“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“My heavyset friend was filled with the thrill of knowing that now words would spread faster. This is hard to specify, but he had the same feeling I have now about newspapers — the daily spreading out of ideas, and the kind of tremendous power behind that ability … I can see that corner of his shop/work area clearly in a half-light, illuminated by a candle in an enclosed mesh lantern sitting on a tabletop. This man had several apprentices, and he was a real artisan, putting ideas across in the form of movable type. I know that Gutenberg is credited with this invention, and probably rightly so; but I also feel this as one of those discoveries that appeared in several places at once, and that my beefy fellow’s shop was in the general vicinity of Gutenberg’s — in Germany? I can’t recall. This idea was ‘shared’ in many places at once, then.⁶

6. Sue could well be correct here. It’s believed that Johann Gutenberg (1400?–1468) was experimenting with movable metal type in Strasbourg, Germany, before 1448 — but there’s also possible evidence of printing from such type in Holland by 1430, for instance. (And typography itself was known, but not much used, in China and Korea in the 11th century.) In about 1448 Gutenberg became a citizen of Mainz, Germany, where he continued his work. By then, of course, the news about printing was spreading throughout Europe.