Is there an Aldine conspiracy?

Was there an Aldine conspiracy? I'm not really ready to commit one way or the other, but if there was, I imagine that it would play out like this.

Aldus Manutius moved to Venice at the end of the 15th century and set up a print shop focused on the Greek & Latin Classics. In themidst of this he brings out a volume that sounded remotely classical, but that was erotic, disjointed, and heavily illustrated - apparently partially encoded. The book ~1505 was "The Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli" (THP). It has long been assumed that the book was a book of clues to a hidden treasure.

What if the original map did not get to the vatican, but was switched yet again with a meaningless map that was hidden in the Vatican. Then years later, the courier, whoever that was, makes a side-trip to visit a printer of classics who would love to get his hands on the library of Alexandria.

He convinces Aldus that the map is authentic and enlists his support in preserving it. They succeed in following the map, but it leads nowhere due to Gutenberg's doctoring. Frustrated, Aldus decides to preserve the map for his heirs and does so by hiding bits of it in the pictures and text of THP. The Aldines have been trying to make sense of the original map ever since. They believe the key to the map is in the mysterious other book of Gutenberg.

The 15th Century Backstory

The premise is that sometime prior to the Library of Alexandria having been burned in 48 BCE, the best texts were moved to Carthage. When the Treasures of the Temple in Jerusalem were recaptured from Carthage in 534CE, the texts of the Library of Alexandria were combined with it and moved to Constantinople. When the treasures were moved back to Jerusalem about 2 centuries later, the texts were left in Constantinople, forgotten until the Turks captured the city in 1453. At this time (1453) The Gutenberg Bible was nearing completion. It was released in 1455. That is the historical context. What follows is the storyline I've devised.

In late 1453 or early 1454, an emissary of the Turks, having heard that nearly two hundred copies of The Bible had been produced on a printing press and hearing of Gutenberg's reputation as an alchemist, approached Johannes Gutenberg in secret, claiming to have found a text that held all the ancient secrets of alchemie from Egypt. He was asked if he could reproduce that text with the printing press, since it would most certainly disprove vast portions of both Christian and Islamic beliefs.. Gutenberg, intrigued by the idea, wanted to see some proof of this ancient document. The emissary promised to take him to the book. Gutenberg left the workshop in the hands of his assistant, Peter Schoeffer, and accompanied the emissary to Constantinople. There he was shown the remains of the Library of Alexandria.

This, however, was only part of the remaining texts as transferrence had already begun to a new location in eastern Turkey without the emissary's knowledge. The emissary managed to steal a map to the new location and gave it to Gutenberg. The emissary was caught and executed, but Gutenberg escaped back to Mainz with the map. He began a process of deciphering the cryptic map in his private workshop, intending to travel to the library and retrieve the precious text on alchemie. That is when Fust sued and in early 1455 took over ownership of the entire Bible printing operation.

Gutenberg shared the information with two friends-- Dieter von Isenburg, later to become Archbishop of Mainz, and Dr. Conrad Humery. While the reformist Dieter was anxious to expose falacies of the Bible, Humery advised against printing it or even letting anyone in the church know about the map. The church, they assumed would conceal or even burn the manuscript before it could be exposed. So, Gutenberg set about encoding the directons in type. Thinking that Gutenberg had a new, lucrative business which he had funded with Fust's investment in the printing house (and, indeed, that Gutenberg might actually have succeeded in making gold from base metals, Fust sued for his portion of the new business. When Gutenberg refused to settle, the Archbishop's court found in favor of Fust and awarded Gutenberg's share of the Bible printing operation to Fust.

In 1460, Dieter von Isenburg ascended to the Archbishopric of Mainz, starting a religious feud with conservatives supported by the Pope Pius II. Adolf II von Nassau took the pope's part to invade Mainz and remove Dieter from his throne. In the process of "The Mainzer Feud," in 1462, Adolf killed 400 civilians in Mainz and drove another 400 into exile, including Gutenberg who fled with his original type matrices (larger than that used for the 42-line Bible) and went to Bamberg. Here, Gutenberg finally solved the problem of encoding the map. He printed the Bamberg Bible, also called the 36-line Bible, with his original typeface. However, this was not "Gutenberg's Other Book." Gutenberg also printed a 12-page rubric for the Bible. The rubric was all the missing characters in the text that the scribe was to fill in with red ink. In the type of the rubric, Gutenberg nicked characters in such a way that if a tracing were made connecting the nicks like dots, the map of the location of the Library of Alexandria would be revealed.

