Stephen Seitz August 8, 2013 Printing, Propaganda, and Progress Schuchardt/Lovett

From Gutenberg to Hollerith to Jobs The Extermination of the Voice, Lives, and World Charlie Chaplin in his impersonation of Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator once said, "We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives us abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little." The gradual evolution of using one's brain like a machine rather than one's heart as stated by Charlie Chaplin started well before his time. One could trace this shift in behavior all the way back to the sixteenth century. In this speech, he draws the connection between the sixteenth century and the twentieth century centuries using technology as the bridge to link them together. The Protestant Reformation and the Holocaust, although being separated by over 400 years, can be attributed to one common denominator aiding its cause: technology. Using the similarities of the inception, the effects of each technical device on its prospective movement, and the unintended consequences of the printing press and the Hollerith systems, technology was the prominent cause of both the Protestant Reformation and the Holocaust being as effective as they were in each of their purposes. Although each invention was separated by a considerable amount of time, Johannes Gutenberg and Herman Hollerith found themselves in similar situations at the end of their lives. To begin with, Johann Gensfleisch, better known as Johann Gutenberg, and Herman Hollerith were creative intellectuals of their time but unfortunately they were not the ones who profited as one might think. Despite being the geniuses behind their prospective technological devices, they had to watch as their inventions were exploited by lucrative businessmen.

Throughout history, there seemed to be a pattern of inventors not being recognized monetarily for their inventions but instead they were locked out by greedy businessmen looking to turn a profit wherever they could. It was no different with the inventions of the printing press and the Hollerith machine. Both Gutenberg and Hollerith weren't as successful as their business counterparts that took over their companies and created insurmountable profits. Hollerith may have sold his company to Charles Flint but Gutenberg didn't share the same fate. Gutenberg died a poor man and his Printing press would make Johann Fust, a wealthy Mainz burgher and merchant, (Meggs 71) an even wealthier man. Although Gutenberg was the sole inventor of the printing press, he wouldn't see any of the profits because of his decision to borrow money from the wrong man, a businessman. During the tedious process of attempting to perfect the printing press with all the necessary research and developmental expenses that Gutenberg had to incur, he needed to borrow money from someone to continue his work. In 1450, he decided to borrow eight hundred guilders from Johann Fust and then two years later, borrowed another eight hundred guilders. Fust loaned Gutenberg the money with the printing equipment as collateral. As Gutenberg drew closer to completing his work in 1455, Fust sued Gutenberg for 2,026 guilders which was the payment of loans including interest (Meggs 71). Unfortunately on November 6, 1455 the courts ruled in favor of Fust requiring Gutenberg to swear before God at a local monastery that he would pay interest on some of the money loaned to him. Fust complied with the court's decision but Gutenberg did not attend. Rather he sent two of his friends to beg Fust for more time. Fust would not settle because he realized how much he could profit from Gutenbergs invention. The night before Gutenberg was finished with his extremely valuable forty-two line bible which would have allowed Gutenberg

to pay off his debt to Fust, he was locked out of his workshop with all the printing equipment and Gutenberg's current work in legal possession to Fust. For Gutenberg, his life's work was in the hands of another man and all he could do was watch as his forty-line bibles would be sold and spread throughout the world by Fust and Gutenbergs previous assistant Peter Schoeffer. Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, would not be the man to reap the benefits but instead Fust, a greedy businessman would lock him out and would travel widely to distribute these forty-two line bibles (Meggs 73). Gutenberg would die destitute in 1468.1 On the other hand, Herman Hollerith, the inventor of the Hollerith system, didn't share a similar fate and fortunately his company was sold to a businessman prior to any legal action having to take place. He was 20 years old working for the Census Bureau when he thought of the idea for tabulating a population with punch cards and a tabulator machine when he noticed a train conductor punching holes in tickets in specific patterns that corresponded to certain physical features of the ticket holder. This was done so other conductors could see the ticket later and identify the passenger by their punched identification card (Black 25). According to Black in his book titled IBM and the Holocaust, Hollerith's idea was a card with standardized holes, each representing a different trait: gender, nationality, occupation, and so forth. The card would then be fed into a 'reader.' By virtue of easily adjustable spring mechanisms and brief electrical brush contacts sensing for the holes, the cards could be 'read' as they traced through a mechanical feeder. (25) Hollerith realized that tabulating the population could be easily accessible through the use of
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From the recording of the description of the Gutenberg Bible at Martin Bodmer Foundation.

