As a family of book lovers or “book-oholics”, as we sometimes refer to ourselves, our house is filled with hundreds of books, maybe over a thousand. No one has counted, it would be a major undertaking and very likely to be embarrassing to know the actual number of books 3 people possess. I know that our library system is not very organized, many times I cannot locate a particular book that I know we have, or did have, whichever the case may be.
Blame it all on Johannes Gutenberg, or John if it was anglicized. The historians claim John was a goldsmith by trade. I would take him to be someone who was competent in the art of forming gold into jewelry or other artful items. If I could talk to Mr. Gutenberg, I would like to ask him, how it came to be that he thought of forming letters with metal and putting that all together into a printing press? But those details seem to be lost to history. At any rate, Johannes receives credit for inventing the first “modern” printing press. Before this the making of books was a rather slow process. There were some wood block type printing and typographic hand printing processes in use at that time which, at best, was a slow way of printing books. The Chinese are said to have printed with wood blocks as early as 800 A.D., but when John got his press going around 1440 A.D. he could soon print 3,600 pages in a day. Compared to hand written books, called manuscripts, it was the difference between a typewriter and a modern day printing shop.
I like looking at manuscript books. Imagine how long it took a scribe to make a copy of the Bible in 1400 or before, and he did not have a modern ink pen! Hand written from beginning to end, after dipping his quill into an inkpot every few words. The cost of such books must have been out of sight, naturally not many people owned books. It is little wonder that the ability to read and write were also rare up until the 15th century. What would the point be for most people? Unless they had access to a library, books were just not common. Even as recent as 150 years ago in this country, many college students could not afford their textbooks, so they were required to borrow from the library and hand write their own textbook. What a howl that would raise in our American school system today! I would suspect we would have a lot less college graduates.
They claim, over the next 50 years or so after the printing press was invented, by 1500 A.D. Europeans had turned out over 20 million volumes. Obviously there must have been a ‘market’ for books.
Move forward 500 years. Now we have people who predict the demise of the printed page due to the invention of electronic books. I doubt it. If the “progress” of printing goes the way of ‘wood-block’ books, I doubt that the ability of man to move information is going to disappear. That is the “worry” of those who bemoan E-books. Their theory is that by having a book stored in a electronic device rather than on paper, there is a danger of some catastrophe destroying all electronic devices and the world moves back into the “dark ages”, because we lost all that information. I can just imagine what the “scribes” thought when old John started printing books by the millions. They guessed right if they thought they would be out of work, but the spread of information only changed gears and moved up to the speed of a hand operated printing press. Now we move information very close to the speed of light! Simply by posting this entry to my blog, in a matter of minutes any number of millions of people, all over the globe, could access this little essay. Of course, they are not going to, because my name is not one that attracts the attention of very many people. But the technology is in place. It is beyond the ability of my imagination how men, of my own generation, brought this state of affairs about. They obviously had more imagination then I do! They also have more money! Good for them, they earned it.
At some point it does appear that our technology advancements will have to slow down. In recent years it has been moving forward at an extreme pace. Every few months new and more advanced smart phone systems come on the market, same with most electronic technology. Most of these advancements are only possible because of the science of physics that keeps getting the elements reduced to a smaller size, thus more information can be stored in a smaller space. Soon they must reach to the lowest common denominator and there will be a leveling off in electronic development. That won’t mean an end to the research and development though. The world is full of possible applications of technology and as long a we don’t self-destruct through stupidity or war, those applications will continue to spread and, for the most part, make our lives easier.
Here is one to think on which I don’t believe has been “invented” yet. If any of my readers know how we can invent the “transfer of electricity”, sans a power cord, we can be on the cutting edge of technology! Every time I trip over a power cord the thought comes to my mind, why has not someone figured out how to do that? Sure, I know about “cordless drills”, just in case some of you wonder if I am that far away from the “modern world”. J All cordless tools today require a battery power system, what I would like to see in my lifetime, is the technology that will send electricity by “radio signal” to my machines without having to plug it into the wall! Just think of the possibilities. We have the power come to a transformer at our house and that is it, set up whatever electric tool or appliance we want and turn it on. No electric wiring anywhere! Now that would be an innovation I could live with.
I know it seems like an impossibility and science fiction, but so is most of the technology that we are now take for granted. In the mean time, I still love “books”, whether they are on “old fashion paper” or delivered to my computer or Kindle via CORDLESS SIGNALS moving through the air.
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