asian material

I agree with Ma that it should mainly go on the HTEA page, and be much expanded, but I am not sure how much should stay in the Gutenberg page. The question of the influences on him is fair enough to make some of it appropriate here, but it really requires a fuller discussion than can appropriately be given on the HTEA page. For the other printing pages, I'd advise just the same, a sentence , and a ref.

Please let what is here stay here for the time being; I want to add things at both places, but I can't easily do it while it keeps moving around. The first step will be to make sure everything is on the HTEA article, wherever else it might be.

DGG 02:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, no prob. Lets leave the section alone until the new year. I do not think, however, that we should give the EA any place at Gutenberg's page. First, the conjecture is much too 'thin' to warrant that. Second, if we begin to insert speculation purely on the basis of temporal priority, we can start as well a section in, for example, 'Chinese characters' about the likelihood of a transmission of Sumerian cuneiform, and at another 1000 places, too. Third, we have at least two place where such conjectures are already addressed ('printing' and 'History of EA typography'). But lets wait until 2007. Regards Gun Powder Ma 01:35, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with not wanting much conjecture, if any, but I do think there is an established history that should at least be mentioned and linked. The conjecture is useful only if it's an established, accepted, verifiable conjecture related to the topic. Much of what is written on Gutenberg is conjecture, since the historical documentation of his life is pretty thin, so adding something about his influences wouldn't be too off base. On the other hand, I certainly don't want to see the conjectured influence from Asia to dominate the article on Gutenberg as it threatened to a month or so ago. Dicklyon 04:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The only thing which is established is that there has not been found a trace element of detectable influence of East Asian printing on Gutenberg. And conjecture about Gutenberg is a pretty different thing from conjecture of possible influences 10.000 km away. Gun Powder Ma 15:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. For one thing, the key step that made printing in Europe take off (with wood blocks) was the importation of the technology of paper making from the east. There are lots of traces of detectable influence from the East. Let's just don't go overboard with them. Dicklyon 17:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
It is far from established that text woodblock printing appeared earlier in Europe than Gutenberg's movable type, even the assertion that it was transmitted from the Far East is unproven (See woodblock printing). Also, Gutenberg never used wooden movable type, which would be the obvious thing, if he had been inspired by woodblock printing. And that paper stems from the Far East is irrelevant for a question concerning the origin of Gutenberg's printing techniques. We have the respective pages for East Asian typography now, so we try to keep the pages on European movable type on topic now. And for conjecture, there is the whole of the Internet, but here at Wikipedia lets try to remain focused on substance. Regards Gun Powder Ma 23:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Judging by the articles on the subject, and sources I have read it is clear that woodblock printing of books in Europe started after Gutenberg, but that woodcuts with lines of descriptive text under the illustrations came a few years earlier. I will try to make this clearer, with dates. Since paper had been known in Europe a good deal before Gutenberg, it wasn't paper that was the key aspect. This is furthermore proven very clearly by two facts: Gutenberg printed many copies of his Bibles on vellum, not paper. Furthermore, most of the minor jobbing" printing his shop did was the printing of indulgences--by the thousands-- and they were printed principally or almost entirely on vellum since that was the familiar medium.
Dicklyon, I am only waiting for the end of the term to expand both parts. If you have access to any of the sources, you could help by adding the Asian in the EA article, the part relevant to G in the G article, etc. Having done all that, it will be possible to write a full and comprehensive section on the influences. Having done that, we can then decide in a cooperative way whether to put that long section in the EA article or one of the Europe articles, and refer to it from all the others. That way, as more material is located, it can all be more easily kept up to date.
I, at any rate, like much better people before me, am fascinated by the possibility, and I want to do it justice. I am also fascinated by G., But we cannot improve a moving article. DGG 02:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
My comment on paper was based on my recent readings in Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word, Boston: Nonpareiil Books, 1980 and New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1970, which says:
"Although impressions from inked raised surfaces had been known in Asia for centuries, this was not ture of Europe. ... In Europe the technique of printing had to await the introduction and use of paper. As previously indicated, there were also laws, sponsored by scribes and illuminators, which borbade the duplication of images. As a result, the earliest use of wood blocks was for reproducing devotinal prints of the figures of saints and the designer-craftmen were monks working within the privileged walls of their orders. Such woodcuts were being made in the altter part of the fourteenth century, but the earliest dated proofs are from the first quarter of the fifteenth. ..."
So, not books, but woodblock printing, well before Gutenberg. Also, "Before the fourteenth century wood blocks had been used in the decorations of textiles. Printed cloth is pre-Christian. ... In Europe, Roger of Sicily established a shop for printing cloth at Palermo in the middle of the twelfth century. ... Book blocks, on the other hand—that is, books in which a page consisting of pictures and words is cut on a single piece of wood—are believe to be of and after the time of Gutenberg rather than before. ..."
So, you're right. But there's a complicated picture of technologies around before Gutenberg made his invention. Then the next section "The Invention and Spread of Paper-Making" says "...Vellum was, and is of necessity, a limited and expensive surface. The invention of paper is credited to Ts'ai Lun, a Chinese, in the early years of the second century. ... It took a thousand years for Ts'ai Lun's idea to reach Europe." This last suggests that other aspects of technology may also have suffered extremely long delays in getting to Europe, so independent re-invention is at least equally plausible.
Let me know what sources you're looking for info from and I'll tell if I have it.
Dicklyon 06:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Dicklyon, all of that, & rather more, is in woodblock printing and old master print, except that, like most historians of text, your source underplays the printing of patterns on textiles (for clothing) which was much commoner in Europe & not just done by monks. Actually I should add more on that to WP. The church certainly sold a large proportion of early woodcuts, but there is hardly any evidence as to whether they cut the blocks or not. Since playing-cards were the no2 use, they can hardly have had a monopoly. Some religious woodcuts are very crude, some good - probably too good to be all done by monks. The earliest (manuscript) Western book on paper btw is the Missal of Silos -C11, presumably on Muslim-made paper. added 6th? Dec by Johnbod 15:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I cut the whole section "Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian printing?" wholly out, since