technology with much greater speed saving a significant amount of money. Following the 1890 census, Hollerith's systems saved the Census Bureau almost a third of its budget, about five million dollars. As his systems began to become increasingly popular with census statistical departments and corporations in countries all over the world, he realized that he needed to create a company for his rapidly growing clientele. Unfortunately, he was an inventor, not a businessman. Perhaps he had learned from his fellow German brother Gutenberg in the sense that he felt everyone was out to get him. He never trusted clients and often felt that his customers were planning on stealing his legacy from underneath him as Fust did with Gutenberg. He often held grudges and would let personal vendettas get in the way of doing business with clients. Hollerith was not cut out to be a salesman. Eventually in 1911, Hollerith decided to sell his company to Charles Flint "who epitomized the affluent adventurer capitalist at the end of the nineteenth century" (Black 30). He sold his company for $1.41 million. Using a Consumer Price Index inflation calculator, this amount equates to about $33.2 million in 2013. Although this amount was an enormous sum of money in 1911, under Charles Flint's merger, the four companies, including Hollerith's Tabulating Machine, was named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company or CTR and would only expand in the upcoming years. It would eventually take on the name International Business Machines or IBM under a newly appointed general manager and IBM would continuously grow in power and wealth to an amazing net worth of about $112.5 billion today. Although this young, eager-eyed salesman may had started working as the general manager on May 1, 1914, it was very evident that he was the one in sole control of the company.

IBM would grow exponentially under this businessman, Thomas J. Watson, the eventual CEO of IBM, and well exceed the amount that Hollerith had sold the company for in 1911. Watson would profit immensely up until his death in 1956. His company's net worth the year before he died was an astonishing $55.8 million which is equal to about $420 million in 2013. According to the New York Times, in Watsons obituary, "his I.B.M. compensation, based on salary and percentage of net profits, climbed to a Government-announced $546,294 in 1940" (New York Times). This is about $9.1 million in todays economy. It is very unlikely that through the sale of Holleriths company, Hollerith had surpassed Watson in wealth because it only took Watson one year to make $9.1 million. Imagine his total salary through the years at IBM. Although the money accumulated through the sale may have seemed like an unimaginable amount of money at the time, Watson took Hollerith's invention and used it to create his own legacy as one of the most successful businessmen of his era. Both of these men, Hollerith and Gutenberg were the creative geniuses behind their technological inventions yet their legacies were overshadowed by businessmen who took over their company. By taking over their companies, these businessmen Fust and Watson stole their legacy as well as their equipment. While Hollerith may not have died poor like Gutenberg, he didn't share in the fame and growth of the company that Watson experienced as CEO of IBM. Instead, he had to watch as Watson, a man who had nothing to do with his invention, took control of his punch cards and tabulating machines and profited immensely. Similarly, Gutenberg had to watch Fust travel the world selling his precious forty-two line Bible, the product from his invention that he had slaved to complete only to see it ripped away from him the night before it was done. In one scenario, Gutenberg lost everything in his partnership with a businessman. He lost the ability to pay back the debt he owed Fust, the ability to see his forty-

