Y E A R S OF P R I N T I N G
The First Printed
Book + The Bible
The First Printed
Book with Music
+ The Psalter +
0. (JSradford f-^e
The picture at tJie right
shows exact reconstruction
of the renowned printing
press used by Johann Gu-
tenberg 500 years ago, op-
erated by O. M. Forkert
during its exhibition b\< The
Cunco Press at the Chicago
World's Fair. Mr. Forkert
is dressed in the costume
style of 1440.
HE civilized world is celebrating throughout
this year the five-hundredth anniversary of
printing. Since the first great book produced
by Gutenberg was the famous 42-line, or
Mazarin Bible, it might be worth while to
pause a moment to view the making of this
first printed Bible—not only the first printed,
but also the greatest book in the world.
Let us go right back to that momentous world-shaking event,
the birth of the medieval printing craft. "No acorn, no oak,
and the idea that printing, Minerva-like, started up, perfect from
its birth in the form of the Mazarin Bible or the Mayence
Psalter, will not bear the test of criticism, although long current
in typographical histories. The steam engine, the gasometer, the
railway, the telegraph, the telephone, and all the great discoveries
of modern science, had to pass through an imperfect infancy
i and gradual development: why, then, imagine that the invention
in the one instance of typography reached perfection by a sudden
lea])?" . . . thus argued William I Hades years ago. And he was
right.
OCTOP.KK, V.VM
Ancient Babylonians and Chinese Had "Seals".
Four thousand years ago the Babylonians made prints, or im-
pressions, from the engraved forms of seals. Even before the
beginning of the Christian Era the Chinese had a system of dupli-
cation that was later developed into printing. The words "seal"
and "print" are designated by the same Chinese character. Bud-
dhists and Taoists used seal impressions as charms. The Con-
fucian Classics were engraved on stone by Ts'ai Yung as early
as 175 A. D. From these stones, rubbings or squeezes were
taken by scholars, in order that these works might be preserved
for the coming generations. During the first half of the fifteenth
century playing cards, woodblock prints of saints, and the Biblia
Pauperum were sold in European markets. The Biblia Pau-
perum or Poor Man's Bible, was made of twenty to forty leaves,
featuring pictorially excerpts from the Bible, particular events
about the apostles, the Apocalypse, (Book of Revelation), etc.
What Then Was Gutenberg's Great Accomplishment?
Let us go in imagination to a little room in the old city of
Mainz about the year 1450. Visualize here a man who had
already spent more than a decade trying to perfect a secret
PA(!U TIIIHTKEN
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