The Story of Communication:
Printing—Fascinating Facts
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The invention in Europe of chimneys led
to greater privacy in the home, and that may have increased
an interest in reading.
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Most medieval kings and nobles were illiterate. They regarded
writing as tasks for clerks.
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Arguments for the “paperless office” of the future
are usually printed on paper.
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In a search for cloth to make paper, some Egyptian mummies were
reportedly dug up and stripped of their coverings.
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A European king ruled that documents were worthless if they were
written on paper instead of parchment.
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Of the 210 copies of the first Gutenberg Bible, 30 were printed
on parchment. Each took the skins of 300 sheep.
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The world’s first recorded labor strike, at a paper mill,
was broken after the owner imprisoned his workers inside the
mill.
About 1,000 years before Gutenberg invented his printing system,
the Chinese printed charms on bamboo strips worn as amulets. -
The first printing with movable metal type was done not by Johannes
Gutenberg, but by Koreans more than 200 years earlier.
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Gutenberg’s great invention was not the printing press,
for he just adapted presses used for wine and linen, but the
type mold and a printing system.
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Book censorship began in Mainz, Germany, the city where movable
type printing began.
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The use of wood to make paper came from watching a wasp build
its nest.
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The first law guaranteeing press freedom was passed in Sweden.
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Newspapers began using color by printing a child’s nightshirt
in a comic strip yellow. That also led to the term “yellow
journalism.”
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Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, is credited with
publishing the first weekly magazine and the modern editorial.
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President Theodore Roosevelt called the first investigative journalists “muckrakers,” an
insult. They liked the term.
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Italians call comic strips “fumetti,” meaning “smoke.” We
call them “comics,” even when they aren’t funny.
Other Resources for Printing
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