I leave a link to History of typography in East Asia below. Regards Gun Powder Ma 15:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

We should now add a short summary para, referring to the other article(s)- 4-5 lines say. A link in "See also" is not really enough - if the topic appears to be ignored it will only attract new half-baked insertions. Johnbod 15:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

These are already half-baked insertions which have just been reinserted. The reinsertion becomes very much a case of consensus over competence now, one of the most frequent criticisms of WP, as you know. Regards Gun Powder Ma 23:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

For what its worth, its clear that the linkage between Gutenberg and East Asian printing is bad scholarship. Unfortunately that particular cat has been let out of the bag and probably isn't coming back in any time soon (especially give a overwhelming desire to create master narratives and creation stories). For that reason, I think leaving the short reference to the East Asian article here makes sense. Given the confusion that Christensen's thesis has led to, it makes sense to explicitly state that there is no connection between Gutenberg and other printing processes on this page.
GPM, you've done a great job in the talk of documenting the problems with Christensen's thesis. Thanks. — Matt 16:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I have just done so. I have also added some material from this page which was not in the History of typography in East Asia article, and inserted it there. DGG 19:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I find the reinclusion of the EA material not adequate to WP standards for the reasons given above. I am editing quite a few articles on the history of technology, and, frankly, I have yet to see a topic where pure, unfounded, conjecture pops up so frequently. The same lame stuff is now to be found in FOUR articles. I do not see more reason for including stuff about Bi Sheng in a JG article than the other way round.

I am also a bit mystified about reincluding the Tom Christensen stuff, although I specifically linked again to the passage where I showed with peer-reviewed material, just how inaccurate and misleading TC actually is. In a word, I do not want to start the whole discussion again (repetitio non placet). Regards Gun Powder Ma 23:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More woodblock dates

