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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 3, 2022 10:47:27 GMT
Guttenberg's innovation was moveable type but the Chinese had carved block printers hundreds of years before that. That's not my understanding - moveable type started in China or Korea and was also used in Europe before the printing press (ie it it is a separate innovation). Printing by various methods took place well before the printing pressMovable type combined with a mechanical press? The Gutenberg museum and myself would like to hear more about that. |
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Post by Orac on Dec 3, 2022 10:55:06 GMT
Movable type combined with a mechanical press? Moveable type without a printing press - ie these are two different innovations. One is Chinese / Korean and the other European. |
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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 3, 2022 11:08:05 GMT
Movable type combined with a mechanical press? Moveable type without a printing press - ie these are two different innovations. One is Chinese / Korean and the other European. Can you expand on that? I'm not just being argumentative I'm genuinely interested because Gutenberg is fairly well accepted as the person to first combine the older printing press with his idea of individual characters or moveable type. He copied the technology of wine presses rather than use knowledge of Chinese printing presses and his genius was to make the individual letters and numbers (in upper and lower cursives) enabling him to reuse them rather than carve whole pages of set with only a single page produced from each plate. |
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Post by totheleft3 on Dec 3, 2022 11:31:35 GMT
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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 3, 2022 11:55:06 GMT
I wasn't trying to say the Catholic church hadn't produced scientists of note. Just that at times in its history it suppressed the desire to challenge things like the age of the Earth or the positions of heavenly bodies with some pretty severe consequences if you strayed too far from the word of God. Many scientists are Christians and other faiths. A thousand years ago the Muslim arabs were ahead of the west in scientific knowledge but Islam is now seen as backward in many places it is practised around the world. We didn't even have zeros and advanced mathematics until the arabs brought the concepts here from India. |
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Post by Orac on Dec 3, 2022 12:05:54 GMT
Can you expand on that? I'm not just being argumentative I'm genuinely interested because Gutenberg is fairly well accepted as the person to first combine the older printing press with his idea of individual characters or moveable type. This is my understanding - Guttenberg is generally accepted as the inventor of the mechanical printing press. Moveable type etc preceded this and was used in Europe before the mechanical printing press. Guttenberg's innovation allowed relatively skill-less and dependable printing. I'm willing to accept that this innovation may have been significantly 'right time, right place, right alphabet', but i think it is inarguable that Guttenberg transformed printing from an expensive grind into something far more useful. The innovation was a combination of multiple technologies, including special ink - ie a large part of the claim is probably made of the fact that what Guttenberg did actually did the job. I'm not being argumentative here either - and I'm hardly a historian. If I'm wrong I'm wrong. However, one note here - Have you thoroughly examined the validity of the notion that paper is a Chinese invention? Papyrus has been around a long time. Is it paper? Many of these invention claims rely on somewhat arbitrary cut off points that come from utility - for instance, the invention of paper of a certain dependable standard that allowed x and y. |
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Post by totheleft3 on Dec 3, 2022 12:11:49 GMT
The age of the Earth is a enigma to this day its not scientific evidence that suggest the earth is billions years old.
Even some prominent scientists believe in the young earth threory .
Even the bible mentions Dionasours and dragons. And thats going back 4, 000yrs in history
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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 3, 2022 12:14:45 GMT
Can you expand on that? I'm not just being argumentative I'm genuinely interested because Gutenberg is fairly well accepted as the person to first combine the older printing press with his idea of individual characters or moveable type. This is my understanding - Guttenberg is generally accepted as the inventor of the mechanical printing press. Moveable type etc preceded this and was used in Europe before the mechanical printing press. Guttenberg's innovation allowed relatively skill-less and dependable printing. I'm willing to accept that this innovation may have been significantly 'right time, right place, right alphabet', but i think it is inarguable that Guttenberg transformed printing from an expensive grind into something far more useful. The innovation was a combination of multiple technologies, including special ink - ie a large part of the claim is probably made of the fact that what Guttenberg did actually did the job. I'm not being argumentative here either - and I'm hardly a historian. If I'm wrong I'm wrong. However, one note here - Have you thoroughly examined the validity of the notion that paper is a Chinese invention? Papyrus has been around a long time. Is it paper? Many of these invention claims rely on somewhat arbitrary cut off points that come from utility - for instance, the invention of paper of a certain dependable standard that allowed x and y. I almost mentioned papyrus. I was quite regularly accosted by over enthusiastic salesmen trying to get me to part with my money for examples of it with hieroglyphics printed on it when I went to Egypt in the mid '90s. I'm not sure you could really call it paper though as it wasn't really processed as such. I now regret my reluctance to part with a few pence for some but I was on a tight budget and falafels seemed like a better option at the time. |
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Post by wapentake on Dec 3, 2022 14:49:38 GMT
I've just heard an interesting little tidbit on QI. Fry explained that the Chinese preference for tea held the development of their culture back by hundreds of years. According to him, the West's liking for wine caused glass to be developed to hold it. This led to dozens of other things. Glass was ground to make lenses, extending the intellectual lives of the leading lights in science, etc., by up to 20 years, telescopes were made possible, thus leading to all sorts of discoveries in astronomy. Amazing how one little development can change history. Tea also made the industrial revolution possible. The move from agriculture to manufacturing brought people to the cities in big numbers before we had clean drinking water. If it hadn't coincided with cheaper imports from the new Indian colony making it cheap enough for the masses the poor wouldn't be able to drink tea which involved boiling the water, there would have been outbreaks of waterborne diseases that would have made the industrial revolution virtually impossible. According to this tea was not the panacea you imagine 
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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 3, 2022 15:00:23 GMT
Interesting.
It's no substitute for food to be sure.
I'd put the blame for malnutrition on inadequate or nonexistent wages rather than tea though.
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Post by johnofgwent on Dec 10, 2022 20:42:54 GMT
Can I take some of my books with me ?
You said 500 years ago.
Ok
While I was working at Barclays Bank back in 2004 a colleague there was heavily into mediaeval reenactment. Someone on here mentioned issues creating wire, I would suggest jewellers if the time were well into crafting gold of that degree of fine thread. What they did not have of course is steel, but they did gave fundamental metalworking skills.
If I were sent back I *COULD* have a damn good go at making antibiotics, certain electrical curiosities using dissimilar metals and the like. What about the steam engine !
Yes I very strongly suspect I’d be hung as a warlock (they hung men, they only burned women and did that out of some wierd regard for modesty)
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Post by Toreador on Dec 11, 2022 7:42:27 GMT
Can I take some of my books with me ? You said 500 years ago. Ok While I was working at Barclays Bank back in 2004 a colleague there was heavily into mediaeval reenactment. Someone on here mentioned issues creating wire, I would suggest jewellers if the time were well into crafting gold of that degree of fine thread. What they did not have of course is steel, but they did gave fundamental metalworking skills. If I were sent back I *COULD* have a damn good go at making antibiotics, certain electrical curiosities using dissimilar metals and the like. What about the steam engine ! Yes I very strongly suspect I’d be hung as a warlock (they hung men, they only burned women and did that out of some wierd regard for modesty) The first wire was made by two Scotsmen arguing over a halfpenny. |
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