Printing, Paper and Reading
Movable type printing press (1440s)
Invented by Johannes Gutenberg. His great innovation was not the printing itself, but instead of using readily-carved plates as before, he used separate letters (types) from which the printing plates for pages were made up. This meant the types were recyclable and a page cast could be made up far faster than with readily-carved plates.
Paper (13th)
Invented in China, transmitted through Islamic Spain to Europe in the 13th century where the papermaking processes were mechanized by water-powered mills and paper presses (see paper mill).
Spectacles (1280s)
European innovation. Florence, Italy. Convex lenses, of help only to the far-sighted. Concave lenses were not developed prior to the 15th century.
Watermark (1282)
Medieval innovation to mark paper products and to discourage counterfeiting. First introduced in Bologna, Italy.
Read more about this topic: Medieval Technology, Civil Technologies
Famous quotes containing the words paper and/or reading:
“To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit from both. The reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do not work but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)