Also by the way, there has just been a change of lead in the great retrospective first-use-of-woodblock-printing race (on cloth of course). I have just found an earlier Chinese use (Han, so bef 220AD) - now added to WP. I still think India may come up on the last straight. Johnbod 15:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, there was certainly a lot going on around 1450. But what is the first known European a/ woodblock print of images on paper

b/ woodblock print containing images and words c/woodblock print containing words only d/woodblock containing words only intended to form a book with other similar pages, if any e/ use of a woodblock to print money or similar financial instrument--if any ? ? DGG 02:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I've opened a new section for this bit. Answers:

a)earliest with dates on are 1418 (Brussels), 1423 (Manchester)(Hind p96) - but great majority are undated, & books all say "around 1400". Some say + or - 10 yrs. Various bits of ambiguous documentary evidence for this, esp re playing cards.

b) Manchester 1423 one is a St Christopher with 2 lines of text at the bottom, which include the date. Most have no text, some have names or a few lines - more captions than anything else. Often text is in banderoles within the image, otherwise usually below. A large block (ie the block has survived- no "original" prints) dated to 1390, presumed for printing on fabric (Le bois Protat) also has banderoles with text. Most prints are very small & have no room for text.

c) As far as I know this would be the text pages of the Ars moriendi block-books, which all (unusually) have separate pages all of text or image but not mixed apart from text within the images. After the BM watermark research these are now dated c1460. Were never dated pre-1440 anyway. Few if any other examples. In many block-books the text was hand-written below a printed image. There weren't many block-book titles; short bestsellers only, but you get lots of different cuts of the same old titles - 13 Ars moriendi I think. Also in different languages.

d) don't seem to be any at all, though there is talk of a pre-JB Dutch "grammar of Donatus" of which no examples survive - i think. Hind gets pretty thick around this point. I haven't read it all.

e) nothing pre-JG as far as I can see. Not sure if there is anything after either.

Hope that helps 03:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


I think you have to open up a new section, because these printing examples beat everything by date: http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.18/ Gun Powder Ma 12:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
That's a cracking link, Ma! I'll use that for the WP page. But they seem to be just talking about text printing & don't count fabric, like most booky sources.Johnbod 13:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Glad you liked it. Did you notice the author actually refers to the ancient Mesopotamian cylinder seals as "printing". Don't want to open a can of worms, but in the long run we have to consider the entry of the Phaistos Disc into 'printing'. I do not think that there is a way around it, now that we have accumulated so many instances of printing, proto-printing and what not in many cultures. After all, the disc is the first indisputable example of the concept of movable type printing, that is to reproduce a text with reusable characters. Gun Powder Ma 01:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Looks like the Phaistos discs were individually hand-made, letter by letter. I don't think the concept of setting type for printing is much related to that. It's as if Gutenberg had tried to make Bibles using his punches, skipping all the steps he invented. Dicklyon 02:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
well the site uses the useful term "blind printing" for the many types of ink-less printing. i think the ink distinction is important, but i'd settle for blind printing. actually I think there is so much blind printing/imprinting/stamping showing up, there is a good case for an article just on the history of that - with the PD as star!

Johnbod 02:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

There is a word "imprinting" which means using pressure to place something into something else to leave a mark of some sort. It's a very general word. It is used in a bibliographic context as a publisher's "imprint" and forms the stem of some related words in other languages. It is also used in a less material sense, as a mother bird imprinting herself upon the visual and olefactory memory of her hatchling, or in the way my writing shows the imprint of my seventh grade teacher. It is in this way that seals can place an imprint upon wet clay or melted wax, just as my footprint could place an imprint on wet cement. T
  • The PD may have been made --in part-- with such marks and --in part--- by engraving the clay with a stylus. The more exact word for that mode of production is "stamping." In shop class in high school I used a set of alphabetic stamps to imprint or stamp my initials on an inconspicuous place of the object I was crafting. That
  • it was made with such instruments is extremely interest and extremely important, and our descendants will still be discussing it a century from now. , but has apparently left no "imprint" upon any later civilization.
  • The key concept of a "print" in early development and later is the production of multiples. (or the possible production of multiples, as in making one photographic print from a negative). There is no technology either several thousand years ago or today which could have made multiple copies of the PD. If I had wanted to mark a second copy of my work, I would have used the punches in succession and produced another original.
  •  :::Even blind printing if done with an implement making multiple blind copies as for some fancy objects is printing. It's the mark that counts, not the ink. If a stamp is used to put multiple copies of a design on the spine of a book, it's printing if multiple books are being produced that way by machinery, but if they are applied one at a time by an artisan, it's stamping. DGG 03:12, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I encourage you to discuss any such imaginary technology on the PD pages, which contain even wilder proposals. DGG 03:12, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Good contributions, and I agree that ink is not essential to printing, even though our current printing methods may make that suggestive. But I do not think that you can separate printing from stamping by the number of applied letters. The real revolution about printing is that people discovered that you do not need to write a text twice, but that you only need to produce once a set of letters which then can reproduce the text many times. This concept is clearly present with the PD, hence it is the first evidence of movable type printing. Regards Gun Powder Ma 13:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
we could carry this on forever, but the existence of 2 genuine identical disks would prove your case.DGG 06:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Give me two genuine identical movable type prints of, say, Bi Sheng. Regards Gun Powder Ma 23:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] varia