Whe he was finished, Gutenberg altered the original map so that it could not be followed, then returned to Mainz. He surrendered the map to Archbishop Adolf along with the story of what it led to, knowing that the conservative man would forward it to the Vatican, where presumably it lies today. ARchbishop Adolf commended Gutenbgerg for bringing the map to the church, making Gutenberg a courtier or Hofmann of the court with a suitable pension to keep him in comfort for the remaining three to five years of his life. Gutenberg was dead by February of 1468.

Only eight full copies of the Bamberg Bible are still extant, all on paper. It happens that when Gutenberg died, his workshop and all the items in it, including one copy of the Bamberg Bible were inherited by Dr. Humery. What Humery did not know was that the original rubric had been used as binding papers in the book (of three volumes, a total of over 1600 pages). In the Bible was also a letter from Gutenberg to Dr. Humery that said in part, "My secret I have hidden in the Black River, and only he who can follow the stones may find it. The key is in my other book." The letter became separated from the book, and came into the hands of the Collector.

As it happened, that copy of the Bamberg Bible came into the possession of William H. Scheide of Princeton and along with copies of the 42-line Bible, the Mentelin Bible, and the 1462 Bible is housed in the Scheide Library at Princeton University.

So, as it turns out, Peter and Maddie don't have to go to Bamberg or London to find the right Bamberg Bible, but they do have to get access to the Bible at Princeton and get the cover papers out of it to discover what is there. Simple, eh?

Remember, even though the dates and people mentioned herein are real, this story and progression of events is my fiction. In the following image, notice the bottom edge. This is the inside back cover of the Library of Congress 42-line Bible. It is on that under paper in the back of the Bamberg Bible that the rubric is concealed.

Where the Temple Treasure/Library of Alexandria went

In 70 BCE the Romans looted the temple at Jerusalem and took its treasures to Rome. After the sack of Rome in 455 CE, the Vandals took the treasure to Carthage.

"The emperor Justinian I (527–565) was known for his successes in war, for his legal reforms and for his public works. It was from Constantinople that his expedition for the reconquest of the former Diocese of Africa set sail on or about 21 June 533. Before their departure the ship of the commander Belisarius anchored in front of the Imperial palace, and the Patriarch offered prayers for the success of the enterprise. After the victory, in 534, the Temple treasure of Jerusalem, looted by the Romans in 70 AD and taken to Carthage by the Vandals after their sack of Rome in 455, was brought to Constantinople and deposited for a time, perhaps in the church of St Polyeuctus, before being returned to Jerusalem in either the Church of the Resurrection or the New Church." (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople)

I'm suggesting that the Library of Alexandria was moved from Alexandria to Carthage in ~48 BCE and was secreted there until it was joined by the temple treasures in 455. When Justinian I brought the Temple treasure of Jerusalem to Constantinople in 534, the treasures of the Library of Alexandria came with it. I'm missing a date for the return to Jerusalem of the treasures, but I'm assuming that at that time, the library scrolls were separated from the scrolls of the temple and made there way past Jerusalem to Kurdistan (a section of Turkey and Iraq, etc. that is highly disputed), or it went to Armenia. It was hidden in a desert cave somewhere between approximately Lake Van and the Caspian Sea. I'll get more specific as I do more research.

Or... the Temple treasures were returned to Jerusalem, but the Library remained in Constantinople until 1453, when the Turks invaded and took over the city. They demolished the Church of the Holy Apostles to make way for the tomb of Mehmet II the Conqueror. In this time, exactly when Gutenberg was supposed to be finishing the printing of The Bible in Mainz and then sued by Fust for channeling money to a different enterprise, the Turks uncovered the Library and sent the volumes to the East. Gutenberg saw them when they were being shipped and recorded the location in eastern Turkey as their resting point in his "other book." This is what he was working on in 1455 and following. It was for this service that Archbishop Adolf rewarded Gutenberg. (Maybe????)

Puzzles and Obstacles

In order to solve the mystery and save the ... Peter and Maddie have to solve several puzzles and overcome several obstacles. Here's a start to the list.

• What it means to be hidden in The Black River


• What document is Gutenberg's other book


• How to get access to this rare manuscript


• How to decipher the Black River code


• Where the code says to go


• How to get into the country/facility where the "treasure" is located


• How to identify the right scroll once they get there


• How to get it and prevent The Voice or anyone else from getting it/killing them


• What the secret of "The Wisdome of Ptolemy" is

Continuing scenes

It's time to start thinking about where I'm sending my heroes. In the third movement, Peter & Maddie are given a manuscript by the Collector that he believes contains "the clue" that they will need to find Gutenberg's other book. Along with it, they are given a ticket to Germany so they can do research at the Gutenberg museum in Mainz.

