The Roots of My Profession
Jason Kottke linked to a wonderful BBC Documentary the other day on the development of Gutenberg’s printing press. Stephen Fry goes on a quest to discover how and where the original press was created. He also works with master printers and a type founder to re-create a copy of the press and cast some type. I have seen pictures of a matrix used to cast lead type, but have never seen how one works.
You can’t watch it on the BBC website (unless you are in the UK) but it is available in six parts on YouTube: part one, two, three, four, five, six.
I hope to somehow get this all in one place and show it to my students how this whole thing started. Without Gutenberg, I wouldn’t have a job.
Michael Slade said,
April 27, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
Cool.
There is a slick program or two that will allow you to download videos from YouTube and save them into a format you can use on your Mac. Do a quick Google, I can’t remember what it’s called.
When do you move? I’m sure you are busy!