[HN Gopher] Was early modern writing paper expensive? (2018)
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Was early modern writing paper expensive? (2018)
Author : Bluestein
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-07-27 10:40 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.folger.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.folger.edu)
| Bluestein wrote:
| - https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensi...
| dang wrote:
| Not sure why https://www.rpvl.cz/en/ was at the top but we've
| changed the URL to that now. Thanks!
| Bluestein wrote:
| Au contraire. Appreciated.-
| kfarr wrote:
| TLDR: no according to this source
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Things are not inherently expensive. They are expensive relative
| to the other demands on one's finances.
|
| For the average person paper would indeed have been expensive but
| for those who had disposable income and a reason to use paper it
| would have felt less so.
|
| But it was certainly more expensive than it is now that 500
| sheets of A4 at Tesco cost less than 5 GBP and that is one part
| in 6 400 of UK median annual household income.
|
| https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensi...
| says that the going rate for a quire of ordinary paper was about
| 4d.
|
| Even in 1800 annual income for most people was under 20 pounds.
| So 500 sheets would cost one part in 60 of annual income (20
| pounds * 240 pennies per pound/(4d per quire * 20 quires in
| 500)). That's about a hundred times more expensive in purchasing
| power terms. Presumably the further back you go the higher the
| price and the lower the income.
|
| But the poor didn't write so the comparison is far from exact.
| For the wealthy it would still have been more expensive than now
| but not importantly so.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Logic would posit that market forces would adjust the price, or
| that proceses would adjust to match demand.-
| ghaff wrote:
| Market forces can't (sustainably) adjust price to less than
| the cost of production. They can spur process and other
| improvements to reduce cost but that does take time and isn't
| always possible, especially in the near-term.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Thanks. Makes perfect sense.-
|
| PS. One thing I have always found fascinating - obvious as
| it might be - is that _paper_ (and paper in large,
| sufficiently cheap industrial quantities) was a
| _prerequisite_ for the printing press "revolution" to take
| place ...
| ghaff wrote:
| Technology trees are definitely a thing. The answer to
| "Could the Romans have invented an arbitrary fairly
| modern thing?" is almost always no because they would
| also have needed a bunch of other resources and
| inventions that didn't exist yet (and which they might
| have had little interest in pursuing given that they had
| plenty of cheap labor, etc.)
| Bluestein wrote:
| Ah, were the Romans to have had antibiotics, eh?
| ghaff wrote:
| Some health-related things are an area where important
| advances could probably have happened earlier in
| principle: germ theory of disease, importance of
| sanitation, some relatively simple advances like
| antibiotics... All seem doable in principle relative to
| inventing a lot of 19th century industrial revolution
| devices.
|
| ADDED: The Romans did apparently have some knowledge of
| antibiotics without presumably understanding the
| mechanisms or refining them. Per Wikipedia and other
| sources: "Antibiotics have been used since ancient times.
| Many civilizations used topical application of moldy
| bread, with many references to its beneficial effects
| arising from ancient Egypt, Nubia, China, Serbia, Greece,
| and Rome."
| Bluestein wrote:
| From the spinning wheel, to plentiful rags, to cotton
| paper, to the printing press.-
|
| > ADDED: The Romans did apparently have some knowledge of
| antibiotics
|
| Fascinating. Worth looking into.-
|
| Sometimes, all it took was _one person_ noticing
| something (midwives who wash their hands post partum tend
| to have better outcomes, farmers near cows get less sick,
| or not at all ...)
|
| ... but, you raise another good point: _First principles_
| , the _search_ for the facts. Benefits at scale come
| with, consistently, wanting to go from observation, to
| general principles, to particular application, to mass
| application ...
|
| ... and, maybe, it took rational thought and the
| scientific method to get there.-
| wildzzz wrote:
| Look at electric cars. We've had them longer than ICE
| cars but they've never really been viable for most cases
| up until recently. It's not like we just realized we
| could run a car on electric motors, it's that battery
| technology has only recently gotten good enough that we
| can pull a lot of power from them for a long time before
| they go dead. Improvements in electronics have reduced
| the size and inefficiency of the components necessary to
| charge the batteries too. Trying to charge a Tesla off a
| gigantic linear power supply would be ridiculous.
|
| The people building DIY electric cars in the 90s were
| using lead acid batteries charged with very slow trickle
| chargers, not because they were ignorant, they just
| didn't have access to the better technology we have now.