Scene 4: The go to the airport to discover that police are showing up. Instead of going to their gate, they rent a car and leave the airport as a new glass atrium explodes. They take off driving cross-country. Time for Peter and Maddie to have it out. No Jason-Bourne-I'm-wounded-but-with-super-strength-I-still-go-on. The drama and exhaustion come from the non-stop drive from S.E. U.S. to El Centro, CA. The scene ends with them greeting Peter's grandfater somewhere near El Centro.

Scene 5: Meeting with grandfather covers three points: *opportunity to stop and examine the manuscript and leave it in grandfather's care. * opportunity to fill in backstory on Peter's family and the Gutenberg quest. * new I.D. & credentials for Peter & Maddie.

Scene 6: Peter and Maddie are motivated to move from Grandfather's care by two things.

• First, the clue they unravel from the manuscript suggests they need to examine the Bamberg Bible. (Where is it?)


• Second, Peter gets a picture message on the phone The Voice gave him that shows him with Maddie in a restaurant in downtown Elcentro. The Voice knows where they are.

Grandfather battens down the retreat and Peter & Maddie head out right ahead of the police.

An idea to kick around

Suppose the Library of Alexandria was secretly moved to Byzantium. It was "underground." Constantine discovered this and built Hagia Sophia over it. By the time the Muslims destroyed Sophia, the library had been moved secretly again, virst to Nicea and then to its current resting place where it was revealed to Gutenberg.

So this idea would put the quest in the category of treasure-hunting. It would be Indiana Jones meets The DaVinci Code, which, in fact, is how I've often positioned it. There is a huge treasure, and the artifacts could change the way we perceive things. Those make good stories.

Should I try for something that is either more world-endangering (i.e. terrorists looking for this because it has the secret to a new weapon), or more esoteric (i.e. focusing more on arcane knowledge of alchemie)? There may be elements of each that I could work into it, but still keep Peter's role in searching for the lost library. This would play well off my former concept of the rivalry with the Aldines. Two ancient classicist cults trying to claim the world's greatest library. In the arcane mode, I could use a Nostradamus prophecy that indicates Peter would eventually rise to find the treasure. That supports the ability of The Voice to plan years in advance for the bombings that would force Peter to flee to him.

This puts the whole thing further out in the urban fantasy category - somewhat like what I did with The Props Master. I think it is a little harder to make that relevant. People find it a bit harder to relate to the magical prophecy concept than to the hardcore thriller where an ordinary guy suddenly has to do an extraordinary task.

Still, there is the idea that The Collecter/Voice particularly wants a specific scroll out of the library because of what it contains and is content to leave all the others where they are. He might want, say, a scroll called "The Wisdom of Ptolemy" that would contain all the secrets of alchemie and believe that flooding the market with all the library would adversely effect the ancient documents market.

That creates a clear danger to Maddie and Peter. Once the Voice has the one document that he wants, they are a liability and could be buried with the rest of the library. So they have to work on an escape plan for after the discovery. That's a good time to get the detective in action to save them. The old "pursuing one step behind, he catches up with htem just at the crucial moment."

What's so valuable?

Talked to Richard this week about a possiblity of smuggling silver as lead type. It would be possible, but not worthwhile. It just isn't valuable enough. Then there is using the formula to mimic silver, but again, there isn't enough difference between the value of the lements to make the work worthwhile.

The value has to come in one of three(??) areas.

• The actual monetary value of the hidden treasure, as in Hypnerotamachia Polyphilli or Templar Treasure or El Dorado.


• The value of the secret itself to the keeper, like Nicolas Flamel & The Philosopher's Stone, location of the Fountain of Youth, The Holy Grail


• The value is in the negative power of the object or its ability to control others, be used as a weapon, or change the way people believe. Examples are The Lost Ark, Atomic Bomb, Lead into Gold, DaVincia Code.

The story is about books. Possibly the greatest "book event" prior to Gutenberg was the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Is it possible that the books of Alexandria were actually removed before Caesar's visit and that the buring was staged as a condemnation of Caesar's barbaric invasion? If so, where did the books go? The Library of Alexandria was built in the beginning of the 4th century BCE reign of Ptolemy I. It was burned in 48 BCE.

Constantinople: Built on the site of the ancient Byzantium (original construction around 671-662BCE) and was made the capital of the Roman empire by Constantine in May 330 CE. In 534CE, the Temple treasure of Jerusalem, looted by Romans in 70CE, was recaptured from Carthage and taken to Constantinope where it was deposited at the Church of St. Polyeuctus. It was eventually returned to Jerusalem.

The First Nicean Council was in 325 CE
Anthansius, Bishop of Alexandria listed the current canon in his works in 367 CE.

