Werck der bücher: Transitions, experimentation, and collaboration in reprographic technologies, 1440-1470

该项目旨在重新定义我们所理解的印刷发明：欧洲中世纪最重要的技术创新。这项发明是一个革命的唯一点，其中活字印刷技术是由约翰内斯古滕贝格在1452年完全成熟地带入世界的，这种持久的想法不再被接受。相反，C之间的一代。1440和C。1470年必须被认为是一个跨越和在rephysical媒体之间进行技术实验的时期。在这一代人中，一系列这样的媒体蓬勃发展：用雕刻的木块印刷的书籍（木刻书）;用木块（木刻）或雕刻的盘子（金属版画）印刷在单页上的文本和图像，用活字印刷的书籍和文件（incunabula），以及所有这些的混合体。此外，几乎可以肯定的是，当时存在着不止一种不同的活字印刷方法。迄今为止，这些单独的印刷工艺一直被视为离散的实体。因此，人们认为它们之间的关系，以及它们的创造者之间的关系，是竞争性的。然而，这些技术如何在这个开创性的时期发展，目前还只是一个猜测，而不是知识。这个创新项目将汇集目前被认为是独立学科的专业知识-木刻和金属切割印刷的叶子的研究，木刻书的研究，以及活字印刷的研究-以产生一个全面的分析。它将在曼彻斯特、美因茨和埃尔兰根创造一个集合和专业知识的协同效应，它将首次开发和部署尖端的数字分析技术，以询问这一时期的全部材料产出。该项目有两个目标。首先，利用埃尔兰根开发的模式识别方法，对1440年至1470年期间用活字印刷的每一个印刷版本进行数字分析。结合历史印刷的实验，这将使我们能够确定和定义有多少不同的技术实际上在发挥作用，以及由谁，何时何地发明和开发。第二，系统调查了同时期木刻、木刻、木刻木刻、木刻木这种材料调查将使我们能够确定这些不同的技术是否被不同的作坊竞争性地使用，或者正如我们假设的那样，在同一个作坊中，实现不同的中间目的：一个完全不同的早期印刷文化经济史的图景。使用数字，摄影和书目方法的创新组合，该项目将改变我们对其时代最重要的技术创新起源的理解。

This project aims to redefine what we understand as the invention of printing: the single most important technological innovation of the European Middle Ages. The enduring idea that this invention was a sole point of revolution, in which the technology of printing with movable type was brought into the world fully-fledged by Johannes Gutenberg in 1452, is no longer accepted. Instead, the generation between c. 1440 and c. 1470 must be conceived as a period of ongoing technological experimentation across and between reprographic media. A whole range of such media flourished in that generation: books printed from carved wooden blocks (blockbooks); texts and images printed on single leaves from wooden blocks (woodcuts) or engraved plates (metalcuts), books and documents printed with movable type (incunabula), and hybrids of all of these. Furthermore, there was almost certainly more than one different method of printing with movable type in existence. These individual printing crafts have been treated hitherto as discrete entities. Hence it has been supposed that the relationship between them, and thus between their creators, was competitive. Yet how these technologies intersected in this seminal period is currently a matter of conjecture, not knowledge. This innovative project will draw together expertise from across what are currently considered to be separate disciplines - the study of leaves printed from woodblocks and metal-cuts, the study of blockbooks, and the study of printing with moveable type - to produce an holistic analysis of reprographic technology. Creating a synergy of both collections and expertise in Manchester, Mainz and Erlangen, it will develop and deploy cutting-edge digital analysis techniques for the first time to interrogate the entirety of the material output from this period. The objectives of the project will be twofold. First, to analyse digitally every printed edition produced with moveable type between 1440 and 1470, using pattern recognition approaches to be developed at Erlangen. In combination with experiments in historical printing, this will allow us to identify and define how many different technologies were actually at play, and by whom, when and where they were invented and developed. Second, to survey systematically the paper stocks used by the producers of single-leaf woodcuts and metalcuts, blockbooks and incunabula in the same period. This material investigation will allow us to determine whether these different technologies were being employed by separate workshops competitively, or, as we hypothesize, in the same workshops, to achieve different medial ends: a radically different picture of the economic history of early print culture. Using an innovative combination of digital, photographic, and bibliographical methods, this project will transform our understanding of the genesis of the most important technological innovation of its age.