Moved some details of copies to the GB page. By G's time, the profession of illuminator was separate, and at least one individual illuminator is known to have worked both on the GB and a contemporary manuscript. Details for the GB page. DGG 22:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Difference between moveable & printing? PBS historian states both were invented in China

What exactly is the difference between moveable & printing? And here is a link from PBS that says both were invented in China hundreds of years before Gutenberg: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/china/age.html

-intranetusa —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Intranetusa (talk • contribs).

Sorry, re China you will have to look at the version from a week ago (look on the History) - the section that covered this has been removed - for the moment! See also Movable type and Woodblock printing. Apologies again Johnbod 02:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but this article is about Gutenberg and what he invented, in Europe. Even if related technologies were developed earlier, that doesn't have much to do with him or his impact. Dicklyon 02:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The issue with the hypothesis is the distinct lack of grounding. Quote "Robin D. S. Yates: I'm not saying that Gutenberg actually had access to a Chinese press; that's highly unlikely. Rather, he [i]probably[/i] got wind of the idea of printing through some [i]unknown and lost source[/i]. (emphasis added)" The scholar in question qualifies the connect right there. No source can be identified. It's all based on speculation. That's the problem with these theories. They leak. Especially when we look at the number of technologies that simultaneously evolve in various regions.
Papermaking can definitely be traced from China to the West. Printing can't. Plain and simple. So this is simply bad scholarship. — Matt 17:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

So question here is not whether Bi Sheng invented moveable type before Gutenberg, but if Gutenberg got his ideas of printing from Asia (no evidence for this). Bi Sheng invented moveable type and printing around the 11th century, and was made with metal in Korea. So if it was "independently invented" by Gutenberg hundreds of years after it was first invented, then should the correct term be "introduced" or should it be "invented?"

