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Who Dunnit, Anyhow?
Aug. 14th, 2006 02:12 amThis current entry was actually inspired by two separate conversations. The first of these conversations occurred two nights ago with a friend over the phenomenon of online journals/blogs as a means of spreading personal opinions. We were contrasting this with older historical means like editorials, soapbox speeches, and private small-scale printing presses (this, by the way, led to the discussion of how modern personal printers could technically be used to create paper political tracts that were once only the privilege of people who could afford to pay a private printer).
Curious to learn more about the history of “spreading one's ideas” I jumped on the internet and began to google. I happened upon a web page talking about the history of the printing press, and I promptly learned that – according to this page – Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type in the 15th century. Now this was very distressing to me, because I know that the printing press with movable type was invented much earlier. The Chinese first developed block printing during the T'ang Dynasty ( A.D. 618 to 908), which copied entire pages at a time. Much later, the Koreans developed the printing press with movable copperplate type in 1234 – over two hundred years before Gutenberg.( It Was Aliens, I Tell You )
Curious to learn more about the history of “spreading one's ideas” I jumped on the internet and began to google. I happened upon a web page talking about the history of the printing press, and I promptly learned that – according to this page – Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type in the 15th century. Now this was very distressing to me, because I know that the printing press with movable type was invented much earlier. The Chinese first developed block printing during the T'ang Dynasty ( A.D. 618 to 908), which copied entire pages at a time. Much later, the Koreans developed the printing press with movable copperplate type in 1234 – over two hundred years before Gutenberg.( It Was Aliens, I Tell You )
