Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

The boom of the gun may be said, by a not forced figure of speech, to have ushered in the new civilization that rose from the mental lethargy of the Middle Ages; for it was the first great invention of all in the long line that have followed since. As it was the first, and because without it the others would have been impossible, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it was the most important.

The mutual reactions between the gun and civilization have resulted, and are still resulting, in widening the distance between the civilized and the uncivilized, placing more and more power in the hands of the civilized, and putting the uncivilized more and more into subjection by the civilized. The process that began with the invention of the fist-hammer, and was continued through the centuries by all the improvements in weapons that followed, was brought to a halt when Rome fell, and not revived until the gun came into general use in the fourteenth century. During the interval of nearly nine hundred years, civilization indeed went backward with the advance of the barbarians into Europe, checked but not wholly stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732, and later by Charlemagne, his grandson, in numerous campaigns. But the gun, being adopted and improved by peoples having the mentality needed to discern its usefulness, stabilized the conditions of living afterward by keeping in check the barbarians, especially east of Europe. Its greatest single usefulness followed from this by making possible the development and utilization of the next great invention. This invention was next to the gun in point of time. It was next to the gun in influence on history also; and some people think it has had even more influence than the gun. This invention is usually called the invention of printing.

Of course, printing had been invented centuries before, probably in China, and had been practiced during all the intervening centuries, in China, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Rome, the Hellenistic countries and Italy. But the printing had been done from blocks on which were cut or carved many characters, that expressed whole words or sentences. Naturally, printing done from them was not adaptable to the recording of discussions, the making of connected narratives, or the publishing of books.

Suddenly, about the year 1434, John Gutenberg, who lives at Mayence, conceives the idea of cutting only one letter on each block, putting the blocks in forms so arranged that the blocks can be put in such sequence as may be desired for spelling words, and all the blocks secured firmly in position. In other words, he invented movable type.

Objection may be made to this statement, and the declaration urged that movable type were used in China before the Christian era. Possibly they were; some declarations have been made to that effect. But even if they were, we cannot see that their invention there had any considerable influence on history. China was separated from western Asia and from Africa and Europe by the long stretch of the dry lands of Central Asia, across which little communication passed. It is more nearly certain than most things are in ancient history, that the civilized peoples of western Asia, Africa and Europe, including Gutenberg himself, did not know of movable type until Gutenberg invented them.

It is absolutely certain that virtually the whole of the influence that printing by movable type has exercised on history sprang from the invention of Gutenberg. It started almost immediately; and it increased with a rapidity and a certainty that are amazing. No invention made before, not even the gun, was seized upon with such avidity. The world wanted it. The world seemed to have been waiting for it, though unconsciously.

It may be well at this point to impress upon our minds the fact that no invention has ever been recognized as an invention, unless it has been put into a concrete form. The U. S. Patent Office, for instance, will not award a patent for any invention unless it is described and illustrated so clearly that "any one skilled in the art can make and use it." It is an axiom that a man "cannot patent an idea." In many countries a patentee is required to "work" his invention, to make apparatus embodying it, and to put the apparatus to use. The underlying idea of the patent laws of all countries is that the good of the public is the end in view, and not the good of the inventor; that rewards are held out to the inventor, merely to induce him to put devices of practical value into the hands of the people. From this point of view, which seems to be the correct one, the mere fact that a man conceives of a device, even if he afterward develops his device to the degree that he illustrates it and describes it to someone in such a way that a person skilled in the art can make and use it, does not entitle him to any reward. He must use "due diligence" in communicating full knowledge of his invention to the public, through the Patent Office, ask for a patent, and pay to the Government the prescribed fee.

Now, Gutenberg "worked" his invention so energetically that, with the assistance of Faust, Schaeffer and others, an exceedingly efficient system of printing books was in practical operation as early as 1455. The types were of metal, and were cast from a matrix that had been stamped out by a steel punch, and could therefore be so accurately fashioned that the type had a beautiful sharpness and finish. In addition, certain mechanical apparatus of a simple kind (printing presses) were invented, whereby the type could be satisfactorily handled, and impressions could be taken from them with accuracy and quickness.

News of the invention spread so rapidly that before the year 1500 printing presses were at work in every country of Europe. The first books printed were, of course, the works of the ancient authors, beginning with three editions of Donatus. These were multiplied in great numbers, and gave the first effective impulse to the spread of civilization from the Græco-Oriental countries, where it had been sleeping, to the hungry intellects of Europe.

The new birth of civilization (usually called the Renaissance) began in Italy, where civilization had never quite died out, at some time during the fourteenth century, and took the form at first of the study of classical literature. This led naturally to a search for old manuscripts; and so ardent did this search become that the libraries of cathedrals and monasteries in all the civilized countries were ransacked. Many new libraries were founded, especially in Italy, to hold the old manuscripts that were discovered. A great impetus was given to the movement by the exodus of scholars from Constantinople, and their migration west to Italy, during the half century between the year 1400 and the fall of Constantinople before the Ottoman Turks in 1453.