worked out, it could be extended to the mechanizing of many 
other actions. Moreover, the mere accustomation to the 
repetitive, lineal patterns of the printed page strongly disposed 
people to transfer such approaches to all kinds of problems. 
Febvre and Martin say in L’Apparition du livre  (p. 28), for 
example, that a great spur was applied to paper manufacture 
as early as the eleventh century by the discovery of a method 
which transformed “le movement circulaire en movement 
alternatif.” The change was from mill to mallets, much like the 
shift from periodic Ciceronian prose to Senecan “cutted period” 
at the same time. A change from mill to mallets implies the 
breaking up of continuous into segmental operations, and the 
authors add: “This invention had been the origin of numerous 
industrial upsets.” And print, which was to be the mother of all 
the bouleversements  to come, was itself a veritable cluster or 
galaxy of previously achieved technologies. Usher’s statement