Phrases.org defines “Standing on the shoulders of giants” as “Using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress.”  The first attribution of that well-known aphorism came in 1123 from William of Conches, a medieval Norman-French scholar who was determined “to expand the bounds of Christian humanism by studying secular works of classical literature and fostering empirical science.”  According to his Wikipedia page, William wrote that, “The ancients had only the books which they themselves wrote, but we have all their books and moreover all those which have been written from the beginning until our time.… Hence, we are like a dwarf perched on the shoulders of a giant. The former sees further than the giant, not because of his own stature, but because of the stature of his bearer. Similarly, we [moderns] see more than the ancients, because our writings, modest as they are, are added to their great works.”  

Isaac Newton’s later utilization of the standing on giants’ phrase is better known.  In 1675 Newton wrote a letter to Robert Hooke, a jealous, lesser rival, “What Des-Cartes [sic] did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colors of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”  Some believe this was a “sarcastic remark directed at Hooke’s appearance.  Although Hooke was not of particularly short stature, he was of slight build and had been afflicted from his youth with a severe kyphosis.”  Kyphosis is Greek for “hump,” and means a curvature of the spine like that of the fictional Quasimodo.

            Hooke wasn’t in Newton’s league, but Johannes Gutenberg was, but he also perched atop earlier giants.  Gutenberg’s famed for inventing the movable-type printing press, but moveable type made of porcelain was invented in 1040 in China by Bi Sheng.  Gutenberg improved on the concept and made handling the individual pieces of type easier and quicker.  He didn’t create his screw press; the Romans did that a millennium and a half earlier for olive oil and wine production.  He also didn’t invent ink, but he did come up with a thicker, oil-based ink that transferred well onto paper which was invented in China around 220 CE by Cai Lun.  Before Gutenberg’s innovation most European ink was extracted in a laborious process from oak tree galls produced by insects laying their eggs.  Recently the Hill family stood on Gutenberg’s shoulders as we printed our annual Christmas cards on my 1901 wrought-iron Chandler & Price printing press.  Seeing this beast in action is a hoot, there are over 50 different places on it that need oiling if the foot treadle is to move the 500-pound flywheel that powers the contraption.  

In the 1880s scores of companies were producing over 100 platen press models, but most were cheap and lightweight and flimsy.  The C&P set the bar higher.  In 1881 banker Harrison Chandler was negotiating to buy the Cleveland Type Foundry when he met William Price, the son of a Cleveland printing press builder.  It was a match made in printing heaven, and three years later they introduced the first of their heavy, durable and easy to maintain C&P presses. By 1930 an estimated 90 percent of U.S. platen presses (which have a flat surface bearing the inked type and a platen holding the paper, which is pressed against the type) were C&Ps.  The Amalgamated Printer’s Association website stated, “If a favorite press poll was ever conducted among pressmen and printshop proprietors, there is no doubt that the C&P would win all the honors, grippers down!”  The reasons for this are the press is easier to set up, it pauses for a beat when the paper’s mashed into the type for a deep impression and pauses again when it opens up for feeding the paper into it, thereby greatly reducing the numbers of smashed printers’ fingers.  

However, the “C&P was not of original design, being based on several expired patents granted to George Phineas Gordon.”  Gordon was a failed actor turned printer, and a spiritualist, who, according to the Letterpress Commons, “claimed that Benjamin Franklin appeared to him in a dream and described the mechanism of a platen job press. In gratitude he called the invention the ‘Franklin’, but it is worth noting that Gordon also received—and acknowledged—considerable non-ectoplasmic help from a predecessor, Stephen P. Ruggles.”  Gordon wrote to Ruggles “I have, in times gone by, most cheerfully accorded to Ruggles the introduction—the origination—of the treadle job press. I have ever said the conception was YOURS, and that your efforts, skill and persistency against great opposing obstacles introduced it.”  Ruggles’ press could produce 1500-2000 copies per hour by a single printer, compared to 250 by the old screw presses, like Benjamin Franklin’s, which required two operators to pull handles which turned screw that mashed the type into the paper, and the C&P was faster and needed one worker. 

            Gutenberg’s “often cited as among the most influential figures in human history and has been commemorated around the world,” according to his Wikipedia article, and “in 1997, Time Life picked Gutenberg’s invention as the most important of the second millennium.”  His Bible was printed in Mainz, Germany in 1455, and by 1480 there were 110 print shops in Europe.  By 1500 they had cranked out over twenty million copies, and in the next century that grew to 200 million.  Within 60 years, the entire canon of classical writers was printed and widely distributed.  This fostered the creation of the Scientific Revolution, brought on improvements for reading, such as numbering pages, tables of contents, and indexes, and made books more affordable. 

            In honor the 400^th anniversary of the 1623 printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the London Review of Books produced a video last year of an “audacious attempt to replicate the methods used to print the book at the time of its original release,” according to LRB.co.uk.  The resulting film, which took two years to make, is “A Series of Headaches,” a title that resonates with the Hill family printers.  The issues encountered included the imprecision of the old-style press” and producing “ink from the crushed galls of oak trees.  I encountered making oak gall ink recently by reading “The Library Mule of Cordoba,” a splendid graphic novel about efforts to save a portion of Cordoba’s library, one of the greatest in history, that was burned in 987 CE by the vizier Almanzor, who ordered the destruction of all books that contradicted Islamic doctrine or were deemed ‘heretical’.  The same religious fanaticism destroyed the remains of the Alexandrian Library in 642 CE.  Making ink from galls was briefly described in “Library Mule,” so I turned to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens article, “Making Ink from Oak Galls” by Usha McFarling, that detailed how they did it.  “The ink gets its name—and much of its color—from oak galls, structures that grow on oak leaves and twigs in response to attacks by wasps and other insects. The galls, created through a combination of plant hormones and chemicals released by insects, are rich in tannins, substances that help protect insect larvae maturing inside the galls. Tannins also provide a color source for dyes and inks.”  They then “pulverized oak galls, added water, and then boiled the light brown extract that resulted. They filtered the extract through cloth … and sprinkled a teaspoon of iron sulfate into the extract. The solution immediately blackened. The color of the ink … results from the chemical reaction between the iron and the tannins.”   Finally, “they thickened the ink by adding gum Arabic,” but care had to be taken since “poorly made ink can eat right through a page.”

            For our Christmas cards, the Hill family prefers using rubber-based ink because it dries slowly, allowing time for our usual dithering.  And that brings us to Henry Cole, the giant who invented the first Christmas card in 1843.  Cole was the 1852 founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum and proponent of the “penny post” system that allowed mail to be posted through the U.K. for a penny.  Smithsonian.com added “a prominent educator and patron of the arts, Henry Cole travelled in the elite, social circles of early Victorian England, and had the misfortune of having too many friends.”  The improved postal service encouraged the middle and upper classes to mail long Christmas letters to relatives and friends, of which Cole, who got around, had about a thousand.  “Cole hit on an ingenious idea. He approached an artist friend, J.C. Horsley, and asked him to design an idea that Cole had sketched out in his mind. Cole then took Horsley’s illustration—a triptych showing a family at table celebrating the holiday flanked by images of people helping the poor—and had a thousand copies made by a London printer …. At the top of each was the salutation, “TO:___” allowing Cole to personalize his responses, which included the generic greeting “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You.”  The rest is history.

Cole hopped onto some giants, and so can you, because when you get down to it, your public library’s shelves are packed full of noble giants whose broad shoulders can boost you up.