Questions:

22. Where did all the books go?


23. Did Gutenberg see them or know where they were and secret that information in his text?


24. Does this conflict with the treasure of The Templars?

Getting to the urgency

In order to make this work as a thriller, I have to keep Maddie and Peter on the run from the first chapter on. So this is what I have in mind and the research questions that it brings up.

Maddie & Peter escape from the hospital believing that the voice on the phone has called the police on them. They escape through the emergency room and right into the waiting clutches of the Collector (also referred to as The Voice because they never really see him and only hear him on the phone).

In reality, the police have been informed there is a bomb at the hospital. I'm thinking there actually is a bomb that blows up another glass front edifice. It could be why the police keep thurning up where Peter is, because a bomb-threat has been called in. They look at security footage and see Peter leaving the building before each one. The Voice is calling in the tip and then alerting Peter that the police are closing in. The key to the explosion pattern is that the buildings have all been built in thepast 10 years and all have a glass facade.
Glass could figure into the alchemical element as well. After all, you take sand and turn it into transparent glass. Why wouldn't you think you could transmute other elements as well?

I believe that The Voice is a wealthy donor and that each of the buildings have been something he contributed substantially to in the past 10-15 years. The buildings all have an atrium or glass facade that implodes. Ultimately it is shown that each of the glass structures was wired with an explosive when it was built.

When it is time for the mystery to be solved, The Voice cannot leave his demolitions expert at large, so he arranges to have him too close to an explosion and he is killed. No connection to the Voice is left except Peter & Maddie.

Questions:

17. Does Maddie consciously contact The Voice to keep him apprised of their location, or is she tagged with a homing device?


18. Is it beyond the imagination to make an explosive glass?


19. How does the accomplice rig the explosions?


20. How do Peter & Maddie expose The Voice and bring him to justice?


21. Is Maddie good or bad?

An answer

9. What is the formula?
   This is not the world's most elegant solution, but it works:

Lead at 1.34 g/cm³
Tin at 7.31 g/cm³
Antimony at 6.697 g/cm³
Silver at 10.49 g/cm³

(11.34*(1-x) + 7.31(1+x))/2 = 10.49
11.34-11.34x + 7.31 +7.31x = 20.98
18.65 -4.03x = 20.98
-4.03x = 2.33
x = -0.63385742

Therefore:
.7890819 cm³ Lead plus .2109181 cm³ Tin weighs the same by volume as 1 cm³ Silver

Using the same formula:
.81692871 cm³ Lead plus .18307129 cm³ Antimony also weighs the same by volume as 1 cm³ Silver.

Add the two formulas together and divide by two, the final formula is
0.803005305 cm³ Lead
0.105459050 cm³ Tin
0.091535645 cm³ Antimony
= by weight by volume of 1.0 cm³ Silver

The proportions are remarkably similar to the proportions of Lead, Tin, and Antimony found in Lead type, forged by Gutenberg.

Waking up in a hospital

Okay, so what does it feel like to wake up in a hospital?

16. Timing - explosion is on Friday night at the beginning of spring break. He wakes up "a few days" later. How many days??

I could see light. It was shining in my eyes. I tried to close them, but something was holding them open. I tried to speak, but no sound came out. In fact, there was no sound anywhere. When the light went out, I was alone in dark silence.

Ooops. I wasn't going to write this as a first person story. Here we go again, trying the same thing as a third person limited POV.

There was a light shining in Peter's eyes. Something was holding them open, so he couldn't escape the light. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. In fact, there was no sound anywhere. When the light finally faded, he was alone again in silent darkness.

Actually, I think the third person makes it a stronger passage, even through the blur of a first draft. Revision comes later.

First words

Having read through the first 240 words that I wrote, I realize that it needs to be at least twice that. Even though it should be short, it really needs to set the scene for the book. This is like world-building in the first chapter. Peter's world is libraries. I've written another 500 words just describing the library, the rare books room, and especially the grand atrium entrance of the university library. It is obvious that it has been donated by a very wealthy patron as a monument to himself.

Rough synopsis of the first three chapters

Okay, I've got a start that will get this rolling.

Scene 1: Peter Drucker is leaving the library musing over his new relationship with librarian Madeline Zane (Maddie) as his research progresses. About 20 steps from the library, there is an explosion that rips off the front entrance of the library and knocks Peter flat and unconscious.

Scene 2: Peter wakes up in hospital. His first thought is of Maddie and he tries to get himself up and out of bed to find her when she storms into the room. Instead of being glad to see him alive, she accuses him of stealing the manuscript he'd been working on. Eventually he pieces together enough to believe that someone has used Maddie to find Drucker. They leave the hospital as police pull up. The two are not paying attention and are grabbed by unknown assailants who chloroform them and shove them into a waiting car.

