The his­to­ry of the print­ed word is full of bib­li­o­graph­ic twists and turns, major his­tor­i­cal moments, and the sig­nif­i­cant print­ing of books now so obscure no one has read them since their pub­li­ca­tion. Most of us have only the sketchi­est notion of how mass-pro­duced print­ed books came into being—a few scat­tered dates and names. But every school­child can tell you the first book ever print­ed, and every­one knows the first words of that book: “In the begin­ning….”

The first Guten­berg Bible, print­ed in 1454 by Johannes Guten­berg, intro­duced the world to mov­able type, his­to­ry tells us. It is “uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged as the most impor­tant of all print­ed books,” writes Mar­garet Leslie Davis, author of the 2019 book, The Lost Guten­berg: The Astound­ing Sto­ry of One Book’s Five-Hun­dred-Year Odyssey. In 1900, Mark Twain expressed the sen­ti­ment in a let­ter “com­ment­ing on the open­ing of the Guten­berg Muse­um,” writes M. Sophia New­man at Lithub. “What the world is to-day,” he declared, “good and bad, it owes to Guten­berg. Every­thing can be traced to this source.”

There is kind of an over­sim­pli­fied truth in the state­ment. The print­ed word (and the print­ed Bible, at that) did, in large part, deter­mine the course of Euro­pean his­to­ry, which, through empire, deter­mined the course of glob­al events after the “Guten­berg rev­o­lu­tion.” But there is anoth­er sto­ry of print entire­ly inde­pen­dent of book his­to­ry in Europe, one that also deter­mined world his­to­ry with the preser­va­tion of Bud­dhist, Chi­nese dynas­tic, and Islam­ic texts. And one that begins “before Johannes Guten­berg was even born,” New­man points out.

The old­est extant text ever print­ed with mov­able type pre­dates Guten­berg him­self (born in 1400) by 23 years, and pre­dates the print­ing of his Bible by 77 years. It is the Jikji, print­ed in Korea, a col­lec­tion of Bud­dhist teach­ings by Seon mas­ter Bae­gun and print­ed in mov­able type by his stu­dents Seok-chan and Dai­jam in 1377. (Seon is a Kore­an form of Chan or Zen Bud­dhism.) Only the sec­ond vol­ume of the print­ing has sur­vived, and you can see sev­er­al images from it here.

Impres­sive as this may be, the Jikji does not have the hon­or of being the first book print­ed with mov­able type, only the old­est sur­viv­ing exam­ple. The tech­nol­o­gy could go back two cen­turies ear­li­er. Mar­garet Davis nods to this his­to­ry, New­man con­cedes, writ­ing that “mov­able type was an 11th cen­tu­ry Chi­nese inven­tion, refined in Korea in 1230, before meet­ing con­di­tions in Europe that would allow it to flour­ish.” This is more than most pop­u­lar accounts of the print­ed word say on the mat­ter, but it’s still an inac­cu­rate and high­ly cur­so­ry sum­ma­ry of the evi­dence.

New­man her­self says quite a lot more. In essays at Lithub and Tri­cy­cle, she describes how print­ing tech­niques devel­oped in Asia and were tak­en up in Korea in the 1200s by the Goryeo dynasty, who com­mis­sioned a print­er named Choe Yun-ui to recon­struct a wood­block print of the mas­sive col­lec­tion of ancient Bud­dhist texts called the Tip­i­ta­ka after the Mon­gols burned the only Kore­an copy. By cast­ing “indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters in met­al” and arrang­ing them in a frame—the same process Guten­berg used—he was able to com­plete the project by 1250, 200 years before Gutenberg’s press.

This text, how­ev­er, did not sur­vive, nor did the count­less num­ber of oth­ers print­ed when the tech­nol­o­gy spread across the Mon­gol empire on the Silk Road and took root with the Mus­lim Uyghurs. It is pos­si­ble, though “no clear his­tor­i­cal evi­dence” yet sup­ports the con­tention, that mov­able type spread to Europe from Asia along trade routes. “If there was any con­nec­tion,” wrote Joseph Need­ham in Sci­ence and Civ­i­liza­tion in Chi­na, “in the spread of print­ing between Asia and the West, the Uyghurs, who used both block print­ing and mov­able type, had good oppor­tu­ni­ties to play an impor­tant role in this intro­duc­tion.”

With­out sur­viv­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, this ear­ly his­to­ry of print­ing in Asia relies on sec­ondary sources. But “the entire his­to­ry of the print­ing press” in Europe” is like­wise “rid­dled with gaps,” New­man writes. What we do know is that Jikji, a col­lec­tion of Kore­an Zen Bud­dhist teach­ings, is the world’s old­est extant book print­ed with mov­able type. The myth of Johannes Guten­berg as “a lone genius who trans­formed human cul­ture,” as Davis writes, “endures because the sweep of what fol­lowed is so vast that it feels almost myth­ic and needs an ori­gin sto­ry to match.” But this is one inven­tive indi­vid­ual in the his­to­ry of print­ing, not the orig­i­nal, god­like source of mov­able type.

Guten­berg makes sense as a con­ve­nient start­ing point for the growth and world­wide spread of cap­i­tal­ism and Euro­pean Chris­tian­i­ty. His inno­va­tion worked much faster than ear­li­er sys­tems, and oth­ers that devel­oped around the same time, in which frames were pressed by hand against the paper. Flows of new cap­i­tal enabled the rapid spread of his machine across Europe. The achieve­ment of the Guten­berg Bible is not dimin­ished by a fuller his­to­ry. But “what gets left out” of the usu­al sto­ry, as New­man tells us in great detail, “is star­tling­ly rich.”

