Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne;
And smale foles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye—
 Old English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-_GwoO4xI
Medieval Time 476 AD – 1492
 Prior to Gutenberg's Printing
Press
• There was no set spelling.
• When the printing press came around, they had to decide how words
were going to sound and how they were going to be spelled.
• Only the Nobles, Kings, and the rich could afford to have a book
made. Most were illiterate at that time.:
China’s Contribution to Gutenberg's
Printing
•When Was the Printing Press Invented?
Press
•Wang Chen
•No one knows when the first printing press was
invented or who invented it, but the oldest known
printed text originated in China during the first
millennium A.D.
•The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book from Dunhuang,
China from around 868 A.D. during the Tang Dynasty, is
said to be the oldest known printed book.
•The Diamond Sutra was created with a method known as
block printing, which utilized panels of hand-carved
wood blocks in reverse.
•Bi Sheng
•Moveable type, which replaced panels of printing
blocks with moveable individual letters that could
be reused, was developed by Bi Sheng, from
Yingshan, Hubei, China, who lived roughly from
970 to 1051 A.D.
•The first moveable type was carved into clay and
baked into hard blocks that were then arranged
onto an iron frame that was pressed against an
iron plate.
•Woodtype made a comeback in 1297 when
Ching-te magistrate Wang Chen printed a
treatise on agriculture and farming
practices called Nung Shu.
•Wang Chen devised a process to make the
wood more durable and precise. He then
created a revolving table for typesetters to
organize with more efficiency, which led to
greater speed in printing.
•Nung Shu is considered the world’s first
mass-produced book. It was exported to
Europe and, coincidentally, documented
many Chinese inventions that have been
traditionally attributed to Europeans.
•Wang Chen’s method of woodblock type
continued to be used by printers in China.
 Johannes Gutenberg
• In Europe, the printing press did
not appear until 150 years after
Wang Chen’s innovation.
• By 1450, had a printing machine
perfected and ready to use
commercially: The Gutenberg
press.
• Integral to Gutenberg’s design
was replacing wood with metal
and printing blocks with each
• Gutenberg’s process would not have
worked as seamlessly as it did if he had not
made his own ink, devised to affix to metal
rather than wood.
• Gutenberg was also able to perfect a
method for flattening printing paper for
use by using a winepress, traditionally used
to press grapes for wine and olives for oil,
retrofitted into his printing press design.
• In 1452, Gutenberg produced the one book
to come out of his shop: a Bible. It’s
estimated he printed 180 copies of the
1,300-paged Gutenberg Bible, as many as
60 of them on vellum
• Printing Press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yeikqw0kyqI
 Making Medieval Manuscripts and Illuminations

www.aristoiclassical.org/apps/video/watch.jsp?v=166705