Scene 3: Introduce "The Collector," also known as "The Voice" since they never see him/her. Peter wakes up strapped to a chair. The shadowy figure of the collector is introduced. He wants Peter to find Gutenberg's Other Book for him, or he will do something bad to Maddie. He knows Peter has an interest in this and willpay himhandsomely for the other book. As evidence of good faith he gives Peter a manuscript.

There are a couple of fine points that make matters more complicated.

• Gutenberg's other book is not the real goal of what the collector is after. It contains a clue to a secret. Have to do some more research on this, but Gutenberg is right between Nicolas Flamel and Nostradamus. There is an alchemical secret around "the black (or white or red?) powder" that goes beyond turning base metal into gold.


• Someone else is trying to get the secret as well. In fact, Peter's family has been searching for a number of years. So he has to consult with his grandfather who is now very old.


• The police grow to suspect that Peter is involved in the library bombing. They are investigating everything he does. The heat gets turned up when Peter goes to Germany and the police find the missing library manuscript in Peter's home or car.


• The collector provides peter with $10,000 and a credit card, but when Peter visits his grandfater, he is given new identity papers by his grandfather. Maddie is released and accompanies Peter, but every so often Peter is emailed a video of her and a renewed warning.

About third person omniscient voice

So, I figured out what was wrong with my 3rd person omniscient voice. I've been head-hopping. It's like this: "Brad thought Ellen was cute. Ellen thought Brad was a nerd." In two sentences, I jumped from Brad's head to Ellen's head. Do that very often and people start getting confused about whose head they are in. Recommendation is to stay with one POV per chapter or scene. That makes sense, but also means I need to pay more attention to who is the main character at any given time and stay focused.

I've noticed that in some of the books I've been reading there is a principal POV but that it changes when you need to get a bit of info that is out of the MC's range of knowledge. I remember that in Accidental Witness, everything was from the MC's POV except a chapter at the Dunes and a substory that involved the Rep's Chief of Staff and her lover. In both of those instances, the MC was not in the scene at all, so there was no question about it being his POV. Thats probably a good form to follow.

So that covers 1st person and 3rd person limited, but what about 3rd person omniscent? To really do that, you have to not go inside anyone's head. You have to be an objective outside party that doesn't write anything they can't observe. So, instead of

"Steve hesitated a moment as he thought about all the dhildless mothers in the world, then, dismissing the thought, raised the gun and fired."

you would have:

"Steve hesitated. It was as if some inner consience had called him to abandon his mission. If so, the conscience lost the struggle. With a slight shudder, Steve raised the gun and fired."

Omniscience objectivies everything. We don't get to see inside. We use more names, more observations. Maybe even more sentences. It would be very hard to write something that maintained a high interest level, suspense, and drama. It does, however, read more like a television show. You don't get to hear the character's thoughts. You can only see them as actors and describe what you see.

Some Brewing Story Alternatives

Beginnings

• John Drucker meets his grandfather, Francis, at a bar at age 21 and discovers the "family secret."


• Johannes Gutenberg packs the forms for his typeface and flees Mainz ahead of the invading army headed to Bamberg.


• John Drucker explains to Madeline Zane the importance of the rare book she has brought to him just before an explosion rocks the building. John flees with the manuscript chased by Madeline, who thinks he has stolen it and set the library on fire.


• John Drucker is merrily chatting up Maddie as she goes to get the manuscript he wants, only to find a dead body in the vault. John becomes a suspect because the manuscript is missing.


• We start exploring the relationships that John has with his mother and with Maddie as reason for why he is so obsessed with a supposed mystery.

Approaches/Genre

• Intellectual puzzle in which everything is about telling the story of each piece of the puzzle and then pulling it all together at the end.


• Thriller in which John is on the run from the first chapter and we have to keep backing up to get the full story.


• Literary piece that is all about the relationships that are cemented or fal apart because of themystery obsession.


• Historical fiction all set in 1430-1468 about Gutenberg.


• Urban fantasy in which John Drucker is Gutenberg who is still alive because he is an alchemist, a la Nicolas Flamel.


• Mystery in which John Drucker, detective, is called in to solve a series of crimes surrounding libraries and uncovers the Gutenberg mystery at the same time.

Voice

• 3rd person omnipotent - best for 1, 3, 4. Would also work for 2.


• 3rd person limited - only follow John with possible telling of things he knows about. That would work for 2,3,5,6.


• 1st person narrative, best for 2,5,6.


• Narrator who tells story with self-reference. For example, told by a different character - Maddie, Grandpa, or best friend.

