August 24, 2010 visit to the
Crandall Historic Printing Museum
the Gutenberg Press
This
is prehaps the most unique museum I've ever visited. Mr. Louis E.
Crandall, founder of the museum, has been collecting antique printing
equipment for over 50 years. When I telephoned him for a visit he
greeted me at the door and treated me like a long-lost relative.
Besides being most knowlegeable of printing history he is also one of
the nicest gentlemen I've ever met.
He gave me a "two-minute" tour of his museum and apologized that they had no tours scheduled the week I visited. He graciously invited me back for the next tour. When that tour had to be cancelled he personally called me on my cell phone and gave me the date and time of the next tour. I'm glad I was able to make the tour. It was one I will never forget.
Mr. Crandall takes us back to the year 1450 when Johannes Gutenberg first invented movable type. He told our group that Gutenberg was born Johannes Gensfleisch (John Gooseflesh). He changed his name for obvious reasons by adopting the name of the house his family lived in, a common practice back then.
My tour was part of group of college students. We got to enjoy seeing an exact replica of Gutenberg's press, complete with hand made movable type, just like the original.
Mr. Crandall began by reminding us how people created written records for thousands of years priot to the invention of printing.
He showed us a genuine reed such as those used by the ancient Egyptians.
He explained how the ancients would use a sharpened reed and write on soft clay then fire the clay to harden it into a more permenant record. He also explained how they sometimes scribed the written word into metal.
Later, people used animal skins on which to record things. He displayed a real animal skin with ancient writing such as might have been used in scrolls used to record ancient scipture. He pointed out that the Dead Sea Scrolls were all written on deer hide.
He said people later learned how to create paper. He told us that, during medievel times, beautiful manuscripts were hand-written by monks on animal skins such as the one below. This was the real thing, hundreds of years old, but protected in a plastic sleve so we could handle it.
He told us we call this type parchment "vellum" after the word veal because it comes from calf skin.
Mr. Crandall told us for Gutenberg to invent the printing press he had to first invent movable type. Type was made by melting soft metal to about 600 degrees F. and pouring it into a mould. Gutenberg first created a punch by blackening the end of an iron rod in the flame of a candle. Then he wrote a backwards letter into the lampblack. Next he filed away all the metal except the letter he had etched.
The punch was then hardened and used to hammer a letter into soft copper which became the bottom of the mould.
Mr. Wallace Sailing demonstrated how hot metal cools instantly by pouring some on a cold slab of concrete.
He then showed us how the soft copper mould was placed in the bottom of an exact copy of Gutenberg's hand caster (the round thing is a large spring). He poured some hot printer's metal into it and was immediately able to remove a solid letter.
He couldn't use soft lead. It shrinks as it cools so the letters don't impress into the mould properly. He tried different mixtures that didn't work. Then he found that the metal "antimony" swells when it cools. So he came up with a mixture of about 80% lead, 13% antimony, 7% tin which swelled nicely and made clear, distinct type.
Gutenberg placed each of these letters into a hand-held device called a composing stick.
Words or phrases from the composing stick are moved to the bed of the press then held in place with metal wedges which are tapped in place using a wooden stick and mallet.
Gutenberg couldn't use the water-based ink monks used. It was too watery and would have ruined the paper. Just as he invented movable type, he had to invent printer's ink. He used a mixture of lead & copper oxides and lamp black for the color and linseed oil for the base.
He boiled the linseed oil down to make a thick, sticky substance still used today. Ink was applied using two round balls covered in animal skin and stuffed with horse hair.
In Gutenberg's day, paper was thicker so he had to dampen it slightly for it to work. Now he had what he needed by what would he use to press it? He modeled his first printing press after the well known olive press which had been used for thousands of years. How significant that the same process mentioned in the Bible used to create olive oil (Micah 6:15) should be also be used to print the first Bible.
The paper is lowered onto the inked type and the whole bed is moved under the press.
Once in place, the press handle is pulled with a lot of force for a good imprint.
After pulling snugly, the bed is moved back out and the paper revealed.
Using hand-made movable type similar to Gutenberg's Mr. Sailing has printed a page of the first Bible, the Latin Vulgate.
Mr. Jim Watkins places the still wet page on a "peal" (layup stick).
He hangs the page up to dry.
Remember the thick paper? The first Bible was too large for one volume so it was printed as two volumes per complete Bible.
Here's a closeup of volume 1. Note the red illuminations added by monks.
Gutenbergs press inabled people to have inexpensive copies of the Bible for the first time in history. The press influenced such notables as Martin Luther who used the printing press to publish his theses which began the reformation movement that created Protestant churchs. It also influenced Columbus. Through books which we widely available during his youth, he was influenced that the world was not flat.
From the invention of the printing press in 1450 to the year 1500 was only 50 years but by then some 20,000,000 books had been printed. Gutenberg's press literally brought us out of the dark ages and started the Renaissance.