Gutenberg Bibles Online

Richey writes: "The British Library is making the Gutenberg Bible, the first major bible printed in the West available online. (Direct link to the book)." This isn't the first high-res copy of the Gutenberg Bible online; a German university library has already done it with their copy, but it's still cool. Update: 11/23 8:25 AM by michael : For the people that skipped those boring history classes, this was the first book printed in the western world with movable type, a huge leap in printing technology.

Comments

You guys are missing the point!

[Jonathan]

This isn't just some religious thing. The Gutenberg Bible is important because it was the first book printed with moveable type in the West (The Chinese Empire actually had a moveable type several centuries prior, but as with their invention of gunpowder, they failed to use it effectively -- they were sort of the Xerox PARC of civilizations, I guess).

The thing about moveable type is that it made books afffordable. Like the Internet, it suddenly made a lot of information available to people.

Re:ahh. good

[stesch]

One thing is missing:

Latin for Babelfish

A good use for the internet

[fantomas]

Think laterally here folks!

This is a very useful, very important use for the internet. You are looking at very high resolution images across the internet of a unique book.

OK so this may not be big news for folks whose idea of important books are the latest O'Reilly's a whole 30 minutes away in your nearest bookshop.But for historians, academics, subject specialists, this means potential desktop access to a whole library of significant works that could previously only be accessed by flying 3000 miles to see. Not all of these have been previously accessible via high resolution facsimile copies, and besides, the facsimile copies that do exist are often very expensive themselves and rare enough (they don't do Harry Potter style print runs of 12th century works...)

This is very good news for historians.

laptop to church

[H*rus]

Cool, now I can bring my laptop to church

Mark
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

The pressures of marketing in 1454 ...

[belbo]

The Background page has some interesting remarks:

While producing the Bible, Gutenberg's team learned fast about the economy of printing. This is reflected in differences between various copies of the Bible.

Three major changes of plan can be detected :

1.It was first envisaged that rubrics should be printed in red. This was soon abandoned, perhaps to save time.

2.It was decided to increase the number of lines per page, presumably to save paper.

3.It was decided to increase the print-run, but as some sheets had already been printed in the number first envisaged, these pages had to be printed again. This is the best explanation for why a number of the pages exist in two different versions.

Times haven't changed that much, now have they?

--

Failed to use it "effectively?"

[cfish]

Chinese invented exposive powder and created fireworks.

Westerners got thier hands on these powders and started to make weapons and started war.

So, who failed to use it effectively?