Was Gutenberg the first person who invented printing? According to history, printing was invented by Johannes Gutenberg of Germany in 1440 AD. If we were to describe the process that Gutenberg invented, we would realize that it was merely a process where a bunch of characters (made of lead, see last image) were pressed against another surface namely paper (or parchment), using ink as a catalyst to leave an imprint of the mirror image on the paper. However that printing concept was an old process that was invented some 5000 years earlier in Mesopotamia. Let’s take a closer look at Cuneiform writing, (unlike a pen used in tracing letters on a paper). The 1st & 2nd images show Cuneiform uses a stylus reed (instead of the molded lead letters compared to Gutenberg), and a wet clay tablet (instead of the paper), but nevertheless the process is the same! It is created by pressing the stylus against the wet clay tablet (i.e. printing). Hence the concept of printing in its abstract from is identical. In fact Akkadians went further to design Cuneiform stamps that would print a full text over soft clay tablet, which is the same mass production of a full page in one stroke, just like Gutenberg did 4000 years later. The 3rd & 4th images are King Naramsins Printing Press that predated Gutenberg by 4000 years, which generated a full page of text in one stroke of pressing a pre-molded image against a soft surface of clay, creating a mirror image of the text, and that is exactly what the Gutenberg press shown in the 5th image did! In fact if you cover the Akkadian stamp with a layer of ink and press it against a sheet of paper, it would do exactly what Gutenberg press did.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 07:32:49 +0000