550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in High-Res Detail

http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=arch._b_b.10

by apaprocki • 13 years ago

212 50 13 years ago

bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Wow, that text is very difficult to read. I'm having a difficult time figuring out why the type used is so illegible.

heydenberk• 13 years ago

The quickest answer is that we've learned a lot about legible type in the intervening half millennium. Conversely, this typograhic style was probably considered pretty readable by the people who were used to reading it.

asolove6• 13 years ago

A really interesting book on the characteristics of written and printed letterforms is "The stroke" [0].

One really interesting thing is the way that writing and reading have changed more than one might expect. A few anecdotes:

- Until some time in the middle ages, scribes did not consistently use spaces to designate word breaks. This was apparently an innovation of Irish monks. But it had important implications. Sounding out a string of letters is quite difficult. Our modern reading speed depends on the characteristic shapes of words, which only emerged once spaces were used consistently.

- Until relatively late, reading was a laborious process. And because the only things important enough to be written were worth reading slowly, no one much minded. One charge laid against the Jesuits was that they had developed a sinister method of reading silently rather than out loud(!) which allowed them to read much more quickly.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Stroke-Writing-Gerrit-Noordzij/dp/...

kps• 13 years ago

Conversely, some people may be surprised at how quickly now-familiar type appeared. Within twenty years of the Gutenberg Bible, Nicolas Jenson had completed his miniscules, based on contemporary Italian humanist script, and designed to complement classical Roman inscriptional capitals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jenson_1475_venice_laerti...

asolove6• 13 years ago

There are two factors here: 1. illegible to whom? 2. what do you expect a book to look like?

The Textura letter forms would have been more familiar to readers at the time, and were used widely in German until surprisingly recently. Even today we use them in English-speaking countries for short pieces of text that need to look authoritative. See the header of the manuscript of the US Constitution or the masthead of most old newspapers.

More importantly, these shapes looked similar to the letterforms from expensively hand-written bibles of the time. Different scripts take different amounts of time to write. A script like this written by hand takes an enormous amount of time because every stroke doubles back on itself. So only quite expensive books would be hand-written in this way. Of course, when you're printing, it makes little difference, so might as well print with the most-expensive-looking letterforms.

Here are some alternate scripts used in English writing around the same time: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic453618.files/Cent...

(Source: wife studied paleography at Oxford, we have lots of fun books about this. There are far, far worse hands to decipher than textura, some scribes were truly terrible. You can also date manuscripts based on small characteristics of the hand-writing. Although, it can be a bit inexact. My wife once corrected a museum placard dating a text based on the writing. The docent argued with her about the characteristics of the script before she pointed out that the text mentioned a Saint born a century after the supposed date.)

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

2. what do you expect a book to look like?

obviously lucida console

wrongc0ntinent• 13 years ago

Right on. Worth mentioning that the illuminated manuscripts of the time were the gold standard, and even though the Gutenberg bibles were not illuminated in the print shop, that's most likely why they had plenty of room in the margins.

Edit: Since you seem to have a convenient source there, could you link to some of the better medieval manuscript repositories online? Bookmarks got lost over the years.

Crito• 13 years ago

It seems that was what people at the time were used to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter#Origins

Does anybody know what the purpose of the red marks in some of those letters is?

asolove6• 13 years ago

When books were hand-written, anything that took longer to do was more expensive: extra colors, pictures, or scripts that required longer to write. This printed book is attempting to incorporate elements from a very fancy handwritten version. So there is a luxury association to these sorts of things.

It looks here like it's setting off the first letter of each verse, rather than having the verses numbered. Because sentences start and end at different places in different languages, finding a specific verse requires the book marking where one ends and a new one begins.

jeorgun3• 13 years ago

The red marks are used to decorate (or maybe indicate) capital letters.

jeorgun3• 13 years ago

In fact blackletter was generally considered more difficult to read than other scripts (that's one of the reasons Italic became so popular, IIRC). But it's also incredibly compact, which is a big deal when paper (or parchment, or whatever) is as difficult to acquire as it was at the time.

rmk22• 13 years ago

If this "historical fact" was so well-known, how come Germany and Scandinavia used Fraktur well into the 1930s as the most common typefaces?

In reality, the respective difficulties were far harder to prove than one might think. First more rigorous scientific testing using tachistoscopes in the early 1900s/1910s provided more conclusive evidence beyond the anecdotal that Antiqua typefaces were indeed faster to parse than Fraktur. Until then, many people who were more commonly accustomed to reading blackletter simply thought it easier to read. Much of this has to do with accustomisation. If you are used to reading Antiqua, you will be faster, if you are used to reading Fraktur & Sütterlin but only encounter Antiqua every now and then, you will probably be quicker in reading the former.

arrrg• 13 years ago

He was imitating (some, mostly liturgical) handwritten books at the time. One of the goals during the creation of the books was to show that he could approach the quality of expensive handwritten books at the time at a fraction of the price. It’s not like just printing something is really complex technology (I, too, carved potato stamps in kindergarden), but approaching the quality of the gold standard at the time while still keeping the price lower was the hard problem.

