The Gun and the Printing Press
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Technology as a Weapon
You’ve been plopped down in a sunny field of golden-brown wheat somewhere in Renaissance Europe. You’re now attempting to juggle a 15th-century printing press , a wooden machine with a heavy screw press, inked iron type, and a large lever, and a 16th-century musket, a long, heavy firearm with a wooden stock, iron barrel, and matchlock mechanism. As you debate in your head whether it would be worse to accidentally drop ink on your nicest pair of jeans or to shoot yourself in the femur, your muscles are screaming at you to end their misery. A pigeon just pooed on your felt hat and you’re pretty sure they then called you a goober in Old Norse. Let’s back it up briefly and talk about what you’re holding; the printing press and the gun, the physical manifestation of humanity’s dysfunctional relationship with technology. Both are responsible for some of humanity’s worst mistakes and greatest accomplishments; from the Holocaust and propaganda to shooting Nazis and the Enlightenment, there’s truly no limit to what this Dynamic Duo is capable of.
History of the Firearm
Early Firearms
In 10th century China, the first firearms debuted as simple tubes of bamboo filled with gunpowder and projectiles. These early weapons were mounted on spears, creating what we now call fire lances, which were essential to many battles in China, and also probably essential to soiling the pants of many a soldier. Fast forward a few centuries, and these rudimentary (pretty bad) devices evolved into more sophisticated forms like hand cannons, cannons in your hand, and matchlocks, hand cannons with a string leading to the gunpowder so it could be ignited with a match. By the 15th century, early guns had spread across Eurasia, playing a crucial role in significant historical events like the fall of the Byzantine Empire and European colonization efforts (Woohoo!).
Early Modern Firearms
Jumping to the 16th and 17th centuries, firearms underwent a transformation that changed warfare forever. This was when the flintlock was invented. Flintlocks worked by having a piece of flint strike the metal, causing sparks and allowing the gun to fire without requiring any string. The 18th century saw advancements like rifling, which added grooves inside the barrel which made the bullet spin and made it more accurate.
Modern Firearms
The mid-19th century was an incredibly innovative time for guns. Before then, trying to load a gun was almost as hard as trying to work with a nested Excel formula that contains roughly 7000 parentheses; you had to pour in powder, pack it down, add a lead ball, try not to accidentally shoot yourself in the fibula, and — if you did all of it just right — you got to fire a single shot. All of this changed with three innovations: breech-loading, self-contained cartridges, and repeating firearms. Breech-loading lets you insert the cartridge in the back instead of inside the barrel, and the new cartridges were a million times more convenient; instead of having to remember the equivalent of the process of making a beef casserole from AllRecipes, you just had to insert the little cartridge that had the bullet, powder, and primer into the back. Repeating firearms was also a huge innovation. Samuel Colt’s revolver in 1835 was the star of the show here, letting you shoot six rounds before having to reload, which was essential to anyone in a dangerous situation.
History of the Printing Press
Printing Press
It’s 1440, and you live in a world where books are like unicorns — rare, magical, and only available for the top as 1%. Why? Because every single one had to be handwritten; my hand cramps after just two minutes of straight handwriting. Each one of these books had to be painstakingly copied by an infinitely patient monk, sitting by the candlelight with a stack of crinkly parchment and a pen that seems to never run out of ink. The Bible is 800,000 words long, at a good pace of 40 words per minute and working nine to five Monday to Friday, it would take almost 8 weeks to copy just one bible. Enter Johannes Gutenberg, A German goldsmith and all-around pretty cool guy. Sometime around 1440, he was staring at some screws, and had this genius idea: “What if we could make a machine to print words instead of writing them by hand?” Eureka. He cobbles together a contraption inspired by a wine press with movable metal stamps for each letter, makes some oil-based ink, and creates a machine that can stamp out hundreds of pages in the time it used to take scribes to finish just one. Fast forward to 1455, and the printing press goes into action, producing the legendary 42-line Bible, allowing Bibles to leave the domain of royalty and monks and land in the hands of the masses.