| People 50 years with some sort of cold fusion battery
| from now will look at our crude electric cars running on
| chemical batteries and laugh.
| samatman wrote:
| Paper, interestingly enough, is a good counterexample to
| this. Paper takes little more than a way to make fine
| cellulose strands, and a fine-mesh screen, both of which
| the Romans were more than capable of.
|
| The demand was there as well, Romans imported papyrus
| from their warmer colonies and went through a lot of it.
| They also used parchment, but it was expensive, a lot of
| writing ended up being done on reusable wax tablets.
|
| Paper was invented when the Western Roman Empire was
| still extant, and while the Chinese could fairly be said
| to have had a technological edge over the Romans at the
| time, it's dubious that said edge played a direct role in
| the invention. It just, didn't happen.
|
| I agree with the general sentiment, and wouldn't call
| paper "fairly modern" either. But given the topic, it
| seemed worth a mention.
| Qem wrote:
| I also would bet a "sacred book" of some sort also worked
| as a prerequisite, because the demand was huge, making
| the crude initial implementation profitable. In absence
| of some sort of sacred book that made the same standard
| text of interest for almost 100% of the literate
| population, the second best alternative probably would
| have too limited runs to make it profitable.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > I also would bet a "sacred book" of some sort also
| worked as a prerequisite
|
| What you point out is fascinating, and probably right ...
|
| PS. I am wondering if "any sufficiently popular" book
| might not have done the trick, beyond just "sacred" texts
| - one of the many knightly tales than making the round,
| for example.-
| Bluestein wrote:
| s/than/then
| pnut wrote:
| The price of a satellite phone in 1650 was greater than all the
| money in the world combined, so that has to be considered
| expensive in absolute terms, right?
| Bluestein wrote:
| Raising a (serious) question: Is the price of an impossible
| (or, period-impossible) object a knowable quantity,
| economically speaking?
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I think it is knowable, to some degree, in retrospect. The
| day before the first iPhone was released was its price
| unknowable?
| Bluestein wrote:
| Point.-
|
| PS. In a bit, like the weather? The further from the
| present you go, the "harder" it gets to solve for that?
|
| That said, when approaching (or, surpassing) some
| "imposibility boundary" - for more an more parts to
| actually _exist_ , ultimately leading to _the whole_
| being impossible ...
|
| ... that 's when it gets interesting.-
| ghaff wrote:
| I think that's true. If you described an early personal
| computer and its capabilities (including software) in
| 1970, sure, a lot of people would be "Why would I want
| that?" But both business people and individuals could
| probably give _some_ reasonable approximation of what
| they 'd be willing to pay.
|
| The thing with something like a phone is that it's so
| dependent on several different network effects that it's
| hard to put a real value on it in isolation. Of course,
| for an individual device, there's very much an upper
| limit. I suspect that a lot of people in 1970 would balk
| at the price of an iPhone but then they had other
| telecoms charges that would seem extortionate today.
| IndySun wrote:
| >I suspect that a lot of people in 1970 would balk at the
| price of an iPhone
|
| And in 2024.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > charges that would seem extortionate today.
|
| ... per-minute voice, for example.-
| pseingatl wrote:
| In 1970, car phones were available. Reporters had them,
| as did police. The instrument was a familiar black,
| Bakelite phone hooked up to a radio.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah, agreed, an iPhone or really most computers is a
| difficult comparison to make for this sort of thing. I
| mean, what is an iPhone anyway? It relies on a lot of
| infrastructure that wouldn't be available in the 70's:
| the modern internet, the apple App Store, usb chargers, a
| way to write and compile iOS programs and get it to run
| them, the first and third party programming ecosystem.
|
| It seems like a nitpick but the value proposition of the
| thing is very dependent on the ability of all those, I'm
| sure we all have some intuition of which ought to be
| included, but it might not match.
|
| An iPhone with all those things would probably be
| extremely valuable I guess. Thousands of times faster
| than the fastest supercomputer and a bit easier to carry.
| ghaff wrote:
| The Blackberry was initially mostly of interest to
| "important people" whose organizations were paying for
| easier texting and email on the go. I did eventually get
| a Treo in 2006 on my own mostly because I was doing some
| travel on crutches and didn't want to carry a laptop. But
| the iPhone--especially by a few years post-2007
| introduction--was really transformational for a lot of
| people in the mainstream. But, as you say, that was
| dependent on a lot of things that weren't inherent in the
| phone hardware.
