SUMMER 1999 -- Part 2 By Dr. Terry M. Clark The battle for freedom of information began in a war, with a rat. In 1349 a Mongol invader besieged a city in the Crimea. While he didn't conquer Europe, he brought a little guest that transformed Western Civilization. The guest, a bug on a bug on a rat, brought the Black Death, spreading across Europe in a few years, killing somewhere between one fourth and one third of the population. Entire towns were wiped out.
The towns had arisen in Medieval society as earlier invaders had ebbed, and commerce grew. Serfs who escaped the feudal society found that "Town air is free" if they could get to a town and stay for a year and a day. At the same town, the forests disappeared as population filled up Europe, and all arable land, some of it marginal, was needed to feed the people. Then came the bug, and suddenly a depopulated continent found that labor was valuable, stimulating commerce, learning, and labor protests for wages.
Meanwhile, on the frayed eastern fringes of what had been the Holy Roman Empire, the Turks were also forcing change. Greek scholars and other learned men began slowly fleeing, primarily to Italy to spur the beginnings of the Renaissance, where another product of Arab influence was affecting learning. Using the pure water out of streams from the Alps, people were developing paper.
Still however, this was an intensely oral culture--not illiterate, but preliterate or a-literate. Writing was confined to scriptoriums for the churches, or for the developing university towns. There monks and scribes would spend their lives meticulously copying words, one letter at a time, to meet an increased demand for codices--the early books.
While there was trade, life was intensely local. Most people never traveled more than about 10 miles from their homes in their lives. They got their news and education from the churches--where priests presented the facts, and the stained glass windows were the visual aids. Writing--and reading--was the product of a select few, and thus became associated with holiness and privilege. Against this backdrop, a German goldsmith came up with a brainstorm --a gold mine of an idea-- a secret invention that was to change civilization for ever. Near the end of the Dark Ages, he invented something he knew would make money--and it did, but not for him. Even though the Chinese had used it since about 600 A.D., Europe was in the Dark, literally, when Johannes Gutenburg first developed his idea in exile in 1439 and got nowhere with it. But then he returned to Mainz, a banking center, and went to his banker, going deeply in debt to develop his invention to take advantage of the Catholic church's need for indulgences--the written permission to sin, at so much a pop, pardon the pun. It was moveable type--he fashioned a method of forming molds, pouring in hot metal alloy, and creating individual pieces of type. In addition, he borrowed and adapted a screw press, which could be used for everything from olives to grapes, and then he also worked on inventing a real ink that would work on paper.
His first real work, other than indulgences, in about 1450, was the 42 line Bible, 641 leaves, x 2 pages, 16 1/2 inches by 12 inches--there are 42 left. beginning with the way we think. What he also did was go broke, because the banker, named Fust, called his note and he couldn't pay it. (Which holds true today that most journalists and printers make very little money--unless they inherit it from their daddies, witness big newspaper publisher-and corporate chains--of today.) He also made it possible for common folk to go into printing and publishing and work themselves to the bone--witness small weekly newspapers. What happened? more than since Constantine lived more than 1000 years before. Most editions were 200 to l000 copies--before then, edition had virtually no meaning as a word. Within 20 years, almost 30 cities had printing presses--they were portable and easy to move--and printers went where the money was--to church towns, to university towns. When in 1453 the Turks took Constantinople, the church really began selling indulgences to raise money to fight the heathens. Here's a fancy word for you: incunabula. I've lived 50-plus years and just now discovered it, referring to the first 50 years of actual printing--meaning literally "in the cradle." *** editor's note: Next issue, how printing and freedom of information affected our lives, and are the Dark Ages coming back? How do you think printing has affected your life? How many different aspects of our society and culture did this little invention change? The fact that you're reading this at all gives you a hint. One other hint. Technology always changes culture. Whether the steam engine, the railroad, the interstates, television. Think a minute what happens if we lose electricity. Folks in rural areas would survive--but the cities would die--without electricity you can't pump gas, can't run cars, can't preserve food, can't transport food, can't keep warm, can't bank, can't live in most modern houses and buildings. The list goes on. As revolutionary as electricity is, so is moveable type.