Technology Returns Gutenberg Bible To The Masses

Johannes Gutenberg's famous Bible started the printing revolution - now it's part of the Internet revolution. DCLnews reports.

WHEN YOU READ words as spots of ink on thin sheets of pulped, dried, and flattened wood (paper), you can thank Johannes Gutenberg (1397-1468), inventor of the printing press. And when you read them as pixels of light transmitted via the world wide web (as you are now), Gutenberg is still the man indirectly responsible. Without the spread of knowledge made possible by the printing press, the information age might still be centuries off.

When the German inventor first began mass producing his famous Gutenberg Bibles in 1455, he could never have imagined the impact his invention would have on the world. Nor could he have imagined that 21st century technology would bring his now very rare work back to life and back to the masses.

Most people will never see a Gutenberg Bible outside a dimly-lit display case. But now, thanks to high-resolution digital photography, they can view an electronic replica of the 548-year-old work by slotting disks into their CD-ROM drives. Viewers can use the zoom tool to enlarge sections of the text or the hand-tooled leather binding. They can also search for a word in the English translation and, with a mouse click, go to the original page where the word appears in the Latin text.

Sophisticated photography

Technicians from California-based firm Octavo spent four months last year photographing the Library of Congress's Gutenberg for its recently-released 2-CD facsimile. They used highly sophisticated photographic equipment. Where consumer digital cameras are rated at 2-4 megapixels and cannot produce larger prints than 11 x 4 inches, Octavo's camera is rated at 130 megapixels and can produce 6 x 9 foot prints without loss of quality.

"The larger the digital image, the more times it can be magnified for analysis - down to the pen or brush strokes made by the illuminator or the way the ink hits the page," explained Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare books and special collections division at the Library of Congress. "Digitizing the Gutenberg Bible has not only made an otherwise unavailable text available, but it has made it available in ways that before were unimaginable."

The Library's Gutenberg is one of three perfect examples of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist. So the Octavo photographer was not allowed to turn the pages - a library staff member did that. And the pages weren't even opened all the way, to preserve the binding.

Accessible to all

Executive editor of Ocatavo, E.M. Ginger, said her company's goal is to make the Gutenberg Bible accessible to as wide an audience as possible and "to keep prices as low as we can."

The 2-CD Gutenberg set is $65, but the price will go up to $80 in October. (A research facsimile with massive image files is also available on 28 CDs for $1,500 now, and $1,950 in the fall).

All the Gutenberg images can be viewed on Octavo's website, but cannot be magnified as they can on the CD.

Rare book collector

Ocatavo was founded six years ago by John Warnock, who co-founded Adobe Systems twenty years ago and helped develop Adobe Acrobat Reader, PhotoShop, and Illustrator.

Warnock, an avid book collector, started Octavo after realizing the computer technology he helped design could reproduce rare books digitally and affordably. He began at home by photographing 16th and 17th century scientific texts from his personal library. Since then the company has published more than 40 rare texts on CD in architecture, literature, art, geography, and mathematics.

The Gutenberg Bible was the eighth project that Octavo completed in partnership with the Library of Congress. Other titles included a treatise by 16th century architect Andrea Palladio and a 19th century collection of rose paintings by French artist Pierre Joseph Redoute.

Growing trend

Most of the world's major libraries are digitizing texts. The British Library recently made the Lindisfarne Gospels available online. And the New York Botanical Garden has made rare books by French botanist Andre Michaux available to all over the Internet.

DCLnews Editorial
7.30.2003