two line Bible produced and sold throughout the world, and most importantly he had his printing equipment stripped away from him. Hollerith had the foresight to sell the company before his machines were taken from him but still lost out on the opportunity to watch his company become one of the most profitable companies in the United States. Gutenberg and Hollerith both watched as their inventions were taken from them, one by legal action and the other by being bought out. Although there are several other cases in history of businessmen profiting from an inventor's intellect, these two cases illustrate how both men were forced into similar situations from conniving business men. Besides both men's legacies being overshadowed by the businessmen that took over their companies, Gutenberg and Hollerith's inventions had unintended consequences during the Protestant Reformation and the Holocaust. Their inventions seemed like great ideas at their inception and in no way had they expected their inventions to cause problems in the world. Rarely do inventors like Gutenberg and Hollerith think of the harm that could be done with their inventions but instead they think of all the positives that they could accomplish with their new invention. These inventions aimed to solve problems and immediately led to solutions. Unfortunately, later down the road, those solutions would be out-lived by the unintended consequences for future generations. During the Protestant Reformation, these unintended consequences can be seen with the creation of indulgences and then the rebellion against these indulgences, both using one man's invention, the printing press. Gutenberg's printing press allowed for the mass production of indulgences,
The remission of part or all of the temporal and especially purgatorial punishment that according to Roman Catholicism is due for sins whose eternal punishment has been remitted and whose guilt has been pardoned. (Merriam-Webster).

These indulgences were being sold to raise money to build St. Peter's Church but were being misused by clergymen, specifically by a Catholic preacher Johann Tetzel. Martin Luther, a 6

monk with a law degree, publicly criticized the way the Roman Catholic Church, specifically Tetzel were using indulgences. Tetzel would preach that indulgences were a way of aiding in the process of sending souls from purgatory to heaven. He would preach saying, "Once the coin into the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs!" (Galli 35) The technology of the printing press provided an unlimited amount of these indulgences because the Catholic Church could produce and sell them to an individual for their penance or for those in purgatory. Since Luther did not agree with the way Tetzel was selling indulgences, he wrote and posted his 95 Theses against the Catholic Church. Once again, the printing press allowed for this list of complaints to be widely distributed throughout Germany. They were reproduced and spread around Germany for the laymen to read. This was the beginning of the destruction of the oral society that the Catholic Church had instilled in their followers for 1500 years and would never be the same. For thousands of years, the Catholic Church had used orality, mainly in the voice of the clergy or the Pope, to pass down tradition from each generation. Since clergy were some of the only people who specialized in the reading of Latin, they had to translate the word of God for all to hear. Therefore, there was an emphasis on the voice of clergy being the sole guidance in everyones lives because they couldnt interpret it for themselves. People had to listen and comply with what the Church said so when the Catholic Church started abusing the selling of indulgences, they had to believe them and didnt have the education or the reason to think differently. Once Luther wrote his 95 Theses for everyone to read, it resonated with people and they began to think more causing a reformation that not even Luther expected. Later on, he would later claim that "'a simple layman armed with Scriptures' was superior to both the pope and the councils without them" (Galli 35). At the Diet of Worms in 1921, he

had to stand on trial before Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. He was asked to withdraw his statements about the Catholic Church and refused. Instead he said, "Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience" (Galli 35). No longer was faith or tradition important in Luther's eyes, but instead his emphasis was on individual understanding of the Holy Scriptures, sola scriptura, scripture alone. Luther would find himself ostracized from the Catholic Church but then during this time, he accomplished his most memorable and consequential feat, his translation of the Latin Bible into the German language. His aim was to allow every layman with the power of the Holy Scriptures at their disposal. The average working man would not have to listen to the Pope for his interpretation but instead each individual could interpret it however they pleased. There was no longer an emphasis on the spoken word or orality but instead, individual interpretation. Society changed from the acceptance of community tradition like the Catholic Church to individual understanding. It changed from hearing everything orally from one man to visually understanding a sequence of words or reading. With this new type of interpreting the Bible, there began a shift from the right hemisphere of the brain, orality, to the left side of the brain, or modern day thinking. Additionally, the brain is split up into two hemispheres: the speech/verbal left hemisphere and the spatial/musical right hemisphere (McLuhan 68). The right hemisphere has characteristics like emotional, artistic, spiritual, and symbolic feelings or how the Catholics orally passed tradition down from generation to generation through the spoken word. This was instilled prior to the invention of the printing press where stories were told orally and the rare