I rather like the last idea, but I've very little in the way of referents for it. I'm finally beginning to understand what P.R. meant when he said he could work for a year on a book just trying to get the right voice. I'm going to do a little research on P.O.V. and voice. I'm sure there is lots of info on it. I need a refresher course.

• Here's another possible opening: John Drucker is twenty steps away from the library - leaving it - when a bomb goes off throwing him to the ground, knocked unconscious. When he wakes up in the hospital, Madeline is sitting beside his bed. Rather than sympathy, however, she wants to know what he's done with the manuscript he stole before the bomb went off. Only problem is that he didn't take it.

Notes on the Gutenberg Bible

From the intro to the Octavo edition of the Gutenberg Bible (electronic PDF of the Library of Congress-owned Gutenberg), by Janet Ing Freeman,c2003.

• ...and near the end of his life, securing a handsome pension from the Archbishop of Mainz as a reward for his "agreeable and willing service," a phrase often interpreted as a reference to his having printed The Bible.


• Paper was imported from Northern Italy.


• The compositors worked from a manuscript copy of the Bible, carefully "casting off" to ensure that the printed text would flow correctly from page to page.


• Quires of five signatures were gathered and folded before binding. [That would mean 20 pages that had to be pulled in coordination, so the signatures would be (20,1/2,19) (18,3/4,17) (16,5/6,15) (14,7/8,13) (12,9/10,11)]


• Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) referred to as Silvius, wrote some people told him 158 copies had been finished and others said the total was 180. Buyers had been found for all the copies beore the volumes were completed.


• An 8-page rubric was printed.


• Fust sued Gutenberg for repayment, claiming that some of the funds provided for "the work of the books" or "the work to their common profit" had been diverted by Gutenberg to other (unspecified) projects. The court decreed that Gutenberg was obliged to repay with interest any money given by Fust and not spent on their joint undertaking.


• Gutenberg's earlier and slightly larger textura type never appeared in works by Fust or Schoeffer. It is most likely that this type was, in fact, never present in the bible workshop, and that the Latin grammars and other ephemeral works printed with it were produced in a seperate shop directly under Gutenberg's control.


• The type seems to have left Mainz and around 1460 was used for another folio Latin Bible, printed some 150 miles away in Bamberg. [Is this whhere Gutenberg went in exile?]

The clue

The key to the mystery translates from German to English as follows:

"My secret I have cast in the Black River and only he who knows the shallows may find it."

I have to get a German translation that holds the double meaning of "cast." I suppose it could be in Latin. I've asked Gary to help. If I can't find "cast," I'll have to use "hidden."

Then I've got to deal with Venice. I wonder what I should see in Venice and what contribution it will make to the story.

Some answers

10. Dieter von Isenburg 1460-1461
    Adolf II von Nassau 1461-1475
    Dieter von Isenburg restored 1475-1482


11. The Mainzer Feud 1460-1463
    400 killed on 28 October 1462 and 400 more exiled, including Gutenberg.
    In 1465 Gutenberg was appointed to the court of Archbishop Adolf and given his pension.
    2/3/1468 (or sometime prior to that) Gutenberg dies in Mainz.

By the timelines, it seems that gutenberg was a loyalist to the reforming Dieter and not to Adolf. He was exiled briefly after the invasion, but within four years had returned to court. Perhaps he had something to do with the reinstatement of Dieter into favor as Adolf's heir? And where did he go during exile?

Question:

15. Where did Gutenberg go during the term of his exile in 1461?

Characters proposed

• MC: Last name Drucker. Some possible family names include John and Peter. I'm also fond of Francis (i or e?). Drucker is German for "printer." John and Peter are after Gutenberg and Schoeffer. Francis would come from Francesco Griffo, the typographer who invented Italic for Aldus Manutius and was then cheated out of his patent.
  
  Drucker is in early to mid-40s. He has attended school to become a librarian, but when he went to school it was at the beginning of the DTP revolution in the mid-80s. He grabbed hold of the technology because of his familiarity with printing. Still, he is an avid researcher in printing & publishing and he knows of the mystery of Gutenberg's other book.


• Love Interest: A librarian in her mid-30s. she is curator of the rare books section at a University where Drucker is lecturing and doing research. There remains a question regarding whether she is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. she takes boks more seriously than people. She may begin in an antigonistic relationshipwith Drucker.


• Antagonist 1: A rival for the discovery of J.G.'s secret. Possibly a vormer friend or partner who believes Drucker is holding out on him. There may be a long-standing rival faction of which the antagonist 1 is a member.


• Antagonist 2: This is a legal authority either in the U.S. or Germany or Italy that believes Drucker has stolen a valuable artifact, or set fire to the library, or murdered someone. This authority is drawn in to the Gutenberg unwillingly and may need to temporarily ally him/herself with either Drucker or Antagonist 1.


