Another week, another list of gleanings from the republic of letters. As usual, all quotes and figures are from the linked source unless otherwise stated. I meant to post this last night, but the end of summer vacation and return to teaching has been, as always, exhausting. Anyway:
Project Jikji-Gutenberg
One of the weird things about Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, when you start reading histories of Western printing, is that for all its significance to world history, we know very little about how Gutenberg came up with the idea and what, exactly, he thought he was doing with his little invention. Much of what we know actually comes from lawsuits against Gutenberg, who quickly lost control of his invention to a creditor and promptly disappeared from history. We know almost nothing about one of the most important questions of all: how did Gutenberg come up with this idea?
A new international project, From Jikji to Gutenberg, is tackling that question with high-tech imaging hardware. Jikji, in this case, is a Confucian treatise printed in Korea in 1377, and the first book made anywhere with moveable type. By comparing the Jikji with a Gutenberg Bible (and other incunabula) using high-resolution imaging technology, researchers are hoping to uncover any links in production techniques or materials between these two books made on opposite ends of Eurasia. Gregory Barber writes, from Wired:
The point of this exercise was a form of elemental sleuthing. When high-energy X-rays hit an object, like the Bible, excited atoms in the ink and paper start firing off electrons, producing fluorescent light. Depending on what type of element has been hit—whether it’s chlorine, or copper, or tin—this light is emitted with a particular amount of energy, which can be imaged, producing a map of the elements that are found on the page.
With those images, the researchers hoped to compare the printing traditions of Asia and Europe. In the lab that day, they were racing to image dozens of documents produced on opposite sides of the world but at roughly the same time, mostly within the 15th century.
The hope, to be clear, is not some kind of smoking gun proving that a Korean monk somehow wandered over to Mainz in the 1450s and taught Gutenberg this one weird trick to mass produce books. Much more likely, though far from proven, is that the idea itself, along with a few technical details, might have made their way to Germany through the grapevine. The more similarities we can find between a Gutenberg Bible and a copy of the Jikji, the more likely that transmission starts to look. But so far, this is just a hypothesis. Hopefully, we’ll know more soon.
More AI Art: Blue Ribbon State Fair Edition
This year’s winning submission for the Colorado State Fair’s digital fine art competition has turned out to be a product of Midjourney, the AI image generating program. The story went viral on Twitter earlier this week, mostly on the backs of angry and anguished artists, though Matthew Gault over at VICE's Motherboard vertical actually bothered to reach out to Jason Allen, the guy who submitted the work and ask him what he thought he was doing. The answer says a lot about what AI-generated art might look like as it gets more popular, more sophisticated, and more meaningful: Allen went through hundreds of iterations of the prompt, making adjustments to the language throughout, then using software to upscale and enhance the picture, then print it on canvas. You can judge the result,“Théâtre D’Opéra Spatial,” for yourself. I think it’s quite good! If I had to bet, I’d guess that we’re going to see more and more artists working in this way: iteration, careful prompt engineering, and post-processing.
Flipping Floppies Over
Taro Kono, the government minister who oversees Japan’s Digital Agency, has declared war on the floppy disk. Japan has long been famous for its weird attachment to outdated communications technology, especially fax machines, but according to Kono this is mostly the result of Japan’s aging bureaucratic playbook: more than 1,900 government operations still require floppy disks in one form or another. Kono’s new reforms will aim to fully transition all government services to online portals as quickly as possible. Two weird wormholes I fell into looking into this article: there is a thriving business in floppy drives in 2022, and nobody seems to know how long floppy disks actually last. As any paleographer can tell you, your choice of storage medium matters!
As for faxes, Kono told reporters at his press conference: “I’m looking to get rid of the fax machine, and I still plan to do that.”
Why Does (Most of) The World Use A4 Paper?
This is the question answered by Ben Sparks over at Spektrum. For most of the world (except, of course, the USA and Canada), a standard piece of paper is exactly 210mm wide by 297mm long. Why don’t they just round up to the marvelously divisible 300, which easily splits into exact thirds, quarters, fifths, and sixths? The answer lies in the ratios: 297:210 is a close approximation of √2:1. This is the only ratio of length to width that can be divided in half, down the middle, and keep the same dimensions. One A4 page can be folded in half to make two A5 pages, which could again be subdivided into two A6 pages each, and son on. The upswing, here, is that the whole A series of paper, from the massive A1 down to the puny A8, have the same relative dimensions.
This is not an accident. It is possibly one of the greatest innovations of the 18th century. To take just one modern example: teachers have been using it to literally halve their photocopying budget for years. You want two copies on one page? Great – they fit exactly! Any other paper shape (say, ‘letter size’, or 8.5 by 11 inches, for all you North Americans out there) is sadly wasteful in comparison because your two half size copies leave an awkward gap on the original page.
As a North American teacher, I can sadly confirm the presence of this awkward gap from long experience.
And that’s it for the week. I’m behind on a few Bibliophilia projects because of the school year, but hopefully will have something up soon! Thank you for subscribing, especially to a recent crop who came this week, and happy reading!