Stephen Fry And The Machine That Made Us

Here's a neat Stephen Fry documentary on Johannes Gutenberg. Stephen is really hepped up on the written word and printed books. He credits Gutenberg in having created the machine that would make us what we are today. He looks some at the man and some at the invention and how it came to be made. He joins three men who are creating a working replica of the Gutenberg press. None of the original presses survive and there are no known illustrations. Still, they have some clues, and they make a press out of wood. The carving of the screw is pretty cool. They make one of the letters in the manner of the time. That takes hours and a lot of filing. Then you have to make a copper impression and cast the type from that. Those other steps take a lot of time. Since the goal is to print a full 2 page replica sheet from the Gutenberg bible the get the rest of the already set type from an American company to save time. Month pass as they build the press. We see how they made paper in Gutenberg's time at a paper factory that started when he was printing his bible in 1455. They still make paper by hand from cotton rags. I found it a pretty interesting program and was glad to see it. Mind you, I'm also a big printed word nut so I'm kind of biased. Stephen Fry travels to the German cities of Mainz and Strasbourg to see where Gutenberg lived and worked. He even gets to handle a real Gutenberg bible. One of the 12 existant vellum copies. There are also 48 paper copies still around. That isn't too bad considering how long ago it was and that the press run was about 180 copies. The book cost 30 Florins which the Wikipedia says was an average clerks wages for three years. Imagine if you had to pay the average wage of a clerk now for a book. I wouldn't buy as many as I do now. I'd have to read dirt, I guess. Thankfully advances in the mass production helped make printing something people could afford. Now you can fill your house from top to bottom with books for a lot less than an average clerks yearly salary. Well, I could anyway.