individual was able to read and write. After Gutenberg invented the printing press and stories could be easily printed and distributed just as easily, there began a shift in reasoning like Luther had stated it so eloquently before the Diet of Worms. Alternatively, the left hemisphere of the brain contains qualities like logical, mathematical thinking, understanding sequences, reading, writing, and controlled thinking. It isn't a coincidence that reading uses the left hemisphere, the same hemisphere that has logical thinking. No longer did humanity feel with their heart but instead thought with their brain. Luther, although unaware at the time, used his 95 Theses and deductive reasoning to break down the normal definition of an oral society and replaced it with a print society, one focused on an individuals conscience. With the use of the printing press, he replaced it with a society that thinks too much and feels too little as Charlie Chaplin once said. Even though Luther wanted to speak out against the Church, in no way was his goal to be excommunicated. He just felt that the issue of indulgences needed to be resolved and in his disapproval, he wrote a letter, not knowing that it would be distributed throughout Germany to start a reformation that would eventually lead to an unbelievable 33,000 Protestant denominations today. He did not intend to break away from the Church nor did he intend to start a downward spiral of destroying the unity of the Catholic Church and now the lack of unity between Protestant churches throughout the world. Luther did not want to be ostracized from the Catholic Church but the technology of the printing press allowed for his work to be reproduced, thus increase in popularity until it started to threaten the Catholic Church. It wasn't his plan to break away from the Catholic Church and start Lutheranism which would inevitably lead to the formation of several other thousands of denominations. Unfortunately, religious groups now uses

deductive reasoning to interpret the Bible and if there is a discrepancy amongst the members of the church, members break away from the church and form a new denomination as Luther did. With the technology of the printing press, it intensified these unintended consequences by allowing for the reproduction of Luthers anti-Catholic works. For example, people had spoken out against the Church for thousands of years but it didn't start a reformation. Luther speaking out against the Church received so much recognition because the printing press allowed for a mass production of his 95 Theses which would cause the laymen to question the Catholic Churches and lead to the Protestant Reformation. Although the Protestant Reformation changed religion by breaking down the tradition of the Catholic Church, it also changed the way people would think and act for centuries by using their conscience or aspects of their left hemisphere to decide what is right and wrong instead of using their heart. Gutenberg with the invention of the printing press, unknowingly, opened the floodgates and caused the destruction of tradition and an oral society to occur which would alter future events forever. Subsequently, Hollerith's tabulating systems under the control of Thomas Watson and IBM did more than just destroy a way of living; they actually aided Nazi Germany in the systematic elimination of Jews during the Holocaust. Similarly to Gutenberg's invention, Hollerith was not aware of the implications that this type of tabulator would have on future generations, specifically the way it would identify and organize humans by race so they could be easily exterminated. Hollerith initially wanted his devices to aid the Census Bureau in its goal "to profile its own population" (Black 26) not aid in the complete annihilation of the Jews. He demonstrated his machines to the Convention of Labor Commissioners at Hartford, Connecticut and a newspaper article of the presentation said that, Mr. Herman Hollerith of Washington gave an exceedingly interesting description of his electrical machine which is designed as an aid in the rapid compilation of 10