|
| Mobile communications for the most part was very much a
| premium early adopter phenomenon for people who really
| needed it in some form and/or didn't much care about the
| cost. Satellite was like that and is only now slowly
| changing.
| analog31 wrote:
| The prices of many of the "parts" were already known on
| that day. Perhaps most notably wireless service. This
| would have allowed at least a ballpark estimate for what
| people would be willing to pay.
| wildzzz wrote:
| The iPhone wasn't the first cell phone and wasn't the
| first smartphone either. One could assume that it would
| cost at least as much as a brand new Blackberry or
| Windows Mobile phone since not only was it Apple but it
| has features that no one else had at the time. Of course
| it still had to be affordable if Apple wanted it to sell
| well so people had some idea of what wouldn't be
| reasonable for what a smartphone should cost.
| fcccccbjjv wrote:
| The price is undefined because there is no conception of the
| object and therefore no market.
|
| If the idea of a phone - a computing/telecommunication device
| that use natural philosophy and not magic - were presented
| then an initial price can begin to be formed, defined as the
| amount of money they are willing to spend to develop it.
| xandrius wrote:
| It would actually be extremely cheap, since it would last
| only 1 charge (if it came pre-charged), no connectivity, no
| way to export anything it does (not even print a photo).
|
| After 24h literally more useless than a rock as a phone
| wouldn't even work as a thing to bang other things on.
|
| If it did happen to have a solar charger, still pretty
| useless, except for the camera (if available).
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| With or without charger?
| Bluestein wrote:
| PS. With our without charging grid? (etc., etc., ...)
| wildzzz wrote:
| A satellite phone in the 1600s would useless other than the
| novelty of owning one to just look at it and play with it.
| The battery is dead shortly after it arrives, there's no one
| else to talk to, and there's no infrastructure to do anything
| with it. The level of technology is beyond what any 1600s
| scientists have even dreamed about. Maybe there are a few
| things inside that could improve science. A lithium battery
| is not that complex so perhaps scientists of the time would
| have been able to see it for what it is and move up the
| invention of batteries by about 200 years. Plastics in the
| phone would be interesting but without petrochemical
| developments, it would have been totally unknown. Overall,
| the phone would have a fascinating collection of rare and
| unknown materials.
|
| It would be like if I gave you a car and told you to build
| another from scratch with a gift of unlimited money to make
| it happen. You could use existing knowledge resources to
| build crude tools to build more sophisticated tools that
| would eventually produce the parts for a car. But without
| that existing supply of knowledge, how would you do it? You
| would need to invent all the tools yourself to produce
| something as simple as an engine block. You'd be looking at
| the end result of 200 years of the industrial revolution
| without any idea of what happened in between.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Not like much would change, but _this_ would be funny: Let
| 's "up" the ante and make it _two_ phones, using point-to-
| point ad-hoc voice connection to each other, with a battery
| life of a week.-
|
| _That_ would be quite the "footnote" somewhere ...
|
| PS. I hate to "underestimate" our forebears, but ... at
| what point would they just throw their hands up in the air
| and start screaming "witchcraft!" burning the lot, phone
| samples and all, at the stake?
| PepperdineG wrote:
| I'd counter that certain things are expensive and as
| technologies change, it opens up the technology to a broader
| audience, which poor people can write now due to changing
| affordability in writing due to technological changes. With
| paper/printing that drives literacy where the cheaper the
| technologies available are, the greater the population
| literacy. It for instance would be difficult to have a widely
| literate population if such population was stuck with using
| animal skins for paper with books being manually handwritten by
| educated and trained craftsmen. Products that require
| significant manual labor and/or space inherently bear a cost
| regardless of the type of economy involved, like the pyramids
| of Egypt (or Stonehenge, etc) are inherently expensive even
| though their construction pre-dates the use of currency.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > it opens up the technology to a broader audience,
|
| What's that Gibson quote about the future being here, just
| not yet widely distributed?
|
| > with books being manually handwritten by educated and
| trained craftsmen.
|
| On this good point: Wonder what (many, certainly) crafts are
| involved in the build-up and "appearance" of the printing
| press? (for example).-
|
| All the (dozen) skills necessary to get to movable type,
| alone, for example.-
|
| PS. On a tangent: _That 'd be_ an interesting "worldview"
| layer for an AI - a really good sense of how technological
| progress has come about, in order to produce further
| innovations - doing multitudes-of-experts research in
| parallel to get to a desired outcome. That would be grand ...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There's an old BBC TV series called _Connections_ that
| explores how technological progress happened. I think you
| can find most /all episodes on YouTube now.
