Gutenberg 's Printing Press And Its Impact On The Advancement Of Printing Technology

The printing press was an interesting and world changing machine that was used for the mass production of written works for distribution. Such a revolutionary process actually worked through an easy process that included only a few steps. First, every letter had to have been carved into a steel object known as a punch. These punches were eventually hammered into a piece of copper otherwise known as a blank. The blank was used as a mold for a mixture of molten alloys created by Gutenberg who was once a stonecutter and a goldsmith; the mixture consisted of lead, antimony and bismuth. This mixture of metals created an alloy that was easily cooled and handled, but strong enough not to wear down over repeated use. In their creation, the base sizes for the letters had to be determined and marked out ahead of time. Wider letters had wider basis, such as the difference between a capital z and a lower case l. The blocks

Instrumental music in the Middle Ages was generally improvised rather than played from notation. True

Gutenberg’s printing press was one of the most important inventions of the renaissance, as it has had a major impact on both the Renaissance and todays world of printing. The Gutenberg Press, impacted the renaissance by, making books and information easier and cheaper to reproduce and print, spreading more information easier and faster to vast audiences eager for new information, helping advance science and technology, and also by helping the economy grow stronger through creating new industries and the constant purchasing of books.

 First of all, the printing press led to a sudden and efficient method of information, to circulate the world. Thousands of books, consisting of maps, historical facts, and biographies, were being produced by the second. During the middle ages, a miniature army of monks or scribes would take the ideas, and then tirelessly copy them into a book, which would take weeks or even months of work. Furthermore, the materials for a book were very costly, and only the elite in the society could afford them. The power of the press enabled ordinary people to share ideas and knowledge which others after them could take and use or develop them.

During the Middle Ages, secular music was widely used. There was little or no documentation of this kind of music since people were illiterate. Economic and social activities at this time did not need educated people. It involved farmers tending to their crops and livestock. However, even without documentation, musical existence in this period cannot be ignored for there were repertoires from this era. The secular music was passed on by word of mouth. One person would sing to another and ensure that he or she has understood.

​ Life in the Middle Ages revolved around the Church, which was the Roman Catholic. So, we can imagine early music was pretty much from church. Every morning at 9 o’clock was Mass, a significant ceremony done to commemorate the Last Supper. At this church service, the music was the Gregorian Chant. The Gregorian chant is performed in the Latin language, unison voice and accompanied by no instruments which was believed that the text of the song which carried the divine message from God was more important. The music was just to help you get to a spiritual place (Wright, 4-1a).

ONG in chapter five “ Print, Space and Closure”talks about printing press and its effects .Through the chapter I found some interesting points connected to literacy. First,the idea of persons in a primary oral culture can entertain some sense of proprietary rights to a poem but with writing resentment at plagiarism begins to develop . We struggle in a copy right world and with removing words from the sound world , print encouraged us to think about mental held possessions as we express ourselves in narrative discourse."Writing is not necessarily the mirror-image and destroyer of orality, but reacts or interacts with oral communication in a variety of ways. Sometimes the line between written and oral even in a single activity cannot actually be drawn very clearly, as in the characteristic Athenian contract which involved witnesses and an often rather slight written document, or the relation between the performance of a play and the written and published text.” (Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992). As a future literacy specialist , I gained new understanding about the line between oral and written and the way writing interacts with oral.

In the early fourteen hundreds people adopted wood-block printing and engraving, which was an easier way to copy words down. A man named Johannes Gutenberg was not only a metal smith but a businessman as well. In 1438 he began experimenting with a metal movable type and got funds from two wealthy businessmen. In 1455 after completion of several working printers, the first copies of the bible were made. This increased literature and decreased the price of books.

Johannes Gutenberg was born into a merchant family in 1395 in Mainz, Germany. He was the third son of Freile zum Gensfleisch and Else Wirick zum Gutenberg. When living in Mainz, Gutenberg apprenticed as a goldsmith. After a craftsman revolt against the noble class occurred in Mainz in 1428, Gutenberg's family was exiled. Gutenberg and his family eventually settled in Strasbourg, France. It was in Strasbourg where Gutenberg started to experiment with printing.

There have been thousands of inventions created that have impacted the world greatly. Some historians might argue that the most important invention from the second millennium is the Gutenberg Printing Press, which was completed in 1450. The Gutenberg Printing Press was created by Johannes Gutenberg, a German inventor. Johannes Gutenberg created many inventions, but the invention of the printing press is the most impacting one. The Gutenberg Printing molded the modern world by allowing societal, religious, and intellectual works to be distributed and read at a rate never seen before.

A medieval minister takes up a plume pen, designed from a goose quill, and plunges it into a rich, dark ink produced using ash. Situated on a wooden seat in the scriptorium of Lindisfarne, an island off the shore of Northumberland in England, he gazes hard at the words from a composition made in Italy. This book is his model, a bound book, produced using sheets of paper or material, the codex, from which he is to duplicate the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. For about the following six years, he will duplicate this Latin.

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was famous for many things, such as being a goldsmith, a blacksmith, a printer, and a big time publisher. In Europe he introduced printing to many people there. He grew up knowing a lot about tradesmith, most of his family worked with metal. They say his “early life was a mystery”, because no one could ever find out that much stuff from when he was younger. Once Gutenberg introduced printing and published the bible called “Forty-two-line” he automatically talked his way into getting a loan for 800 guilders.

In 1452, the German Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press that changed hIstory. Before the printing press, books were hand copied. It was very expensive, time-consuming and someone could easily make an error. The printing press let books be produced easily, fast, and cheap. Some people thought that if Gutemberg wan’t there, then the Renaissance would not have had the same influence for today.the first few books tha he printed were of the bible. The Bible was later changed through time, and he used his version on documents used in the Rhine area of Germany in the 14th to 15th centuries.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable-printing press in the fifteenth century. The printing press affected Europe’s political, cultural, economic, and social development in the centuries that followed. According to Reader, “The eighteenth century saw a rapid expansion in the publication of books, periodicals, and pamphlets, which allowed wide dissemination of these new ideas, and with that, the early stages of public opinion” (24). The availability of paper and spreading of books, allowed various classes of people, many of whom had not previously been exposed to books, to read and interpret different ideas and publication. Access to different points of views caused tension between those in power and the lower classes. One specific example was the access to the Bible, which led to the lower classes questioning the foundations of the Church. In addition, the spread of ideas and power to publish their individual thoughts led to Enlightenment thinking and increased individualism. The idea that people should learn from their own experiences and learn to challenge what they are taught and search for real facts, made living in Europe with an educated, self-governing public possible.

Beginning at around 476 AD, the medieval era is mostly related to the church as most music from this era is sacred. The style of this era, the Gregorian chant is monophonic only comprising of the plainchant (or the single- line melodies of early church music) in texture only comprising of the plainchant (or the single- line melodies of early church music). It is not until the arrival of the French composers Léonin and Pèrotin in 1100 and 1200 respectively that polyphony would be incorporated into musical worship with the “decoration” of Gregorian chant with one or more simultaneous musical lines, thus transitioning from Gregorian chant to Organum. During this era, most of the music and roles for musicians belonged to the church except for the troubadours of southern France and the trouvères of northern France. The music was responsorial between the mass and the father during church and was