statistics. . . It has been adopted in the Office of the Surgeon-General, U.S.A., for compiling army statistics and will shortly be used in mortality work in the New York health Department.2 (Hollerith 72) It didn't count the living but instead counted the dead. Ironically, it wouldn't take long for the process of identifying the dead to transition to singling out one quality in humans and then killing anyone with that quality in mass executions. Eventually, Holleriths machines and punch cards would not be restricted to only gathering statistical information on the army or the dead but would collect a limitless amount of data on just about anything. It "would become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holes. It was nothing less than a nineteenth-century bar code for human beings" (Black 25). Jews had been persecuted for thousands of years but never had there been such efficiency in the identifying, organizing, and exterminating of Jews until the technology that Hollerith invented was given to the wrong hands: Nazi Germany. Even Luther, the reformer who said one could be saved by faith alone, persecuted Jews towards the end of his life. Why did Luthers persecution of the Jews not result to mass genocide? Because technology of the Hollerith systems was accessible, it finally allowed for the mass identification of Jews for Nazi Germany to carry out its plan of exterminating a single race. Even if the Hollerith systems werent provided to Nazi Germany through subsidiaries of IBM in Europe, would the Nazis be slowed down or would the extermination happen just as quickly? Admittedly, the Hollerith machines seemed to only aid in the destruction of Jews in the Holocaust but one story of Nen Carmille, a French military technocrat of the French resistance, who impeded the plan of Nazi Germany to identify Jews using the Hollerith system proved this theory false. The sole reason that the Hollerith systems weren't as effective in France as
2

Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut). June 27th, 1889.

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they were throughout the rest of Europe was because of Carmille. He and his organization that worked with Hollerith machines never once punched the whole that corresponded with race thus inhibiting the identification of Jews.
As for column 11 asking for Jewish identity, the holes were never punched--the answers were never tabulated. More than 100,000 cards of Jews sitting in his office--never handed over. He foiled the entire enterprise. (Black 329)

Without punching column number 11, the Jews could not be identified. "Of an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Jews living in France, both zones, about 85,000 were deported--of those barely 3,000 survived. The death ratio in France was approximately 25 percent" (Black 331) as compared to a death ration in the Netherlands of about 73 percent. The death ratio was extremely less in France because Nazi Germany did not have the assistance of the tabulating machines to identify the Jews. Carmille used the Hollerith systems, specifically by not punching column 11, to impede the plan of Nazi Germany. As seen in the heroic situation of Carmille, without this technology to identify the Jews through Hollerith's punch cards and tabulating machines, Nazi Germany would not have been as efficient in slaughtering as many Jews as they did during the Holocaust. In the end, Hollerith designed his machines to record the mortality rate in places like New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York but little did he know that one of the consequences would be that his equipment would be used in adding to the mortality rate throughout Europe during the Holocaust. In the same way that Hollerith and Gutenberg shared an experience in losing out to businessmen, both men unknowingly contributed to consequences that forever altered the way in which future societies lived. It seemed that each man attempted to solve a problem in his era but with their inventions, they actually created a new problem in their solution. The printing press allowed for Luther to solve the corrupted way in which the Catholic Church, specifically Johann Tetzel, sold indulgences which inevitably led to split of the Catholic Church and the lack of unity 12

in Christian faith today. The Hollerith systems attempted to fix the way in which the censuses were conducted but inadvertently led to the ease in which a single demographic amidst a country could be singled out and eliminated with such accuracy and swiftness. The end products of both of these inventions may have contributed many positives throughout history but the two negative outliers outweighed the positives. Today there are 33,000 Christian denominations causing an utter lack of unity amongst Christians. Neither Gutenberg nor Luther wanted this. Likewise, there are over six million unnecessary graves, many unmarked, of Jewish victims. Although the deaths cannot be attributed to the Hollerith's systems, using the case of Carmille, it can be said that Nazi Germany would not have been so efficient in the slaughtering of the Jews if it weren't for such an effective machine like the Hollerith machine. All in all, using the similarities of the initial steps of each invention, the consequences that would occur afterwards and the effects of each piece of technology on its movement, the advancement in technology can be attributed to the efficiency in which the Protestant Reformation and the Holocaust's purposes were carried out. This wasnt the first time that people of a religious affiliation were persecuted nor was it the first time someone spoke out against a church. What made these two cases with Luther and the Holocaust so different from the previous similar events in the past? Was it that Luther used reasoning that resonated so much with the German population that they had no choice but to reform? Did the Holocaust occur because Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was the perfect man to carry out a complete annihilation of the Jews? Although many have argued that those are the likely reasons the Holocaust and Protestant Reformation occurred, there was something else behind these movements. The printing press was the reason that Luther's 95 theses were distributed throughout Germany causing a

