Two Kinds of Technology Change

Here’s the thing, though: Gutenberg was not the first to try movable type. The Chinese were using basic printing presses in the ninth century; Pi Cheng introduced movable characters between 1040 and 1050. So why didn’t it catch on then? And even setting that aside, surely some tired monk must have thought of the idea sooner.

Turns out, prior to the 14th century, books were primarily printed on parchment — created from sheep skins. A single 150-page book required the skins of 12 sheep to make the parchment. That much parchment wasn’t cheap — the parchment on which a book was written cost far more than the actual writing. With that much cost sunk in the materials, it’s no wonder that book-buyers wanted beautiful, handwritten script — it added relatively little to the cost.

Thomas de Quincey, in “The Palimpsest of the Human Brain”, makes a similar point:

What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans had not the advantage of printed books? The answer will be, from ninety-nine persons in a hundred—Because the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used, or could be used. … It did not require an Athenian intellect to read the main secret of printing in many scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life were daily repeating. To say nothing of analogous artifices amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is essential in printing must have been known to every nation that struck coins and medals. Not, therefore, any want of a printing art—that is, of an art for multiplying impressions—but the want of a cheap material for receiving such impressions, was the obstacle to an introduction of printed books even as early as Pisistratus. The ancients did apply printing to records of silver and gold; to marble and many other substances cheaper than gold and silver, they did not, since each monument required a separate effort of inscription. Simply this defect it was of a cheap material for receiving impresses, which froze in its very fountains the early resources of printing.

(The entire essay is well worth reading.)

Babbage and Lovelace had all the key ideas for the modern computer in the 1820’s, but it wasn’t until the 1890 census that somebody wanted to pay for such a thing.

I'm not sure that's true. One of my friends, for a history of computing course in university, took a deep dive into Babbage's designs for the difference and analytical engines, and concluded that they weren't actually all that much like modern (Von Neumann) computing devices at all. The limiting factor on Babbage's machines was not the fact that nobody wanted to pay for them, but that the necessary precision in manufacturing gears had not yet been achieved. The analytical engine, especially, required thousands of very small and precisely machined gears, and the manufacturing technology for them would not be invented until well into the 20th century.

The tabulators used in the 1890 census were a far cry from anything that Babbage designed. The Census tabulators were, more or less, very fancy sorting and counting machines. They could not do math or logical operations, but they could take a large amount of data, sort it by various fields and count how many records had the given field marked. They made no attempt at generality (unlike Babbage's inventions and later computers), but instead sought to mechanize one or two algorithms for maximum efficiency.

Once you go looking for it, there’s a lot of technology shifts like this. Newcomen’s steam engine (and Heron’s, long before).

Newcomen's steam engine needed the ability to handle brass in a way that wasn't available before 1700.

I disagree that the spread of printing presses was not constrained by insight. Gutenberg's innovation was not the invention of the printing press, but rather the invention of a cheap way of making letterforms for the type in the printing press. Prior to Gutenberg, type had to be laboriously carved out of wood, or sculpted out bronze or ceramic. This was very expensive, and the resulting type wore out quickly, making it uneconomical to use for large print runs.

Gutenberg's innovation was to cast the letterforms out of lead, using a hand mold. This innovation allowed him to produce letterforms that were cheaper, more durable and more efficient, in terms of ink consumption, than woodblock or ceramic letterforms that the Chinese were using. It seems to me that this was the key innovation that allowed the printing press to take off, since without cheap, high quality type, the printing press isn't actually more economical than hand copying. Indeed, Gutenberg's method was so successful, it remained state of the art in printing until well into the 20th century, until it was displaced by photolithography.

This analysis seems correct but somewhat misleading. Specifically, I think that when a technology is enabled by a change in economic conditions, it is often the case that the change in economic conditions was caused by a different technology. So, the ultimate limiting factor is still insight.

In particular, Gutenberg's printing press doesn't seem like a great example for the "insight is not the limiting factor" thesis. First, the Chinese had movable type earlier but it was not as efficient with the Chinese language because of the enormous number of characters, which is why it didn't become more popular in China. Second, you say yourself that "printing presses with movable type followed a century later". A century is still a lot of time! Third, coming back to what I said before, why did paper production only took off in Europe in the 1300s? As far as I understand, it was invented in China, from there it propagated to the Muslim word, and from there it reached Europe through Spain. So, for many centuries, the reason the Europeans didn't use paper was lack of insight. Only when the knowledge that originated it China reached them did they catch on.

Cool!

I'm reminded of this TED talk [7 minutes, well worth watching] about what factors matter the most for startup success.

The conclusion: timing matters more than anything else.

Good teams can implement the same idea. But a little too early, and the technology isn't viable yet. A little too late, and the niche is already filled. It seems there's a sweet spot for the timing of effective deployment of a good idea.

A single 150-page book required the skins of 12 sheep to make the parchment. That much parchment wasn’t cheap — the parchment on which a book was written cost far more than the actual writing. With that much cost sunk in the materials, it’s no wonder that book-buyers wanted beautiful, handwritten script — it added relatively little to the cost.

It was paper which changed all that. European paper production didn’t get properly underway until the 1300’s. Once it did, book prices plummeted, writing became the primary expense of book production, and printing presses with movable type followed a century later.

Do you know what changed that caused paper production to be viable?

How far back can we follow the chain?

Unsolicited editorial note: I think this might be clearer if you had extra versions of the graphs that are labeled with the relevant technologies instead of labeled abstractly. Walking through the printing press example, with a graph for each time-step for instance.

(In practice I did this myself, but it would be easier if you held my hand, with pictures that I can look at.)

This seems to be a similar argument Lachmann makes in _The Structure of Production_. That argument is very similar, probably well thought of as an extension of Smith's division of labor limited by the extent of the market applied to capital. Technology simply being something of a more general classification that applies to both labor and capital.

For me it's about considering innovation through the lens of complementarity with the rest of the economy and particularly at the "edges". If we consider the economy a tapestry the edges will be frayed, not well bound. That will be where innovation can take root and integrate into the broader picture by finding new relationships with the existing threads on the frayed edges. In some cases that results in brand new economic areas. Most of the time I suspect it results in advancements in how existing economic activity is conducted or needs are met leading to the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction.

I wonder if the Euclidean graph type approach really captures the full texture of the processes at work or not. Perhaps it hides as much in the shadows as it sheds light on.

Well this seems to argue strongly for reviewing old technology proposals at some time interval. I wonder if we could develop some kind of test to apply that would make it easy to gauge whether an in-depth investigation makes sense?

If we could develop such a test, would it be worthwhile to apply it to new ideas immediately as a way to determine their viability and as an indicator of what the criteria would be for coming back to it?