Post 1: In the beginning...

An inventor! 

Johannes Gutenberg (c.1400–1468) was a trained goldsmith who arrived in Strasbourg in c.1428 C.E. as a political exile. While there he learned printing and began experimenting with movable type.  By 1448 Gutenberg had returned to his home town, Mainz.  The financial backing he obtained from lawyer, Johannes Fust, allowed Gutenberg to commence a printing business using the movable metal type and typecasting machine he had devised. 
Movable Metal Type
Previously printing type had been made from wood and so Gutenberg's raised metal type, of equal length and thickness, produced a clearer image.  The durable metal letters could be used again and again, and being separate they could be rapidly reassembled so that, suddenly, books could be printed more quickly and at such a reduced cost that reading and knowledge became widely available and were no longer restricted to the rich and powerful. 
Gutenberg Bible 
Gutenberg's famous "42-line Bible", the first full-length book ever printed comprised of 1286 pages in 2 volumes. Completed in 1455-6, it gets its name from the number of lines per column to each double-column page.  The Bible is also known as the 'Gutenberg Bible' and also the 'Mazarin Bible', for a copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin.  Forty-nine copies of the bible still exist of the 180 originally published. 
Blackletter Typeface 
Gutenberg and his colleagues, notably the calligrapher Peter Schöffer, meticulously copied the letters originally drawn by the scribes.  The style of type became known widely as "black letter" or "Gothic" and remained popular in Germany until the mid-1940s.

 Description of This Week's Research

• Continued my general research covering the whole topic.

• Identified the more important typesfaces and when they were first introduced.

• Formed my data into a timeline, starting with Gutenberg.

• Divided the information roughly into 6 separate posts.

• Wrote the text for the first text.

• Created the blog.

• Posted the first post.

• Edited post and added further information.

Reflection on the Research Process for the First Post

• I did not read the Assignment instructions carefully enough and, although I started early, I did not have sufficient research done or organised for this post.

• I searched the SLV databases for suitable images but could not find any.

• By focusing on early printing, i.e.Gutenberg, I was able to easily to identify 6 books that looked to have good information, but realised later that the depth of information they contained was probably not needed.

• I had earlier found an image of an early printing press but wasn't able to publish it as part of the initial post. I will keep trying. I might need to put the image into Picasa first.

• I had an enormous amount of trouble trying to save my first post. I kept getting a message saying that there were 'form' errors. Information from Blogger Help pointed to the problem being the use of MS Word because of the embedded formatting. The advice was to cut/paste into 'Notepad' and then cut/paste from there into Blogger. This still created problems with HTML formatting. The answer was to ignore the option to save a draft and just to publish - which I did.

Discoveries for this Week's Post

• It is better to type the information to be posted directly into Notepad, cut/paste into the Blogger text box and then apply formatting. I found it best to avoid Word altogether. When saving is problematic, publishing without saving first seems to have worked fine.

• SLV was a good source of information for my topic. I searched the catalogue and found 6 six books easily (and could have asked for several more appropriate items if I wanted to ask for them to be retrieved from the remote store). SLV also has great databases. The ones I found useful were 'Grove Art Online: Oxford Art Online' and the the 'Oxford Companion to Western Art'.

• I did not expect my topic to have never been studied previously, but when I did a Blog Search for my Blog I was quite unprepared for the huge number of blogs, on exactly the same subject, already in existence.