The Elephants Memory

The Elephant's Memory created by Timothee Ingen-Housz was created with the intention of being used to replace written text, a universal pictorial language .he name "The Elephant's Memory" plays on the fact that a huge amount of people would need to learn and remember all they symbols and their meanings for it to be successful. I don't think it works very well as I can't understand most of the symbols on their own, and when placed together to form a sentence I find it even harder! This proves that the alphabet we use today is good. I don't really understand why this guy thought it would be a good idea to go back and use pictograms again...?

The Elephant's Memory, Timothee Ingen-Housz "Seeing elephants shot by men makes me cry"

Gutenberg's epitath

"In the long run the general public, the last judge of the printer's endeavours, will benefit by it, and the printer will continue to hold the proud position of a man - as Gutenberg's epitaph puts it - 'well-deserving of all nations and languages'

Taken from '500 years of printing'.

S. H. Steinberg

"It is no exaggeration to describe Gutenberg's invention as Germany's most important single contribution to civilisation."

S. H. Steinberg taken from '500 years of printing'.

Print or digital?

"The printing press has made it possible for millions of people to read the same text at the same moment: wireless, television, and the cinema enable millions of people to hear the same text spoken and see the same performance acted at the same moment... The peaceful coexistence of print, sound, and vision is to a large extent guaranteed by the psycho-physiological make-up of the human race..."

S. H. Steinberg from '500 years of printing'.

Printing presses were established...

1464 Cologne
1466 Basel
1467 Rome
1469 Venice
1470 Paris, Nurnberg, Utrecht
1471 Milan, Naples, Florence
1472 Augsburg
1473 Lyon, Valencia, Budapest
1474 Cracow, Bruges
1475 Lubeck, Breslau
1476 Westminster, Rostock
1478 Geneva, Palermo, Messina
1480 London
1481 Antwerp, Leipzig
1482 Odense
1483 Stockholm

The spread of printing

"It is no exaggeration to describe Gutenberg's invention as Germany's most imporatnt single contribution to civilisation. However, the printers who , from about 1460 onward, went on their travels from Mainz wer little concerned with German culture. They were craftsmen and business men; they wanted to make a living; and they adapted themselves and their art to the conditions of international trade. Until printing had firmly established itself as an everyday commodity, that is to say, until well into the beginning of the sixteenth century, a map showing the places where printers had settled down is virtually identical with a map showing the places where any commercial firm would have set up an agency."

Taken from '500 years of printing' by S. H. Steinberg.

Is movable type good?

Movable type is an old practise which seems to be coming back into fashion as all things vintage get bought back to life and we are searching for more handmade things. I would like to find out how movable type helped communication and bought us to where we are today. I need to research the history of movable type and decide whether is is good for our development.