Welcome to the Superbook Show. Today, we're talking about tech. Right, Quinn? Yeah, sure. Whatcha doing?
Updating Facebook with all the cool stuff we're seeing here at the Museum of the Bible. You're on your phone a lot. I love this thing. I can stay connected, I can look up anything, and...
I've got the Superbook Bible app on it. Product placement! Tech.
Pretty cool, right? Uh, yeah. Tech is amazing. What do you think was the most amazing tech ever? Hmm.
The phone is pretty cool. A computer you can carry around with you. Oh, computers.
What would our phones be without them? Those are both... Then there's television, game stations, iPods, motorcycles... Very good tech, but I...
Ooh, ooh! The app that tells you when you're near a restaurant that has black bread and banana cream pie? Or the app that lights up when Krispy Kreme donuts are hot and fresh.
Or the app that-Great apps, one and all. But what if I told you that there was a piece of tech that caused the fall of empires? Empires? Plural? That would be powerful.
Or a tech that caused the rise of democracy. Nice. How about a piece of tech that led to the idea of universal education? Universal education?
Everyone should get to go to school. You mean there was a time when I didn't have to go to school? Focus.
Or a piece of tech that led to the modern scientific revolution. Hold on. You're leading up to something. Cough it up. Everything I just mentioned, from modern democracy to the scientific revolution, all came from the same piece of technology.
What? What? Tell me all about it.
Better yet, let's talk to an expert. Hi, everyone. Hey, how are you? I'm good.
How are you guys today? Good, how are you? What are your names? My name is Alithea. Alithea, it's nice to meet you.
And I'm Quinn. And you're Quinn, it's nice to meet you. My name is Jackie.
Thank you so much for joining us today at the museum. Now, this very impressive piece of machinery behind me here, this is what is used to print the very first printed book in the Western hemisphere, the Gutenberg Bible. So before this comes along in the year 1450, books and Bibles have to be written out by hand. How long do you think it would take to write out a Bible?
Oh, years. How about you, Quinn? Probably a very long time. A very long time is correct.
I don't know if you've seen a Bible before, but they're very long. So it can sometimes take up to three years to write out a single Bible. Now, if you're very good at it, sometimes it can only take up to a year, but I think we can all agree, a very long time. Now, beginning in the year 1452, Johannes Gutenberg over in Mainz, Germany, takes a machine that looked a little something like this, and he printed 182. copies of the Bible in that same span of three years.
So this is a lot quicker, right? Yeah. We need a lot. Now because it's so much faster and so much cheaper to produce books, this makes books much more available for the common person.
You know, not just the nobility, not just the clergy, but the common man, people like you and me. We were finally able to buy books for ourselves. Now up until this point, none of us knew how to read.
But because we can buy books now, we start to learn how to read. And so literacy rates across Europe skyrocket after this. And at the beginning of the 1400s, there was only about 100,000 books in the Western hemisphere.
By the end of the 1400s, as we go into the Renaissance, there may have been as many as 10 million books, all thanks to this machine right here. Now, believe it or not, this machine right here behind me, this could be completely wrong. We have no idea what Gutenberg's press looked like because no images survive of the Gutenberg printing press. So like I said, This could be completely and utterly wrong.
Now, with that being said, many scholars do agree it was probably based off a wine or an olive press like what we have here, hence the corkscrew top. So would you two like to help me print a page of the Bible today? Yeah, sure.
Awesome, come on up. All right, my friends. So what do you see here? What does this look like?
Some sort of text. Text is correct. Do you happen to know what language this is?
Oh, it looks like German. German's a good guess. How about you, Quinn?
Hebrew maybe? Hebrew is also a good guess, but it's actually in Latin. So Gutenberg was printing between the years of 1452 and 1455. This is about 70 years before the Protestant Reformation, so there were no Bibles and languages that people like you and me would actually understand. No German, no English, nothing like that.
Only Latin, the language of the church. Now you two are in luck because we are not using Gutenberg's movable type today. This as you can see is not going anywhere.
However at the time of Gutenberg it would have been the job of you two, my apprentices, every single individual letter that you see here and arrange it backwards in a complete mirror image of what we would read on a printed page and as an added bonus in Latin as well. So how long do you think it would take to set up just one page? Probably a couple days.
Maybe one day. Maybe a couple days, close to a week. Not quite that long, but it can sometimes take up to 14 hours to set up just one page. So I'm very glad we don't have to do that today. Now, Quinn, can you grab those two ink balls that you see over there, those mushrooms?
Yes. Now go ahead. Can you give one to Alethea? Now what does this material feel like here?
What does that feel like? Leather. Leather is correct. At the time of Gutenberg, they were using dog hide at the time.
But don't worry. No puppies were harmed in the making of these replicas. And they are stuffed with wool or hair.
Now, can I have these please? So what they would do at the time of Gutenberg is we would roll the ink between the balls like this, and then we would take one ball and rock it back and forth across like that until we had an even coverage across the page. Now, by the 1700s, printers began applying ink using rollers, which is what we are going to use today because it's much easier.
So Alethea, can you please put that back over there for me? Quinn, could you grab that roller there? Yes. And pass it on over to me. So what we're going to do today, my friends, you two are going to stand right there.
I'm going to roll this across the letters to you, and then you're going to roll it on back to me, okay? Here we go. So nice and easy, just like that.
Go ahead. You can each get a hand on a side. Excellent.
Have you two done this before? No. It's a great technique. All right. Can someone put this back for me, please?
Thank you so much. All right. Alethea, can you please grab that picture frame right there?
That's the one. Yes, my friend. Now, this right here, this is called...
a frisket. Can you two say frisket? Frisket. Very good.
It's like a biscuit, but you don't want to dip it in gravy. Now the frisket here, this holds and stabilizes the paper during the printing process. So what we're going to do, I'm going to line this up for us here, and can you each please get a hand on the frisket?
So on my count, we're going to very gently lay this on the typeset. Ready? One, two, three. Very gently.
Excellent. Okay, can someone please slide the casket underneath the platen there? Very good.
Alright, can I have a friend stand right there and another friend stand over here for me? Excellent. Now when I say go, you're going to pass that lever across to this side of the press here and we're going to turn the corkscrew and lower the platen here onto the frisket, paper, and typeset and we press the ink down onto the page, hence the name, printing press. Alright, go ahead and bring that on across please.
Keep going. Very good. Can you bring this back for me please? Alright, excellent work.
Now can someone please slide the casket back out to the pen there? I'm going to take care of the last and final step. But our last and final step, we are going to remove the frisket and reveal our printed page. So can I get a drum roll please from the two of you? Very good.
Dun da da da! That's what we have! Not bad, you two.
Not bad at all. Can I get high fives? Great work today. Thank you so much for helping me. Just think, we wouldn't have this thing if we didn't have the printing press.
And we wouldn't have a Superbook show if we didn't have our fans. Please like this video and subscribe. Tell your friends about the Superbook show and come visit us on Facebook. And download the free Superbook Bible app.
Product placement. See you soon. Everything...
High energy. Wait, I have a line? That was my childhood, basically.
I mean, I'm still in my childhood. If we didn't have this thing, we wouldn't have the printing press. Is that the right line?
Yeah. Yeah.