Blockchain - the fruit of the evolution of banking. Part 8 The invention of printing and John Gutenberg

After a little over a month's hiatus (forgive us, everyone sometimes needs to gain strength and find inspiration to write) we are back to our [...] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1085437947660215829/

After a break of just over a month (forgive us, everyone sometimes needs to gain strength and find inspiration for writing) we return to our series on the history of banking development. In the previous part (you can find it here) we described the rebirth of deposit banking. As you probably noticed, in this series we don't write only about how banks worked, but also about how mankind tried to record and process information and various data. From there, today we'll move on to the invention of printing. In a previous section, we wrote about medieval literature. However, it is worth mentioning that in those days, still not many people could read. Much content (including fictional stories, such as legends) was transmitted not only by paper, but also by word of mouth. There was quite a business involved. Certainly from the movies set in the so-called Dark Ages you know what event in a given village or town was the arrival of a well-known bard. The bard, accompanied by music, told fabulous tales about the deeds of great knights and kings. It was something like a concert of Iron Maiden and Michał Bajor. Worse (for the bards) that at some point in history a certain Jan Gutenberg appeared... Gutenberg changes the world The first primitive printing houses were established in Europe as early as the beginning of the 15th century. Only that they can be compared to the first computers. They were not very efficient. "Printing" was based on printing a previously created form with letters on paper. The problem, however, was that each page had its own form. This made the process itself lengthy, and thus its fruits - books - very expensive. Everything was changed by Jan Gutenberg, a goldsmith and printer from Mainz. He came up with a very innovative idea. He created an apparatus for casting type from exchangeable matrices and a printing press. So there was no need to create a die for each page. One with exchangeable content was enough. The official date of the invention of printing (in the sense of movable type) is 1450, but what was the first book created this way? No, it was nothing in the genre of culinary books or stories about famous rulers and their knights. Gutenberg printed the Bible this way. Or, more accurately, for the first 4 years Gutenberg printed about 180 copies of it. Why so few in such a fairly long time? The pace of work in Gutenberg's printing house was not fast by our standards. Printing one page took three days. - One day the printer wet the paper, the second day he printed and the third day he dried the page. Only then the printed pages were sent to binding, sometimes even within 20 years - explained Tadeusz Sarocki, the director of Pelplinsk Diocese Bernardinum Publishing House on Polish Radio. Even so, it was a record pace. An individual monk would handwrite one book for even several years. Something very discouraging for the inventors, however, is the fate of Gutenberg himself. Not only did he struggle with financial problems for most of his life, because in order to create his invention he got heavily into debt, but he also died in poverty and oblivion in 1468. His burial place is not even known... CDN. Tags blockchain history history history of printing John Gutenberg