• Antagonist 3: This is a wealthy patron of the arts who "collects" rare objects and once he has set his eyes on one will do anything necessary to get it for himself. He probably owns a number of extremely rare manuscripts and incunabula.


• Family of Drucker


• Grandfather who has been a mentor of Drucker and initiated him into the Gutenberg mystery. He is an old printer with ink in his veins.


• Mother who is of questionable loyalties. She forbade contact between Drucker and his grandfater after her husband died (was killed?) in a printing accident. The father was a serious hunter after the Gutenberg secret.


• Stepfather? Who might be a part of Antagonist 3's cadre, sent to keep an eye on Drucker and his grandfather.


• Drucker's sister? who could be used to pressure Drucker to release the secret when he finally discovers it.

More questions

10. Who are the two Archbishops in question?


11. What is the timeline for the invasion?


12. From where did Archbishop 2 come?


13. Where/when did J.G. meet the Archbishop? In Strassborg? Contracting the printing of indulgences?


14. How does the timeline of the invasion coincide with the printing of The Bible and Fust's lawsuit against J.G.?

The Politics of Mainz

So here is the setup in Mainz. It is an archbishopric, similar to what Salzburg was in Austria, but much more important. An Archbishop set his sights on Mainz and went to war to drive the incumbent out. It was this latter Archbishop of Mainz that awarded Gutenberg his pension. Therefore, we must assume that Gutenberg provided his service to this Archbishop, possibly before the war. However, the printing of The Bible was done seven years before the second archbishop invaded.

Some answers

4. What was Gutenberg doing in the second shop that earned him the gratitude of the future prince of Mainz?


1. It is possible that Gutenberg discovered that he could not apply enough heat and pressure to the base elements to reach the density of gold, but that he could mix an alloy of the same elements that looked like silver


2. Even though he could have made a silver-like alloy, would that be adequate? It seems more likely that he was hiding something "in plain sight." So the queston remains as to whether he was hiding something in the type or in the text.

What do we know about The Black River?

It has long been one of the references to printing, like printing being referred to as "a black art." It refers to the rivers of ink made up by rows of type on a page. When you tilt the page and look down the rows of type, the characters blur and you see only the rivers. But since the shapes of the characters all vary and some are tall while others have either vertical or horizontal elements, or long "below the line" elements, the rows do not appear to be solid black. They have darker and lighter areas. The most intensely black area is at the baseline, since every letter in the western world and most other character forms touches it. The darker area near the deepest black is referred to as "the channel." The gradually lighter areas that lie above and below the channel are "the shallows." The completely white space that lies between the rivers is the shore. German "black type" (Gothic Textura) is very sonsistent with a broad deep channel, very narrow shallows and pretty much no shores. But even within this dark area, it is possible to see different values of light and dark. It would be possible to manipulate this pattern with very subtle changes in the design of the type.

Gutenberg cast characters in two different sizes. It seemed to be an economy thing to switch from the first, larger size, to the second type that was used for the 42-line Bible. As it was, the Gutenberg Bible was two volumes of 600 pages each. Some bindings have split it into three volumes.

There were other things that Gutenberg employed in printing The Bible. He used a variation on a wine press of a crew-type as his press. He also formulated an ink out of boiled linseed oil and lampblack. The depth and permanency of that ink has not been surprassed. He printed nearly 200 copies, one-third of which were on calfskin vellum. It seems likely that page and paper size were determined by a mathematical process to decide the optimum size to be cut from a calf's hide.

Of the extant copies, I have seen the one at the Library of Congress, the two in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, and the two at the British National Library. I have the digital copy of the Library of Congress copy that John Warnock's Oxford edition produced.

Some Answers

2. What are the weights of the three metals and of gold?


1. Lead = 19.3g/cm³


2. Tin =7.31g/cm³


3. Antimony = 6.697g/cm³


4. Gold = 19.3g/cm³


5. Silver = 10.49g/cm³


3. If Gutenberg got the proportions right, could he have hidden gold in the alloy? or discovered another alloy or mixture of elements that mimicked gold?


1. No. Gold was the heaviest metal known at the time. You couldn't get an alloy that weighted as much per cm³


2. Yes. Could discover a mixture that mimicked silver.

Some questions

Okay, so here are the questions so far:

1. What was the proportion in the alloy?


2. What are the weights of the 3 m3tals and of gold?


3. If Gutenberg got the proportions right, could he have


• hidden gold in the alloy?


• discovered another alloy or mixture of elements that mimicked gold?


