- Maybe I'm too nitpicky, but I wish that, out of the 8 times that they write "the oldest printing presses", they would at least once mention that these are the oldest (known) surviving printing presses, just to avoid anyone getting a wrong impression. Actually, they're not even the oldest in Belgium by a long margin, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_...), the first printing presses in Belgium started operating in 1473, so 127 years before these.
by joostdecock
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- As someone who lives in Antwerp, this museum is my number one recommendation for people visiting the city.
It is also a Unesco World Heritage site, which is very unusual for a museum. But that's because the museum occupies what historically was a printing business stretching back many many generations who had -- fortunately -- a bit of a hoarding streak.
Well worth a visit. While you're at it, 'Goodie Foodie' on the same square as the museum serves the best pancakes in the city.
- The printing press froze the written German language before natural language evolution had a chance to simplify the declensional system.
So, language nuts: how much time would have sufficed for German to simplify "sufficiently" ? Another couple of hundred years ?
A two hundred year delay in the introduction of the printing press certainly would have changed German and European history.
- I visited this museum in Antwerp in late 2023 as part of a trip there and to the Amsterdam area. The museum is fantastic and fascinating. You can also operate a real printing press, inking it and turning the crank, taking home your print. We have it framed on the wall. It's not as "good" as the ones you can buy there, as the inking is not even, but we made it from blank paper, which is pretty special.
One of the highlights of the museum was the foundry, where they made type. As in, hired people to design fonts and create the lead type to print with them. Folks like, you know, Garamond.
by MarceliusK
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- There's something fascinating about that middle stage of technology: vastly faster than manuscript copying, but still completely dependent on human rhythm, muscle, maintenance
by JoeAltmaier
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- Considering movable type was in China in 1040 (Bi Sheng, inventor) I wonder if there are any extant presses there.
- I have a vandercook 325g press from 1947 and I thought that was old.
by notorandit
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- It took me the entire web page to understand that the display is in Antwerpen, Belgium.
Maybe I am the one and only ignorant to not know it, but I am pretty sure I am not alone.
Nowadays we give a lot of stuff for granted.
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