While the typeface has some issues (m, n, u, i all look confusingly similar when next to each other, for example) I think the issue may just be that you are not used to reading it. This particular typeface is about 500 years out of fashion so you were never really confronted with it.

Someone• 13 years ago

I know there are many many subtleties in "X is easier to read than Y" (capitals vs lowercase, ligatures vs no ligatures, black on white vs yellow on black, etc) claims, but surely, blackletter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter) must be harder to read than modern writing. I can't find a paper on that, though. It probably would be hard to find subjects with equal experience reading that and modern writing.

jejones3141• 13 years ago

The first movies of theatrical productions plopped a camera in what was presumably the best seat in the house and let 'er rip. New media start by imitating their predecessors.

degenerate• 13 years ago

What viewer is this? It's really nice. I'm not getting any hints from a quick view of the source. Is it something custom?

nkuttler• 13 years ago

http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/js/bdlss.icv.page.js seems to lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seadragon_Software and more specifically http://openseadragon.github.io/

ygra• 13 years ago

I'm still surprised how "right" (for lack of a better word) Seadragon feels when interacting. Where things like Google Maps, Leaflet, Openlayers, etc. all seem to get you into, out of, and around a map with a minimum amount of fuzz, somehow the "springy" feel feels more natural to me. Bing Maps also seems to be built with Seadragon.

A bit sad that Microsoft closed Live Labs – a lot of cool things came from there. Fun fact: Ian Gilman, who maintains OpenSeadragon now, was one of the original creators of Seadragon.

drblast• 13 years ago

Fantastic. Interesting to see that it's flush-justified with a proportional width font. Imagine the effort it would take to create this, and then again how much effort a reprint would be.

Sure you have a press, but after your print your first run of copies, start over.

asolove6• 13 years ago

There is (debated) speculation that Gutenberg made several forms of some letters with different widths so that he could justify lines with very small adjustments rather than adding space between words.

The Wikipedia microtypography page has more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtypography

SmileyKeith2• 13 years ago

The writing in this is absolutely gorgeous at this high-res. This feels like a weirdly futuristic way to preserve something like this. Would love to see this with the Dead Sea Scrolls (it took everything I had to not write the Elder Sea Scrolls right there).

apaprocki• 13 years ago

As you requested:

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

milesf• 13 years ago

Whoah. I clicked on the Great Isaiah Scroll and look at the translators. I used to provide tech support for Peter Flint at Trinity.

Sometimes as a tech I forget that I'm helping people do really cool things in the world.

SmileyKeith2• 13 years ago

That's awesome thank you!

nwatson• 13 years ago

I expected to be impressed by the printing itself, but what startled me was what one sees on pages 2 and 3 of the original link (and what http://www.barbaradoyen.com/book-publishing/physical-anatomy... calls the "Fancy End Paper"). I'm assuming those are the original "Fancy End Papers," but they look like something I'd expect in a 20th century modern painting, not on a 500+ year old book.

asolove6• 13 years ago

Fancy end paper is truly a wonderful thing. If you like this, just look at some of the Kelmscott Press endpapers: https://www.google.com/search?q=kelmscott+press+endpaper&esp...

Brakenshire• 13 years ago

It does look very cool, but the binding isn't original, look at the cover- Bibliotecha Bodleiana.

I also noticed there's no frontispiece, wonder whether it was lost, or taken out.

stan_rogers3• 13 years ago

Those are actually very easy to make. You just float oil-based inks on water, using a stylus or a comb to make the traceries (and clear oil or water drops to make the voids); transfer to the paper is almost immediate and almost total. Marbling's been around for a very long time.

ggchappell• 13 years ago

Amazing.

It's interesting to see the typographical conventions. For example, the first sentence of Genesis (the first black sentence on image 15): "In principio creauit deus celu et terram." meaning, if "celu" is really "celum", "In (the) beginning god created heaven and earth."

But look at all the oddities. The "d" and "e" of "deus" are run together. What's up with that? The "m" in "celum" is missing, but there is a horizontal line above the "u". I guess that means, "Throw in the obvious letter after this." And then there is another word thrown in between "celu(m)" and "et": "dicim". This is in red, apparently marking it as going with the note above, and so not part of the flow of the text.

And "creauit" would normally be written "creavit", but "u" and "v" used to be the same letter (along with "i" and "j").

