Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08644_Field_TCGG T409.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 948b | 16 lines

visual problem. Abbott Payson Usher devotes the tenth chapter
of his History of Mechanical Inventions  to “The Invention of
Printing,” saying (p. 238) that more than any other single
achievement, it “marks the line of division between medieval
and modern technology. . . . We see here the same transfer to
the field of the imagination that is clearly evident in all the work
of Leonardo da Vinci.” From now on “imagination” will tend
more and more to refer to the powers of visualization.

     The mechanization of the scribal art was probably the
first reduction of any handicraft to mechanical terms. That is,
it was the first translation of movement into a series of static
shots or frames. Typography bears much resemblance to
cinema, just as the reading of print puts the reader in the role
of the movie projector. The reader moves the series of
imprinted letters before him at a speed consistent with