The Machine that Made Us (32 of 34)

The Machine that Made Us

A Bible was a thing that people expected to turn to all the time.
And it isn't a fragile...
little thing, like an ornament, it's a useful object.
And the extraordinary thing about this is that although there were only 100 or so of these made, only 12 of these in existence on vellum, you know that aside from the illuminations, every page is the same.
And that was really the most remarkable breakthrough, wasn't it?
That somebody in a monastery in Germany, somebody in a palace in Florence, somebody in a private house in Amsterdam, could turn to the same page number.

The same word would begin at the top and the end.
They were looking at mass production for the first time.
Although they were very rich, those who could afford it, they were nothing like as rich as those who could afford ones that had been made by scribes, handwritten.
I can't believe I'm here looking at it.
I'd like to report a happy ending for the man who created this extraordinary book, but it didn't turn out quite like that.
Do you remember Mr Fust, the dragon who bankrolled the printing of the Bible? Soon after the presses started running, he asked Gutenberg to repay the money he'd borrowed.