Word: gutenberg
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...think big about history. We can pause to notice what Grove calls, somewhat inelegantly, "strategic inflection points," those moments when new circumstances alter the way the world works, as if the current of history goes through a transistor and our oscilloscopes blip. It can happen because of an invention (Gutenberg's printing press in the 15th century), or an idea (individual liberty in the 18th century), or a technology (electricity in the 19th century) or a process (the assembly line early in this century...
Berners-Lee is the unsung--or at least undersung--hero of the information age. Even by some of the less breathless accounts, the World Wide Web could prove as important as the printing press. That would make Berners-Lee comparable to, well, Gutenberg, more or less. Yet so far, most of the wealth and fame emanating from the Web have gone to people other than him. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, drives a Mercedes-Benz and has graced the cover of several major magazines. Berners-Lee has graced the cover of none, and he drives a 13-year...
Proselytizing via these handwrought manuscripts was not an easy task. The Bibles were rare, fragile and generally came in one flavor: Latin. The problems didn't go away until the mid-1400s, when a German inventor named Johann Gutenberg wheeled his movable-type press out of its secret hiding place and into history...
Appropriately enough, the first book Gutenberg printed was the Bible. His simple press passed sheets of paper under specialized plates that could be changed in minutes instead of weeks, revolutionizing intellectual commerce. Ideas that once could be communicated only in person, or at large universities in cities such as London or Hanover, suddenly took wing across the Continent. And though Gutenberg printed just 200 Bibles before losing control of his invention, there was no turning back. In 1456, when the first Bible rolled off his press, there were fewer than 30,000 books in Europe. Fifty years later, there were...
Many scholars credit the printing press with theology's next revolution: the Reformation. Thirty-seven years after Gutenberg's death, young Martin Luther renounced his plans to become a lawyer (his father's idea) and instead, seized by spiritual anxiety, joined the Monastery of the Emerites of St. Augustine. It was a fateful decision. Luther's tortured soul, which attached itself to new ideas with a fervor that seems strikingly modern, turned in a decade's time against the institution he had vowed to serve and created one of history's greatest religious splinter groups. Rome wanted to suppress...