— intranetusa 21:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to answer is some greater degree of detail, as a sort of summary of prior discussions here.
He invented the Western practice of printing, composed of a number of elements. Nobody had ever integrated presses, paper, type-alloy, oil-based ink, etc into a single system. He did, and he got it to work,m and he is the inventor of Western printing. He did not invent all of these techniques. Some of them were certainly introduced from east Asia, most notably paper. Some were adaptation of earlier West europe inventions, such as the modifications of the various agricultural types of presses to form a practical printing press. Some like the use of movable type, were apparently invented independently--though there is a respectable minority opinion about possible influences. There is no likelihood of a mere introduction of a developed technique, because his technique was new and unique.
This is all discussed in Typography of East Asia,because it is best to centralize such discussions, to avoid having to sort out just what is consensus at too many different places.
The technical details of movable type are a little complicated, and the subject has a long continuing history after Gutenberg, so it is separate article. Ditto with Printing press. ditto with Paper, for that matter. The integration into a system of printing also has a long continuing history, and is discussed in two separate aspects: Printing, for the craft aspects, and Typography, for the artistic.
The article on Gutenberg is for what Gutenberg did. Even within Europe the question is complicated, because others contributed. He is known to have paid money for presses, and for other instruments. He is known to have worked with metal castings for other purposes, and is known not to have invented the general art. He is not the inventor of the European practice of printing illustrations from solid wood blocks, and it is not completely clear if he worked with them. He is known for having worked cooperatively with manuscript illuminators. What is usually considered is the part he most certainly did by himself, was cut the original punches, the artistically and technically most demanding part, for he was apparently a specialist in this, who is known to have trained others. (One thing he is known not to have done--which is to provide the money for the development of the process).
The problem with the Korean transmission is that the details were different, and the time interval very short. The problem with the Chinese is that it is a different process--there are illustrations of Chinese printers at work, and of early European printers at work, and they are totally different, and would not have been able to use each others' techniques.
The most likely thing to have been transmitted is printed playing cards, and printed money--both known in the Middle East, and from which an ingenious person might have derived some ideas. But after centuries of looking, no example of either has ever been found in western Europe. This does not mean they never will be. Personally, I wouldn't be the least surprised. But neither of them was done with movable type. For movable type, it is necessary to postulate some traveller who had heard of the technique in East Asia, and reported it in Europe, and whom Gutenberg might have heard from first hand, or indirectly. Unfortunately no such person has ever been identified. That does not mean that some day the existence of such an intermediate might be found. Personally, i would be very surprised.
If A invents something in one place, and B later invents it in another, they are both called inventors, though one has the claim to the first discovery. It is very hard to prove independence in a positive sense, and this is the subject matter for much of the work of patent attorneys. If A invents it, and then B copies the work in another country, only then is B a mere introducer, not the inventor.
The above is my synthesis, (and it is what I would teach a class), but I am not an authority. In writing about it in WP, it is necessary to proceed differently, and put the actual sources and quotations together in a narrative. The editor here needs to select intelligently, and combine into a readable account, but she can not put in anything of her own authority. Some of the previous discussion on this topic in the talk pages has involved some of us discussing the primary sources, and contrasting our own different interpretations. But it would be very wrong for us to put any of that into the article.
If you want to go further, you should take these articles only as an introduction, and read the various books and articles used as sources. Use WP merely as a guide to get the basic understanding necessary to intelligently read the actual sources--that is all that an encyclopedia is really good for. If you'd like to continue the discussion, continue here and I --and the other people with all our different opinions-- will all see it. Better yet, read one or two of the sources, and enter some more details into the appropriate articles along with the reference--there is plenty of room for them. DGG 04:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Excellent summation of the issues at hand and exactly why "introducer" or other words that back away from Gutenburg as inventor do not work. One question though:
The most likely thing to have been transmitted is printed playing cards, and printed money--both known in the Middle East, and from which an ingenious person might have derived some ideas. But after centuries of looking, no example of either has ever been found in western Europe.
Not sure where you're going with this. There are clear examples of woodblock printed playing cards in Europe. And the transmission of "playing card" technology has been pretty well demonstrated to follow trading routes (I've got a couple solid articles on this subject). As you've noted they had a very different mode of production/printing. But that's one where I think there is a pretty solid link. —Matt 15:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Matt, could you add your references here & we'll see where to best put them. References welcome, but not in this article, which should be kept to the point: Gutenberg and what he invented.
As usual this ignores the printing of textiles, which is clearly how woodblock printing first reached Europe - see woodblock printing, Old master print. Johnbod 16:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
As I have not yet learned anything about it, I cannot discuss it. Are you quite sure that it could not have been indigenous? References welcome, but not in this article, which should be kept to the point: Gutenberg and what he invented.
The following was removed because it was labeled as "POV" but I don't see how that could be so.

Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian printing? -

Main article: History of typography in East Asia

- Since the use of printing from movable type arose in East Asia well before it did in Europe, it is relevant to ask whether Gutenberg may have been influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Korean or Chinese discoveries of movable type printing, or their earlier discoveries of block printing. - However, there were key differences between the European technologies and that in Korea. Gutenberg used a press, unlike in East Asia, and used matrices (frames to hold type), oil-based inks, and other devices that were significantly different. Whatever the facts regarding Asian influences in this invention, there can be no doubt about Gutenberg's genius in putting together the technologies that eventually went on to fuel the European renaissance.[1]

Whether Gutenburg got its idea from Asia, or whether the ideas that Gutenburg built upon were of Asian origin, is a very hotly debated topic among historians, in which so far there is no right answer. The above did not take a side at all! How then, could that be POV?