“Only very recent­ly” has the long his­to­ry of print­ing in Asia been “acknowl­edged at all” in pop­u­lar cul­ture, though schol­ars in both the East and West have long known it. Korea has regard­ed Jikji “and oth­er ancient vol­umes as nation­al points of pride that rank among the most impor­tant of books.” Yet UNESCO only cer­ti­fied Jikji as the “old­est mov­able met­al type print­ing evi­dence” in 2001. The recog­ni­tion may be late in com­ing, but it mat­ters a great deal, nonethe­less. Learn much more about the his­to­ry, con­tent, and prove­nance of Jikji at this site cre­at­ed by “cyber diplo­mats” in Korea after UNESCO bestowed World Her­itage sta­tus on the book. And see a ful­ly dig­i­tized copy of the book here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

See How The Guten­berg Press Worked: Demon­stra­tion Shows the Old­est Func­tion­ing Guten­berg Press in Action

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. F

The idea of a young­ster vac­il­lat­ing between whether to become a magi­cian or join the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency may sound implau­si­ble, but those two work­ing envi­ron­ments have deep­er com­mon­al­i­ties than it would seem. So, in any case, believes John McLaugh­lin, whose more than 30 years at the CIA includ­ed peri­ods as its deputy direc­tor and act­ing direc­tor. He also describes him­self as a life­long ama­teur magi­cian, an avo­ca­tion that owes much to his boy­hood dis­cov­ery of Quick­er Than the Eye, a mag­ic man­u­al from 1932 by one John Mul­hol­land. Around the same time the young McLaugh­lin came across that book in the library, Mul­hol­land was writ­ing the more spe­cial­ized guide­books Some Oper­a­tional Appli­ca­tions of the Art of Decep­tion and Recog­ni­tion Sig­nals — though nobody with­out a seri­ous secu­ri­ty clear­ance would have known it.

In 1953, Mul­hol­land left his posi­tion as edi­tor of the magi­cians’ trade mag­a­zine The Sphinx, osten­si­bly for health rea­sons, but actu­al­ly to go to work for the CIA. Formed just six years before, the orga­ni­za­tion was still deter­min­ing what its mis­sion of pre­vent­ing sur­prise for­eign attacks against the U.S. and coun­ter­ing the glob­al advance of com­mu­nism would entail on the ground. To any­one who’s made enough of a habit of nov­els and films deal­ing with Cold War espi­onage, it may come as no sur­prise that the arts of dis­guise, mis­di­rec­tion, and sleight of hand prac­ticed by mas­ter magi­cians would look use­ful indeed to the CIA. “Just as a magician’s meth­ods must elude detec­tion in front of a close­ly atten­tive audi­ence,” writes McLaugh­lin, “so an intel­li­gence offi­cer doing espi­onage work must elude close sur­veil­lance and pass mes­sages and materiel with­out detec­tion.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, “ana­lysts must be as famil­iar as magi­cians with meth­ods of decep­tion, because ana­lysts are almost always work­ing with incom­plete infor­ma­tion and in cir­cum­stances where an adver­sary is seek­ing to mis­lead them — or in the magician’s term, mis­di­rect them.” The Com­pa­ny’s spe­cial­ists in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence described their sub­field as a “wilder­ness of mir­rors,” an expres­sion pro­fes­sion­al illu­sion­ists must find espe­cial­ly evoca­tive. Com­mis­sioned in the time of the CIA’s human-exper­i­men­ta­tion pro­gram MKULTRA, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Mul­hol­land’s man­u­als were long assumed offi­cial­ly destroyed along with many oth­er of its doc­u­ments in 1973. After they unex­pect­ed­ly resur­faced dur­ing declas­si­fi­ca­tion in the two-thou­sands, they were pub­lished in The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion by Agency his­to­ri­ans H. Kei­th Melton and Robert Wal­lace. You can find a copy over at the Inter­net Archive.

At that time, the Boston Globe pub­lished illus­trat­ed expla­na­tions of some of Mul­hol­land’s tech­niques, such as trans­port­ing spies using a mech­a­nism sim­i­lar to the one that con­ceals an appar­ent­ly sawed-in-half stage­hand, or sur­rep­ti­tious­ly drop­ping into a drink a pill affixed to the back of a book of match­es. Amid “the super­pow­er strug­gle for pow­er and influ­ence around the world,” writes Tom Scoc­ca, “both the ideas and tech­niques of secret war per­vad­ed the cul­ture — the cor­ro­sive belief in hid­den con­spir­a­cy and the nifty thrill of spy­craft itself, the codes and dis­guis­es and minia­ture cam­eras.” Today, “Mulholland’s account of real-world stage­craft amounts to an eti­quette man­u­al for a lost moment of his­to­ry. The match­book trick depends on peo­ple smok­ing and drink­ing. There is a sur­vey of the many pock­ets found in every man’s suit, and which ones are most nat­ur­al for casu­al­ly slip­ping objects into.” How­ev­er much of the romance has drained out of espi­onage — as it has from so much else since the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — the best magi­cians know that old tricks can always be re-enchant­ed for a new world. You can read The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

12 Mil­lion Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ments Now Free Online: Secret Tun­nels, UFOs, Psy­chic Exper­i­ments & More

Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The CIA’s For­mer Chief of Dis­guise Show How Spies Use Cos­tumes in Under­cov­er Oper­a­tions

Inside MKUl­tra, the CIA’s Secret Pro­gram That Used LSD to Achieve Mind Con­trol (1953–1973)

When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process”

The CIA’s Rec­tal Tool Kit for Spies — Cre­at­ed for Tru­ly Des­per­ate Sit­u­a­tions Dur­ing The Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.