A friend sent me a word suggestion the other week that I had never come across before now. He mentioned the word incunabulum. It is a rather obscure and exclusive word.
Incunabulum designates a book printed before 1501 AD. It was first used in 1688 by Cornelius à Beughem, in a sale catalogue, to refer to books printed with very early printing presses of the 15th century. The word comes from the Latin incunabula which means “in a cradle” ( in plus cunae) specifically referring to the place to lay a baby. So, it refers to the first documents printed using movable type up to December 31, 1500.
In 1999 A & E’s Biography listed Johann Gutenberg as the number one person, over the past 1,000 years, who did the most to shape the world we live in today. Sir Isaac Newton was second and Martin Luther was third in the list of the most influential people of the millennium.
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was born in the year 1400. In the 1440s Gutenberg worked on developing a press that could print items using movable type. In 1450 he printed a German poem using his invention. In 1455 the Gutenberg Bible was completed in a style known at 42-line Bible. About 180 copies were made. Only 49 copies exist today in library, university, and museum collections. Less than half of these are complete.
Gutenberg was not the first person to print documents using movable type as Chinese printers used porcelain materials to produce paper books around 1040. But Johannes Gutenberg introduced movable type printing into Western civilization. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tine, and antimony, which remained the norm for 550 years. Books printed in the first decades after Gutenberg’s work have been designated as incunabulum. The word eventually came to refer to any work of art or industry of an early period.
It is interesting to note that Johann Gutenberg was not financially successful in his lifetime. But as printing technology spread and developed over the next decades it helped expand the theological and scientific ideas of the Renaissance. Martin Luther would never have achieved the third place standing of significant people of the millennium if it wasn’t for Gutenberg’s movable type invention.
Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, commemorates the influence of the German inventor. In 1961 the Canadian philosopher and scholar Marshall McLuhan labelled his study in the disciplines of print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology as The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. A Time-Life 1997 magazine selected Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium of the Common Era. In space, Gutenberg is commemorated in the name of the asteroid 777 Gutemberga. In 2018, WordPress named its new editing system Gutenberg in tribute to him.
You may never have occasion to use the word incunabulum, however it designates an important time and series of events in the history of the world. And if you ever have an opportunity to view one of these books, it can be a rare treat and connection to an important era of our past. We are all a product of the history of humanity. Remember that many things have shaped us into the people we are today, even incunabulum.
Columnist John Kreutzwieser loves to research words and writes this weekly Word Wisdom column for Moose Jaw Express/MooseJawToday.com. He has an interest in the usage, origin, and relevance of words for society today. Greek and Latin form the basis of many words, with ancient Hebrew shedding light on word usage.
John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to wordwisdom2021@gmail.com . Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