The Protestant Reformation
Get ready for the man, the myth, the legend, the Theses Thrower, the Scripture Saver, the Indulgence Impediment, the Bible Bringer, that beautiful man you see above me is Martin Luther. A Catholic priest who got very angry with his Church and decided to nail 95 complaints, sorry “theses”, to a door. The main things that Luther was rooting for were genuine repentance and limiting Papal authority to forgive sins. He believed that only God had the power to forgive sins, and especially disliked indulgences, where the rich would pay money to the Church to have their sins forgiven, and were coincidentally one of the earliest things the printing press was used for. One of Martin Luther’s most prominent principles however was Sola Scriptura, meaning “by scripture alone”. While this Luther guy seems really cool, one of the reasons he was so successful in spreading his doctrine maybe because he was in the right place at the right time. Around that time, the Church’s power was beginning to wane due to regional lords from around Europe confiscating its land, and an unexpected ally was helping Luther in this fight: the printing press.
The Luther Bible
One of Luthermeister’s goals was to bring the Bible to as many people as possible, and he did this by creating the Luther Bible. This Bible was special in a few ways: first of all, it omitted a section called the “Apocrypha”, which contained the books that were Deuterocanonical according to Catholics, but that Marty didn’t believe were canon, or inspired by the holy spirit; secondly, it was meant for the common people, so El Lucho decided to translate it into German, unlike earlier versions which had been in Latin and therefore inaccessible to the masses, and to print it using the recently invented printing press. It’s estimated that by the end of Luther’s life, more than 200,000 copies of the Luther Bible had been printed; for reference, before the invention of the printing press, it’s estimated 30,000 books in total were in existence in the whole of Europe.
Firearms and the Protestant Reformation
The German Peasants’ War was a rebellion against the Church, the German aristocracy, and their taxes. It was partly inspired by the Lutinator’s religious reforms but was opposed by Martin Luther who in his text titled Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants called for the nobles to put down the rebels to put down the peasants like mad dogs (Oof Luthie, bit harsh there). The rebels were incredibly outmatched, lacked artillery, cavalry, a command structure, and military experience, and as such got completely obliterated.
The Rwandan Genocide
The Media
In 1994 Rwanda, the media played a chilling role in inciting violence during the genocide. Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a Hutu-controlled station, became a powerful tool for spreading hate against the Tutsis. The radio station decided the best way to get people up and ready for the day would be spreading hate speech. They told the people that the Tutsi were “cockroaches” who deserved to be exterminated and even gave out the names and addresses of individuals who they thought should be killed. In addition, the newspaper Kangura also put out editorials and even cartoons to stir people into anger against the Tutsis. You may think that surely nobody would actually listen to these incitements to violence, and you would be wrong, so incredibly wrong. 50,000 people were mobilized into violence against the Tutsis; the media’s role in the genocide even led to the leaders of the media facing legal prosecution for their hate speech. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Guns don’t control people and people don’t control people, the media controls people.
Firearms
Infamously, the main weapons of the Rwandan genocide were the club and the machete, however, firearms also played a large part in the conflict. They were mainly used by the police, soldiers, and militia who had access to more organized weaponry than the citizenry. Firearms made the killing faster and more brutal, especially in churches and schools which were believed to be safer. These weapons were symbols of power and authority, representing the damage we can do when fueled by anger.
Conclusion
So here we are, standing in this field of grain, with two of the most great and terrible inventions in our hands. Each, in its own way, has shaped cultures, society, and the world in immeasurable ways. They’re both symbols of oppression and freedom, of good and evil. What these teach us is that technology has no moral compass; it’s just a tool waiting for how we’re going to use it. When we mix powerful tools like these with propaganda or unchecked rage, it can be devastating. The lesson? Power, whether it’s in ink or iron, isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s in our hands, and ultimately, it’s up to us to decide whether we’ll use it to build or to destroy.