| ghaff wrote:
| Also from Burke, The Day the Universe Changed. He also
| has a recent new Connections miniseries.
| Bluestein wrote:
| - https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke
|
| Spreading the gospel of Burke :)
|
| As I always feel I must when "Connections" pops up,
| truly, an _outstanding masterpiece_ - the original and
| subsequent seasons.-
|
| PS. This comment, is, in fact, totally Burke:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087042
|
| ... he reasons as much, in the show, from spinning wheel
| to printing press (and before and beyond, of course).-
|
| PSS. Featuring, as y'all certain know, the (arguably)
| "best timed" shot in the history of broadcast TV.-
| mihaic wrote:
| Nice coincidence! Last week-end I remembered watching
| Connections in the 1990s on TV, blowing my 7th grade mind
| back then, and then watched it partly out of nostalgia. I
| ended up binging it, and was surprised that it felt even
| better now. Especially the philosophical aspects felt
| even more important now.
|
| At the end I was a bit upset that there isn't anything
| like this being made, where the production treats the
| audience as intelligent and capable of grasping complex
| topics.
| Bluestein wrote:
| I make it an actual point of rewatching the entire thing
| yearly.-
|
| When at some point nothing else does, that show rekindles
| a sense of wonder and amazement at life and its
| complexity that is sine qua non for me.-
|
| PS. I feel it also serves to (somehow) "frame" each of
| our lives - my own - as being dot-positioned as a small-
| yet significant - speck in a big, ongoing, neverending,
| marvelous, unavoidable and unstoppable march through
| time.-
|
| Further - and Burke makes an special point of this in one
| of the "framing" episodes - the _individual people_ (that
| is, _us_ ) responsible for that onward march were as
| confused, concerned, discouraged or baffled about _their_
| future as we might be today about ours - or, oft - just
| trying to get by, or make a buck.-
|
| Poignantly, this might sound obvious, they, further _did
| not know_ what the future held, what the consequences
| would be of their actions - but somehow, in lockstep -
| all the necessary pieces were being put together for some
| grand, tectonic invention or method to later appear,
| making their individual contributions indispensable.-
|
| I find that encouraging.-
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Right. It's difficult to compare because the quantities
| involved are relevant.
|
| If paper were 100x more expensive today, e.g. it would cost PS1
| per A4 sheet rather than PS0.01, but it was the only way to
| take notes, then I would still buy it and just moderate my use.
|
| It's not like you need thousands and thousands of sheets of
| paper.
| dmurray wrote:
| > I would still buy it and just moderate my use.
|
| I think I'd still use it exactly the same amount (I fill 1-10
| pages a day) but I'd be more careful about letting unused
| pages go to waste.
| Bluestein wrote:
| I would think thriftyness would actually end up influencing
| your handwriting.- PS. That'd make for an
| interesting study ...
| creer wrote:
| There is a tendency to talk about "the poor" as an extreme
| case, and "the wealthy" as an extreme case. But in doing so you
| make the entire problem irrelevant. As you say, the extreme
| poor at that time does not write, and the extreme wealthy at
| that time does not care.
|
| The question is only relevant for a more "normal" case that
| both writes and is price-sensitive. Say, a student, a public
| writer, an accountant, a letter or litterary writer.
| Puts wrote:
| Fun fact - italic typefaces was invented to save paper since
| slanted letters allow tighter kerning.
| jfengel wrote:
| Something I've been unable to figure out: what is the trick you
| have to invent to make wood pulp paper? Is it chemical, or do you
| just need to keep smashing at wood chips in water?
| Bluestein wrote:
| My understanding is that both chemical and mechanical are
| methods.-
| bsder wrote:
| Wood pulp is extremely tough. Why use water power to pulp wood
| for a very long time when you can use it to pulp rags for a
| much shorter time to get the same amount of product?
|
| Water power is limited. Consequently, you have to make choices
| as to what you are going to use it for. At that point economics
| kick in.
|
| Until your demand for paper significantly exceeds supply, you
| won't start looking for a better process. And then it took
| until the steam engine until such a process became economical.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > At that point economics kick in.
|
| (And chemicals ...)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Was early modern writing paper expensive? (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20559968 - July 2019 (4
| comments)
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