When you hear the word “technology” what comes to mind? Computers? The internet? Cell phones? Some other gadget? Very likely whatever you think of is an electronic or digital something or other. But the definition of technology has nothing to do with electronics. According to my dictionary the definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.”

Now think about that for a minute and all the things that fall into the category of technology that we never even consider, especially old things, things that have been around forever before we were born, before our parents and grandparents were born even. Now take a look at the book in your hand or sitting beside you and consider what a technological marvel it is. The book as object is technological perfection, but that’s just my opinion which is kind of a biased one at that.

But consider all the things that go into the making of a book and let’s think back to Gutenberg’s time and consider how all the sciences came together to send the book on its way through history to become the object we know and love today.

Yesterday I talked about Gutenberg and what his real invention was. So we have the press already in existence, a descendent of wine and olive presses. And we have moveable type already in existence thanks to the Chinese, but now we have Gutenberg’s invention for creating metal type. All this is useless unless you have paper and paper has its own long and illustrious history.

We also need ink. Ever stop to wonder what ink is made of? Back then black ink was made of varnish colored with powder made from purifying soot. The black ink in Gutenberg’s Bible, however, is rather shiny and has been discovered to also contain copper, lead and titanium. The inks used for the hand illustrations contained cinnabar for the red color and to achieve the vivid blues required lapis lazuli. No wonder books used to be so expensive! As soon as printing began to spread, specialist ink manufacturers sprang up. The cost of the ink was one-third to one-quarter less than Gutenberg’s ink, but the quality was also not as good either.

Curiously, book binding was not such a big deal. It was not uncommon for books to be sold unbound. The more wealthy book collectors would have the book bound. Books were bound between two wooden boards and then covered with tanned calf or goatskin. The leather covers were then decorated with gold leaf, stamps, and sometimes metal clasps to hold the book closed when it wasn’t being read. Binding a book was a leather worker’s expertise and printers would send books outside their shop to be bound.

Clearly, the creation of a book relied upon a perfect storm of technologies all coming together at the same time. Pretty amazing when you think about it. I hope you aren’t getting bored with all this book history stuff. I will try to have a different topic tomorrow just to mix things up a bit.