

Memo From the Monastery - white_eskimo
http://steveblank.com/2010/02/04/memo-from-the-monastery/

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ilamont
Funny. A couple things to add about this:

\- Gutenberg basically tried to mimic illuminated manuscripts with his
creation, in terms of the lettering and the use of hand-painted letters at the
beginnings of new sections. He did not immediately see the potential of his
application for new styles of books and new uses of printing.

\- Printing presses caught on very quickly in Europe. Once they did, there
were very few people who believed illuminated manuscripts were better.
Certainly, the Church didn't like losing control over information, but even it
recognized that the technology was superior and could serve its own ends (see
Elizabeth Eisenstein's _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ for more
about this, as well as the impact of printing on many aspects of society)

\- Illuminated manuscripts held on through the early 1600s (see
[http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse....](http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse.htm)).
Of course, by then their impact was negligible compared to books and other
printed works.

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showerst
To play joke explainer in case anyone didn't get it, Aldus is a double
reference to early Venetion printer Aldus Manutius and Aldus corp, creator of
pagemaker, which merged with Adobe in 1994.

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asolove
In 16th century England, after a book had been printed, someone would go in
and draw pencil drafting lines marking the text area and the text baseline as
was done before hand-writing a manuscript.

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RyanMcGreal
Illuminated manuscripts are orchestral music. Printed books are rock 'n' roll.
Rock 'n' roll wins:

[http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/01/cory-
doctorow-c...](http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/01/cory-doctorow-
close-enough-for-rock-n.html)