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reformation against the Catholic Church and a detrimental split from tradition and orality. During the Holocaust, the technology of the Hollerith systems was the reason that Nazi Germany was so efficient in their liquidation of the non-Aryan race. If it weren't for the technology of these systems, Jews would not have been exterminated with such efficiency and speed and it's possible that the death ratio would have dramatically decreased like the death ratio in France. Altogether, if it werent for the technology, perhaps the unity of Christian faith could have been salvaged as well as the lives of millions of Jews. A guest lecturer at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee talked about the events of the destruction of the word. He said that with the invention of the typewriter, "Everyone looks the same." Although it may be true with the typewriter, the destruction of the word could be traced earlier than that with the invention of the printing press. People werent any longer separated by the uniqueness in which someone spoke but instead, everyone sounded the same when reading what they had written on paper. The same could be said about the destruction of humanity during the Holocaust. The Hollerith machine and punch cards made everyone look like a number. No longer were they a person with a soul but instead just a figure on a piece of paper or a bar-code that needed to be identified, grouped together, and then deleted. With these inventions, it seemed that humanity seemed to prosper but then down the road there was a drastic effect that altered society. If this is true, where are we now in this cycle of behavioral altercation by technology? When we look around at the billboards, the commercials, or even devices in peoples hands, what do we see? Most of the time, we see the iconic image of an apple with a piece removed. Humanity can be reminded of the story of Adam and Eve who both took a bite out of the forbidden fruit, an apple, and their eyes were opened and they were banished from the

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Garden of Eden. This iconic image has become famous under the company Apple as their logo. Is it possible that a technological advancement in an Apple product will force humanity to alter the way in which we live again like the printing press and the Hollerith machines? Could this new technological invention cause humanity to be banished from our Garden of Eden, Earth, in the destruction of mankind? Its very possible that the world as we know it may be the unintended consequences of one of Apple's newest products and we are on a downward spiral of the complete destruction of the mankind. We may not realize it before it is too late or is it already too late? Have we already sunk our teeth into the newest technological invention from Apple that will eventually destroy this world?

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Work Cited Armstrong, Dave. "How Many Protestant Denominations Are There?" How Many Protestant Denominations Are There? N.p., 12 Apr. 2005. Web. 08 Aug. 2013. <http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a120.htm>. Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. New York: Crown, 2001. Print. "CPI Inflation Calculator." CPI Inflation Calculator. U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11 Feb. 2009. Web. 08 Aug. 2013. <http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=546,000>. Galli, Mark, and Ted Olsen. "Theologians Martin Luther Passionate Reformer." 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2000. 33-36. Print. Hollerith, Virginia. "Biographical Sketch of Herman Hollerith." Isis 62.1 (1971): 69-78.JSTOR. Web. 5 Aug. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/229001>. Martin Bodmer Foundation. Gutenberg Bible Description. 6 Jun. 2013. MP3. McLuhan, Marshall, and Eric McLuhan. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988. 68. Print. Meggs, Philip B., Alston W. Purvis, and Philip B. Meggs. "Printing Comes to Europe."Meggs' History of Graphic Design. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons, 2006. 71-73. Print. New York Times. "Thomas J. Watson Sr. Is Dead; I.B.M. Board Chairman Was 82." On This Day. The New York Times Company, 2010. Web. 6 Aug. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0217.html>. "Someone Said. . ." European Graduate School, Saas-Fee. 7 June 2013. Lecture. The Great Dictator. Dir. Charlie Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. United Artists, 1940. DVD.

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