I don’t know about you all, but I felt the need for a visual supplement to the readings to truly understand the process of early printing. These two videos were quite enlightening.

The first is a video of the press, the second is of casting the metal type.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksLaBnZVRnM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u–84uPhNSU[/youtube]

(there is a little bid of an audio overlap in the second video, but it is only for a few seconds)

The throw when the metal is poured into the mould made me nervous. It doesn’t look like the man in figure 8.1 from the reading was wearing a glove. Not only was it a challenging job, it was dangerous as well!