ImSoCool

I agree - but you will see from the rest of this page there is an editor who has a very strong position (or perhaps POV) on this. Johnbod 16:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

"Whether Gutenburg got its idea from Asia, or whether the ideas that Gutenburg built upon were of Asian origin, is a very hotly debated topic among historians"
Is it? As far as I have seen you have one pseudo academic and one academic raising the possibility of evidence without any proof. I've yet to see anything within the academic community that takes these points seriously. So in that respect GPM's point is understandable. Personally, I don't have any issue having that content on the page as it helps put that shoddy scholarship to rest. — Matt 22:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
There is a good deal more scholarly debate that could be inserted about this topic. The main authority remains Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). "part one, vol.5", in Joseph Needham's opus. However, it will probably be better to put it on what is intended to be the main page for the topic, History of typography in East Asia.
We are blessed with an editor who thinks the insertion of any material discussing any possible links to the Asian inventions is plain wrong, regardless of who might say otherwise, and also one, a little less in evidence right now, who rejects any attempt to suppress what he considers the obvious Asian invention--and inserts it in every article. Ted C is also around. Personally, I don't know, and I tend to just slightly wonder at the people who are 100% sure-.
Fortunately, we do not have to decide--at least not in WP. All we have to do is put in proportionate amounts of the various theories. This should be possible, and almost everyone one here is willing to compromise with a brief mention here and a longer elsewhere, which is the consensus for this page.
There is no possible basis in WP NPOV writing to completely remove material about the possible Asian invention.

Even were there no reputable support, the less reputable 19th c support is there, and people generally know about it. We would have to include such a mention of any minority theory with that much support in any WP article.

therefore I have once more inserted the material in the Gutenberg article. I will continue to do so. I hope others will support me. I have only been here 7 months now, but I have not yet had the need for using any formal dispute resolution process, nor have I been involved in one started by others, and I hope to continue that way. But repeated reinsertion of consensus material is probably grounds for one. It need support, though, to maintain the consensus.

I had stopped checking this article daily as I've been working mainly on the science and the academic notability guidelines. but I will resume. DGG 07:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Following your reinsertion, I've massaged the text to include the issues with the current theories. — Matt 22:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
and done it very well.DGG 01:34, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes - I hope this can now stay in place. Johnbod 02:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Leader needs to say that Gutenberg did not invent movable type

The leader needs to say that Gutenberg did not invent printing, nor movable type, nor metal movable type. The current leader, by deleting a reference to the prior invention in Korea / China does the article considerable disservice. This is especially so, given the popular perception, built up by decades of hagiographic textbooks, that proclaims him as the "inventor" of printing.

Also I don't understand the phrase "invented printing in Europe". I thought inventions were universal. Perhaps we can say he "pioneered", or that he re-invented ? mukerjee (talk) 04:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] where things go

He also did not invent paper, or ink, or the latin alphabet, or gothic script, or the screw, or metal-founding. And he did not write the Bible, nor even prepare the translation used. The article does not claim he did.

The invention of these things elsewhere are described in the appropriate articles. Instead of the former very unsatisfactory way of trying to describe them all three times over in paragraphs of different articles about other technologies, the inventions in China and Korea have their own article. It would be very helpful if you were to expand it; I am sure there is a great deal more of reliably sourced material to say.
Printing in europe is a separate tradition, and the wording is exact and appropriate. Had he used the Chinese invention, it would not have been successful for producing what he did produce. Had he re-invented it, he would similarly not have been able to produce his work. Fortunately, he almost certainly did not know of it. (nor would he have been able to produce what was printed there) :There have been quite a number of independent inventions throughout history. They all count. DGG 05:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not understand why it is so difficult to grasp the meaning of inventing. Gutenberg did not copy movable type technology from someone else, hence he invented it, that is he took it form himself. If invention were "universal", then the Sumerians would have also invented the Chinese script, since they were the first to develop a script. Regards Gun Powder Ma 13:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

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