After that red "dicim" mentioned above is a little mark that looks like a raised "9". That mark is all over. Does anyone know what it means?

Beginning at the end of the 5th line: "Dixitqz deus. Fiat lux." I guess that little "qz" thing is an abbreviation for "quoque"? Thus: "Dixit quoque deus. Fiat lux." "Also God said. Let (there) be light."

Fun stuff & a nice post. :-)

asolove6• 13 years ago

Yep, these are all conventions used in hand-written Latin texts of the time. I believe the 9-looking mark is short for "us" at the end of a word. See the top of the right column on that page: "Et vidit de9 qd esset" where "de9" is "deus" and "qd" is "quod" (cf. http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=1).

GotAnyMegadeth• 13 years ago

It would be good to read a similar analysis in 2514 of today's contemporary writings.

"I believe the 2-looking mark is short for a 'too' sound, and the 'lol' throughout the text, although it originally signified laughter, has become a replacement for the end of a sentence"

seanstickle• 13 years ago

These are nice examples of scribal abbreviations in Latin. Q.v. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation

involans• 13 years ago

The "m" elision (with the macron) is a standard orthographical device, and only for final "m". "-m" was very soft, even in Classical Latin; it functioned more like a vowel, and could be elided into following vowels. It was likely pronounced as a nasalisation of the preceding vowel sound, as in Portuguese today.

nzp• 13 years ago

In addition to all convention others have mentioned, I expect a lot of oddities have to do with hacks to make justification and spacing perfectly uniform. The 42-line Bible font was composed of well over 200 unique characters.

ljoshua• 13 years ago

This is what the Internet is for.

kbs• 13 years ago

If you are interested in the evolution of movable type and what Gutenberg might have really invented - Blaise Aguera [of PhotoSynth fame, among many other things] did some fascinating research into the glyphs that appear in the books printed from Gutenberg's printing presses.

For instance - there are a surprisingly large number of variations in any given glyph [say, the "p" glyph.] These are variations in the actual bit of metal used to print the glyph at that location, rather than some sort of printing glitch.

This is odd because Gutenberg is generally credited for inventing the movable type using a matrix[1] and type cast from a matrix would not show such variations. Blaise speculates he might have instead cast each type in sand, individually; which would destroy the mould after each type was cast. He thinks he might have used something like a small wooden stick to re-create the shape in sand for each casting. There's some substructure in many glyphs which give some credibility to this hypothesis.

On the flip side, Gutenberg may not have been given credit for Linotype[2] - where a whole line (or in Gutenberg's case, two lines) were cast all at once, rather than arranging individual glyphs.

If you find this sort of stuff interesting - do watch his presentation[3] - great stuff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28printing%29

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine

[3] https://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=104803

bayesianhorse• 13 years ago

Lorem ipsum ...

For all the latin I learned at school I can barely understand a word...

beginagain• 13 years ago

wow, there must not have been much to do back in those days.

user24• 13 years ago

I seriously recommend you read on on the Gutenberg bible. It's arguable that without it we wouldn't have printed books, or wouldn't have had them until much much later.

It was the "killer app" of the printed word.

Think of the information dissemination that became possible because of this, the increase in human empowerment and knowledge.

It's an incredibly important artefact of our collective history and culture.

brenfrow• 13 years ago

This is an excellent example of gothic font. I just started learning calligraphy and this was the third font to learn. http://www.ageofarmour.com/education/font.html

julianpye• 13 years ago

It's interesting to read Gutenberg's lifestory in the context of this. A man on a mission, relying on several investors to create what most deem essentially as the last millenium's greatest invention. After he launched, the investors kicked him out and he lived his last years in relative obscurity. He got redeemed in later years, though.

huskyr• 13 years ago

Although i applaud the effort of putting this publication online in such a nice, interactive way, i'm a bit saddened to see the license underneath the page leading to a Creative Commons Noncommercial (BY-NC-SA) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

This means that the images are not usable on, for example, Wikipedia, that only allows CC-BY and CC-BY-SA licenses. Also, there seems to be no easy way to get those images and reuse them, apart from reverse-engineering the application and scraping the files.

Apart from that, adding any license to a work that has been in the public domain (Gutenberg died in 1468) is questionable in terms of copyright law. Reproductions of 2D public domain works (such as this text) are not applicable to renewed copyright law, considering Bridgeman vs Corel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_vs_Corel) and many other similar rulings in other countries.

rmk22• 13 years ago

If I understood the linked article correctly, nobody knows about the actual effect these rulings have on UK law, where this digitalisation originated. Until there has been a similar case brought before the court, little seems to suggest that this is, indeed, not copyrightable?

sp332• 13 years ago

Is there any way to download a high-res version of a page?

550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in High-Res Detail

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