Calendar

At our first meeting, the instructors will divide the students into two groups, Group A and Group B.

In most weeks, one group will meet with Professors McCants and Ravel to discuss class readings and examine rare print objects from the MIT collections, while the other group will meet with Ken Stone in the MIT Hobby Shop to build our printing press. The following week the two groups will trade places, so that all students in the class will participate equally in our academic and building exercises.

(HS) = Sessions in the MIT Hobby Shop

SES # TOPICS DUE DATES
Week 1
1

Introduction.

Split class into Groups A & B.

  
2 Class visit to The Printing Office of Edes & Gill  
Week 2
3 Printing press construction session (HS)  
4 Printing press construction session (HS) (cont.)  
Week 3
5 Paper-Making, Manuscript, and Print  
6

Manuscripts and Early European Print Materials in the MIT Libraries: Visit from MIT Rare Books Program Manager Stephen Skuce

  1. Illuminated European Book of Hours, ca. 1450
  2. Persian illuminated manuscript, 1495
  3. The Nuremburg Chronicle, 1493
 Forum post due
Week 4
7 Printing press construction session (HS)  
8 Printing press construction session (HS) (cont.)  
Week 5
9 Religion in Print  
10

Early Modern Printed Religious Materials in the MIT Libraries: Visit from MIT Rare Books Program Manager Stephen Skuce

  1. Leaves from the Gutenberg Bible, 1453
  2. 1507 Canon law Decrees of Gregory IX
  3. 1564 English Book of Martyrs
  4. 1572 German Gospels and Sermons
  5. Leaf from the King James Bible, 1640s
  6. 1693 Lutheran Bible
  7. 1700 Amsterdam polyglot Bible
 Forum post due
Week 6
11 Printing press construction session (HS)  
12 Printing press construction session (HS) (cont.)  
Week 7
13 The Meanings and Uses of Early European Print—A Conversation  
14 A visit to the Hart Nautical Collection, MIT Museum First paper due
Week 8
15 Printing press construction session (HS)  
16 Printing press construction session (HS) (cont.)  
Week 9
17 Print and Natural Philosophy  
18

Early Modern Natural Philosophy in the MIT Libraries: Visit from MIT Rare Books Program Manager Stephen Skuce

  1. 1556, Conrad Gessner, Illustrated Zoology
  2. 1580s, Ambroise Paré, Collected Works (Essays on curiosities of the animal world, healing battlefield wounds, human procreation)
  3. 1656 Works of Galileo
  4. 1666, Observations of Tycho Brahe
  5. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2nd ed., ca. 1715
  6. 1486, 1532, 1626 editions of The Spheres of Sacrobosco, an astronomical textbook (Venetian and Dutch examples)
  7. 1561 & 1621 editions of Agricola, De Re Metallica (metallurgy text, both published in Basel)
  8. 1648, 1651, 1691 versions of an English text entitled Mathematical Recreations
Forum post due
Week 10
19 Printing press construction session (HS)  
Week 11
20

How A Sixteenth-Century Italian Miller Read: The Historian's Interpretation

 Forum post due
Week 12
21 Experimental printing on completed press (HS)  
22 Experimental printing on completed press (HS) (cont.)  
Week 13
23

How A Sixteenth-Century Italian Miller Read: The Documents I

  
24

How A Sixteenth-Century Italian Miller Read: The Documents II

  
Week 14
25 Print Your Own Text I (HS)  
26 Print Your Own Text II (HS) Second paper due