4. What was Gutenberg doing in the second shop that earned him the gratitude of the future prince of Mainz?


5. What did Gutenberg cast in the Black River?

I theorize that Gutenberg used his talent in both metalurgy and alchemy (and also perhaps in printing) to hide something from or for the new prelate. This something has remained hidden, in plain sight, to this very day. it is of such value that even today one might start a war to get it.

6. What was hidden?


7. How much is known about it? and by whom?


8. How much of present-day Mainz was there when Gutenberg was? Is there a different city where it is hidden?


9. What is the formula?

Regarding the subject of density & weight by volume, Archimedes made the discovery in Syracuse c200BC. It was the origin of "Eureka!"

• When an object is placed in water it appears to be lighter.


• As the object is lowered into the water, the level rises in the tank. That is, the object displaces a volume of water equal to its own volume below the surface.


• Finally, the great synthesis - the weight of water displaced is equal to the weight loss of the object. This is crucial and not obvious. It means that if Archimedes weighed 175 pounds and carefully stepped into a tub filled to the brim, he would spill over, say, 165 pounds of water. His apparent weight in the tub, then would be 175-165 or 10 pounds. That is, his weight loss would be 165 pounds.

The bouyant force on the object is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid.

Gold = 19,300kg/m³
Lead = 11,340kg/m³
Antimony = 6,697kg/m³
Tin = 7,310kg/m³

The known elements & weights at the time of Gutenberg were:
Copper (9000BCE) 8.92g/cm³
Gold (6000BCE) 19.3g/cm³
Lead (7000BCE) 11.34g/cm³
Silver (5000BCE) 10.49g/cm³
Iron (5000BCE 7.84g/cm³
Carbon (3750BCE 2.26g/cm³
Tin (3500BCE) 7.31g/cm³
Sulfur (2000BCE) 1.96g/cm³
Mercury (2000BCE) 13.5g/cm³
Zinc (1000BCE) 7.14g/cm³
Arsenic (800CE) 5.72g/cm³
Antimony (800CE) 6.697g/cm³
Bismuth(800CE) 9.78g/cm³

At the time of Gutenberg, gold was the heaviest substance known and equal weight of an alloy by volume would not be possible.
It might be possible to solve a formula for an alloy that equaled the weight and volume of silver. Using the weight of each element, 11.34x+7.31x+6.697x=10.49; 25.347x=10.49; x=0.41386
In other words, proportions of the following when mixed to an alloy would equal the weight and volume of silver:
4.693 cm³ Lead
3.025 cm³ Tin
2.772 cm³ Antimony
Equal to 10.49 cm^3> Silver

I'm sure there is still something missing, but it should come out to the proportion of three base elements mixed together to equal the weight/volume of silver. But it is silver, not gold. Is that the great discovery?

Gutenberg's Other Book

I'm catching up on entering notes that I've been writing in a paper *gasp* journal. I'm backdating to when I wrote the notes.

So - Gutenberg printed the Bible in Mainz Germany about 1455. It was a long process. He invented movable type, which isn't to say that others hadn't also invented it. But most remarkable about the invention was a dimensionally stable alloy. He combined lead, tin, and antimony. Lead and tin both contract when they cool from liquid molten metal to the solid state. Antimony is one of those rare elements that expands as it cools. Gutenberg figured out the ratios that would make the expansion of the antimony counteract the contraction of thelead and tin. I'd like to know those proportions. Gutenberg used lead because it was cheap & molded easily. But it was too soft to withstand the pressure of the press. So he added tin to harden the alloy.

I wonder what the weights of the metals are. Is there a correlation between what this alloy weighs and what gold weighs? I think that gutenberg was working the mathematics, not just experimenting with the physical elements. That would mean that the formula could have taken the form of an algebraic equation.

Oh yes, the formula. Gutenberg was an alchemist. The mixture of lead, tin, and antimony was common among the alchemists attempting to turn lead into gold, or base metal into rare metal. He had set himself up to teach two young men the art of metal working in Strasbourg some years earlier. The brother of one sued him according to court records for not letting him inherit his brother's share.

When he was in the process of printing The bible in Mainz, Gutenberg borrowed heavily from one Johan Fust. Fust sued Gutenberg just before The Bible was finished because Gutenberg had skimmed off some of the loaned money for a private operation. Fust wanted a piece of that action as well. When Gutenberg refused to share the second operation with Fust, the courts awarded the entire Bible printing operation to fust. Peter Schoeffer was awarded the Bible contract and was elevated to master printer from Gutenberg's journeyman. By all the evidence of the works that came from the Schoeffer/Fust operation, Schoefer was probably a better printer than Gutenberg anyway. But what we don't know is exactly what gutenberg was doing in the second shop, even though there were reportedly some other books that were produced.