The Machine that Made Us (11 of 34)

The Machine that Made Us

These are rather noble structures, and I think if poor old Alan back in England is trying to build a press, he's going to find it rather useful to see what these originals were like.
'These contraptions are wine presses.
'Alan May thinks that Gutenberg's press evolved from machines like these.'
Oh, that's very artistic.
Very good.
Yes, for Gutenberg, these must have been a very common sight.
He grew up in one of the biggest wine-growing areas in the world.

I wonder if there was an actual moment, though, when he was sitting next to one of these, or watching some grapes being pressed and saw the spindle sending the thing down, and thought, Ah, that's what I need.
"Just this big frame, with a spindle."
'Presses like these may have started Gutenberg's creative juices running, but to turn such a basic piece of engineering into a precision machine would be a tall order.
'And that was only part of the challenge he faced.
'The whole project would take years of experiment and it would cost a fortune.'
'But money didn't grow on trees in 15th-century Mainz.'
It had been very influential and very rich in medieval times, but then, in the 14th century, it came down a little bit, the plague was there two times.
The Black Death.
The Black Death, yes.
The city didn't have the richness any more.
But it had been politically very influential.
The archbishop had been the elector and was the primus inter parus as we might say of the electors.
And so it was an important city, in any case.