The Inventions: The Printing Press
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve tortured you with hints and more hints about six inventions. - Some of them were obvious. - Some were not.? Thanks for all your guesses.
Finally, over the next several days I will unveil the answers one by one in chronological order.
Quotes from the forthcoming book The Power of Mobility. Due out this September.
“[T]he impact of Gutenberg’s invention was purely economic. Prior to Guttenberg, there were printed documents - many made by hand (manuscripts), but printing presses were also cranking out documents by the mid-fifteenth century as well. … In fact, printing a book became the first assembly line process - mechanically combining replaceable parts to produce a complex end product - predating similar industrial processes by three hundred years.”
“As a simple example, Ong relates that, prior to printing, most people never knew in what calendar year they were born. With no newspapers or calendars to regularly remind us of the year, such a number would appear to have no relation to anything in ‘real life.’”
“The printing press enabled knowledge, which had been a virtual monopoly of the church and the universities, to be distributed. As Bacon observed, with the distribution of knowledge came the distribution of power. The powerless hungered for the freedom that came with the new flow of information, and of course, those that had horded knowledge were threatened as their hold on power became challenged.”
June 6th, 2007 at 4:37 am
[...] Yesterday I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. Yesterday it was the Printing Press. Today, it’s the Steam Engine. [...]
June 7th, 2007 at 1:02 am
[...] Earlier this week I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. Tuesday it was the Printing Press. Yesterday’s invention was the Steam Engine. Today - the Telegraph. [...]
June 8th, 2007 at 5:30 am
[...] Earlier this week I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. Earlier this week we’ve covered the Printing Press, the Steam Engine, and the Telegraph. Today - the Microprocessor. [...]
June 9th, 2007 at 5:52 am
[...] Earlier this week I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. We’ve already covered the Printing Press, the Steam Engine, the Telegraph, and the Microprocessor. Today - the Internet. [...]
June 10th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
[...] Earlier this week I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. Earlier this week we’ve covered the Printing Press, the Steam Engine, the Telegraph, the Microprocessor, and the Internet. Today we reach the final one - the Mobile Phone. [...]