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From Gutenberg to the Internet Timeline An Annotated Chronology of the History of Information from about 30,000 B.C.E. to the present, by Jeremy M. Norman. |
| 1920194019501960 |
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1403 |
Printing from moveable type is practiced in Korea during the 15th century. In 1403 a set of 100,000 copper types are cast by command of the king. These are used for printing many books in Korea until 1544. |
| 1403 | Tthe Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London approve the formation of a fraternity, or Guild of Stationers . This guild consists of booksellers who copy and sell manuscript books and writing materials, and limners who decorate and illustrate them. Each appoints a warden to control them and regulate their trade. |
| 1417 | Jan de Printere of Antwerpe is earliest textile printer whose name is documented in Europe. (Carter 198). |
1418 |
The earliest dated xylographic or wood-block print is a religious souvenir known as a "helgin." The earliest recorded helgin is a portrait of the Virgin dated 1418 in the Royal Library of Brussels. Previously the earliest known dated wood block print was thought to be a portrait of St. Christopher dated 1423 and preserved at Manchester. |
| 1418 | Card makers, who presumably are card printers printing from wood-blocks, are mentioned five times in the city records of Augsburg and Nuremberg by this date. About the same time the records of the city of Ulm in Germany show that cards are being shipped in barrels to Sicily and Italy. (Carter, History of Printing in China 2nd ed [1955] 186.) |
1434-44 |
Johann Gutenberg, a goldsmith, begins experimentation on printing in Strassburg. One of his projects is the production of small cast metal mirrors for the forthcoming "great Aachen pilgrimage". As many as 100,000 of these are cast from a mixture of lead, tin and antimony--the three basic ingredients that he will use in the casting of metal type. The records of Gutenberg's work on this project are in records of a lawsuit brought by Gutenberg's partners against him. These will eventually be transcribed verbatim before their destruction in a fire in Strassburg in 1870. Lehmann-Haupt, Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards (1966) 58-60. |
| 1434 | In 1434 the king of Korea orders the Publications Office to cast a bronze font of 200,000 pieces of type named Kabin-Ja. "This momentous event in Korean typographical history is recorded in the Yi Dynasty Annals and in the Third Foreword to the Yoktae janggam bakui of 1437. These accounts state the king, regretting that the type in use, though beautiful, was difficult to read because of the small size of the characters, suggested that a new font be cast from written characters of a larger size. Within two months more than 200,000 were cast, so clear and exact that is was possible to print more than forty sheets per day." (Schoyen Collection 21. Pre-Gutenberg Printing MS 2923). |
| Michael of Rhodes, a Venetian galley commander, writes a manuscript describing his knowledge of mathematics, ships and shipbuilding, navigation, and time reckoning. It contains some of the earliest surviving portolan aids to navigation and the world's first known treatise on shipbuilding. | |
| 1435-1455 | The first artist known to produce copperplate engravings, the so-called "Master of the Playing Cards," is active in Germany at this time. Of this artist about 100 engravings are known. He is associated with playing cards because sixty of his engravings are playing cards, the first printed from intaglio plates. |
| 1437 | Il Libro dell Arte, often translated as "The Craftsman's Handbook," written by Cennino d' Andrea Cennini, includes a description of methods used by Europeans for textile printing. It will be first printed in 1859. |
| 1441 | An edict of the Council of Venice indicates that the card printing industry in this city is being interfered with by outside competition. |
| 1444 | Foundation of the Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence by Cosimo de' Medici. This is the first public library in Renaissance Europe. |
| 1448 | Pope Nicholas V establishes the Vatican Library by combining some 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial library of Constantinople. This is an exceptionally large library for the time, and the richest in the Western world, not only in the financial sense but in the educational and cultural value of the information preserved. The Vatican Library will prepare its first catalogue in 1475. |
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| 1920194019501960 |
(This page was last revised on
December 1, 2006
. Please report errors
and broken links to jnorman@jnorman.com.) |
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