
550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in High-Res Detail - apaprocki
http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=arch._b_b.10
======
ggchappell
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. :-)

~~~
asolove
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](http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=1)).

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
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"

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nwatson
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...](http://www.barbaradoyen.com/book-publishing/physical-anatomy-of-a-
book) 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.

~~~
stan_rogers
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.

------
kbs
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28printing%29)

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

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

------
drblast
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.

~~~
asolove
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtypography)

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

~~~
asolove
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...](http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic453618.files/Central/editions/scripts.html)

(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.)

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
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.

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huskyr
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/](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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_vs_Corel))
and many other similar rulings in other countries.

~~~
rmk2
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?

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julianpye
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.

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

~~~
ygra
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.

~~~
acdha
Yes - OpenSeadragon is great. We use it for the imagery on
[http://wdl.org](http://wdl.org),
[http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov](http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) and
parts of the [much larger] collections on [http://loc.gov](http://loc.gov) and
I'm quite happy with it as an infrequent contributor.

For awhile it seemed like the project was languishing but in the last year or
so it's really picked up steam with significant quality and performance
improvements, particularly on mobile browsers, API and doc cleanups and some
new features like rotation.

Just recently Ian started collecting instructions for the other side of
creating images – if you want to try something like this, there are some
simple command-line tools:

[http://openseadragon.github.io/examples/creating-zooming-
ima...](http://openseadragon.github.io/examples/creating-zooming-images/)

One particularly interesting project is
[https://github.com/zoomhub/zoomhub](https://github.com/zoomhub/zoomhub) which
is trying to be an open equivalent to Microsoft's zoom.it service.

------
SmileyKeith
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
As you requested:

[http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/](http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/)

~~~
milesf
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.

------
ljoshua
This is what the Internet is for.

------
brenfrow
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](http://www.ageofarmour.com/education/font.html)

------
sp332
Is there any way to download a high-res version of a page?

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bayesianhorse
Lorem ipsum ...

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

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

~~~
user24
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.

