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CMAT102

Prof. Jeremy Cox

PoliticsCourtsHistoryEconomics

Writing is so important that everything referred to the age before writing is known as prehistory.

Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphs emerge between 3400 and 3200 B.C. The earliest literate texts from 2600. Sumerian

Egyptian

Earliest printing starts in Mesopotamia with “cylinder seals” that roll impressions into clay tablets, circa 3000 B.C. Essentially, it’s mass-produced art.

Block printing emerges across east Asia (earliest in China, pre-220 B.C.) as a method for printing on cloth. These incorporated wooden blocks chiseled and sanded to leave a flat, raised portion, which was inked and either pressed or rubbed onto the desired surface.

Printing moves from cloth to paper to spread translations of Buddhist texts. That results in the earliest printed book, the “Diamond Sutra,” in 868 A.D. But more on that when we talk about books.

Sorry, Johannes!

The Chinese beat you by 4 centuries.

Credited to Bi Sheng, who lived in the then-capital of China, Bianliang. The invention is dated to 1045-1058.

The clay letters were arranged on an iron board and could be moved to any location after use.

There were 3,000 characters so to find them more quickly, he arranged them by pronunciation of the first syllable.

The clay was fragile so it wasn’t great for mass-producing materials.

Later printers would use wood and metal, but clay persisted into the mid-19th century in China.

Guten tag!

A goldsmith, blacksmith, printer and publisher, Gutenberg introduces the first movable-type printing press to Europe in 1439. Before that, he’d made coins from molds.

His biggest contribution is that he makes printing an economically viable profession. He introduces oil-based ink (the better to stick to the metal), the hand-screw press (the better to distribute the ink evenly) and using an iron mold (matrix) to make new letters.

The first work he chooses to mass-produce isn’t a newspaper but a Bible. He makes about 150-180. Today, 48 are known to still exist.

During Caesar’s time in Rome, a “newspaper” called the Acta Diurna (actions of the day) was posted on a wall after each Senate meeting.

But it’s not until nearly two full centuries after the creation of the printing press that the first newspapers appear in the form of single-page sheets called corantos, written in English and imported from Holland in 1620.

Why were they created? To tell of war, of course. Specifically, the Thirty Years War.

In a trend that would continue, the king, James I, banned them but relented and even sanctioned them under popular desire for news of the violence.

If you can’t beat it, control it.Nathaniel Butter is granted a royal monopoly

to translate and publish news into English.He published the first edition of

Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in 1608.In 1622, he starts his first periodical. You’ll

like the names.Everyone together now: “News from Most

Parts of Christendom” or “Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries”

Even before his “Weekly News” gets started, Butter publishes a pamphlet, purportedly translated from Italian, that tells of a fantastical vision above to tomb of Muhammad that signaled the conversion of all Muslims to Christianity.

If that weren’t cool enough, it told of “the miraculous rayning of Bloud about Rome.”

Newspapers are also jingoistic. To speak ill of the throne was a one-way trip to prison. Just ask Butters, who spent 6 years in jail when fortunes turned in the Thirty Years War.

The master poet Ben Jonson writes the scathing play” The Staple of News”* so that "the age may see her own folly, or hunger and thirst after published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday but made all at home, and no syllable of truth in them: than which there cannot be a greater disease in nature, or a fouler scorn put upon the times."

* The play’s plot is borrowed from “The London Prodigal,” which Butter had published years earlier.

By the 1600s, the term has gained wide use.They are distinguished by a few traits:

They are printedDatedAppear at regular or at least irregular

intervals under the same name (usually)Include more than news item (not a treatise on

one event)

That would be the Oxford Gazette, soon to be known as the London Gazette.

It begins publication on November 7, 1665. It sets the style of English-language newspapers for

many decades to come, with its two columns, clear title and clear date. It includes foreign and domestic news, royal decrees.

It is launched in an act of cowardice. King Charles II, the first after the restoration of the monarchy, fled to Oxford during the Great Plague of London. He wanted to keep up with the news back home but didn’t want to touch the papers for fear of contagion.

A mere 70 years after the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock, the colonies get their first newspaper: 1690’s Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick.

• Editor Benjamin Harris vowed to print once a month.• Charging “reflections of a very high order,” colonial authorities shut it down after one issue.• Its biggest sin was that it wasn’t sanctioned by the authorities.• Another 14 years would pass before the next newspaper would appear, the Boston News-Letter.

Under British law, libel was libel, even if what you were printing was true.

While in jail, his wife ran his paper for 9 months.

Zenger’s attorney, Andrew Hamilton, shocked the court by refusing to deny that Zenger had indeed published the offending tract.

If one cannot speak truth to power, power can run as rampant as a mighty river when it escapes its banks.

The News-Letter was supported by the government and run by the postmaster, John Campbell, who…

…refused to grant the name to his successor as postmaster, William Brooker, so Brooker started a rival paper called the Boston Gazette, which…

…was printed for a time by James Franklin, who was fired by Brooker’s replacement. Despite warnings that Boston’s newspaper’s market was oversaturated, he started a third paper, the New England Courant, which…

… went on to publish an editorial criticizing the government’s failure to quell pirate harassment of ships off the New England coast, which…

…landed James Franklin in jail and elevated his 13-year-old brother, Benjamin, to the post of editor and publisher, which…

…young Benjamin retained even after James’ release from prison because of a publishing ban decreed against James, whom…

… Benjamin never really liked anyway, so he set up shot in New York and later Philadelphia, where …

… Benjamin bought the Pennsylvania Gazette with an investor and, though he had stopped being a printer in the 1740s, he still owned the print shop and equipment upon his death in 1790, leaving them to…

… his grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, who founded the Philadelphia Aurora.

Benjamin Franklin is the official printer, but he is free to print what he likes because he sells advertising and doesn’t require government subsidies to survive.

Hence, the first political cartoon appears:

In 1798, the Federalist Party and President John Adams back the Sedition Act, barring false, malicious, scandalous criticism of the government.

Things are different in America. (Thanks, Zenger!) The opposition to the act fuels support for Thomas Jefferson’s candidacy and he wins.

So why did Adams feel he had to make the press shut up?

Largely because of one loudmouth: Benjamin Franklin Bache and his Democratic-Republican paper, the Aurora.

Bache calls the Sedition Act an “unconstitution-al exercise of power.”

In 1798, he’s beaten twiceOn June 26, 1798, he is charged with “libeling

the President & the Executive Government, in a manner tending to excite sedition, and opposition to the laws, by sundry publications and republications.”

Less than three months later, he dies of yellow fever.

Within hours, his wife prints a one-page announcement of his death.

The List paper argues that the newspapers saw women as functioning politically but with value as rewards for just political behavior.

Margaret’s biggest compliment came two days after she resumed publication and it came from her opponent, who wrote: “That person, henceforth, whether bearded or not bearded, whether dressed in britches or petticoats, whether male or female sans-culotte, shall receive no quarter from me.”