Change of Location:
This talk will be in Room FINE 214 (second floor of Fine Hall) !

Blaise Aguera y Arcas

Computational analysis of early European printing: some first results

 Abstract:  Gutenberg is credited with having invented the typographic
printing process in the West around 1450.  Insofar as any single
technological development of the past millennium can be said to be the
most important, this is a good candidate, as popular "millennium
retrospectives" of the past year have been unanimous in pointing out.
Printing has also been regarded as an exception to the general principle
that technological advances happen incrementally; it is held that his
idea, full-blown at its birth, remained virtually unchanged until the
typographic developments of the 19th century.

We have studied early printing from an archaeological standpoint,
focusing in particular on survivals from Gutenberg's press.  Using
simple data analysis techniques based on high-resolution digital
photography of these survivals, we have been able to find direct
evidence of the technologies used to create them.  These technologies do
not in fact correspond to typographic printing in the modern sense.
Although we are only beginning to develop a comprehensive picture of the
early development of printing, it has become clear that Gutenberg was
only the first of a series of European experimenters, who gradually
"evolved" the concepts and methods of typography over a period of
several decades.