About the Author

Bennett Gilbert

E-Mail: bbg2@pdx.edu

Website: https://pdx.academia.edu/BennettGilbert

Bennett Gilbert teaches history and philosophy as Senior Instructor in the University Studies Program at Portland State University (2014–present). Up until 2006 he was a rare book dealer for about 30 years. He is the author of A Personalist Philosophy of History (Routledge, 2019) and has published papers on the philosophy of history, the history of ideas, and book history.

Contributions by Author: Bennett Gilbert

Issue 8
book history
engraving
history of communication
history of technology
medieval philosophy
printing

To Copy, To Impress, To Distribute

The Start of European Printing

In order to distribute our thoughts and feelings, we must make intelligible and distributable copies of them. From approximately 1375 to 1450, certain Europeans started fully mechanized replication of texts and images, based on predecessor “smaller” technologies. What they started became the most powerful means for the distribution, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in history, up until the invention of digital means […]