I will not laugh. Yes, you will. This is why I didn't make it at the ground length. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Welcome to another exciting podcasode of Expertise. I'm your host, Danno Sullivan, and my guest tonight is Clare Sera. Clare, you are an expert in printing. And so, I thought we could probe your area. Pardon me? Of expertise.
Spelled wrong? Naturally. You claim to be an expert in printing, but let me ask you this right off the bat. This so-called business card that you've handed me is completely blank. Is this a modern art project of some kind? Well, look, Danno. The area that I am an expert in is modern, specific, elegant. It is invisiprint. Invisiprint? Yeah. This sounds like as much an art as a craft. I think of printing as perhaps the ultimate expression of the handyman at work. But what you're describing is something way, way beyond that, into the realm of art. More science fiction!
Have you heard of invisiprint? Just from you, and I'm trying to find out more. I really felt like we lost the personal touch. Back in the day, the early printing press, your printer person would press each letter individually. Of course. That's the miracle of movable type. Movable type, Danno. And what were they pressing? Ink. And what was that ink comprised of? Black liquid and blood. The blood of the printer? I'm actually talking about the blood of the printer. As he would go about his daily printing of the press, accidents happen, scratches, scritches, a slight wound, a jealous lover coming over lunch, a little bit of blood got into the ink.
And so it was very personal, and people were quite aware of it at the time. It's like the bloodied press. I've heard that expression. And I believe that is why we are so stirred by the words that we read on a piece of paper. Because it's not just the emotion of the author itself, but the blood of the printer. That is it. And they are combined in such a way that our very being resonates. We've lost that in this world of computer tech wizardry. Most people today have a laser printer, blood free. Where's the art? I'll tell you where the art is, Danno. Invisiprint.
Invisiprint. So this one example that I've seen of Invisiprinting started off with a blank card like the one I'm holding here. I followed the instructions. You say you followed the instructions. Yes. So you worked up a sweat. That was step one, as I recall. I chose jumping jacks. Jumping jacks, very good. And I mean a real sweat. You got real sweaty, dripping sweat happening. I didn't want to say anything. I'll admit I was sweating to the oldies. I actually put on some oldies. And I don't mean music. And was sweat 10. Yeah. So that was step one. Step one. Then you showered off.
Yeah, it almost seemed arbitrary at that point because, well, I was now back in the state where I had begun. So yes, there I was, previously sweaty, now clean and slightly damp, but with fresh water. And fresh eyes, Danno. You were now connected to yourself and to the card. So looking at the card with fresh eyes, as I am now, I did the sweating and the showering just before we got together here. And I apologize for the bathrobe. But looking at the card with fresh eyes, Claire, I'm realizing something that I'm just embarrassed by. This may not be Invisiprinting at all.
I think I was just looking at the back of the business card. When I flip it over, it says, Mary Johnson's Boutique, New and Used Antiques, Available 13, 13 Mockingbird Lane, Northern New Hampshire, Vermont, 02451, and a phone number. Well, that actually feels like an Invisiprinting error. She's in Northern New Hampshire, Vermont. She probably filled in the form wrong. A lot of people nowadays just aren't used to filling in forms. So I guess my question is, do I have Invisiprinting, do I have faulty Invisiprinting, or do I just have a business card that I was looking at backwards?
Could we go back in history a little bit away from Invisiprinting and examine the origins of all our modern techniques? I know that you know a lot about modern printing and historical printing. If you go back to the early days of printing, I know we're supposed to give credit to China, but most people around here, anyway, in Northern Vermont, New Hampshire, think of printing starting with Johannes Gutenberg. Yeah, which is actually not his real name. No. It was a printing error. You don't say. The very first one, I'm guessing. Yes, it was the very first printing error, and of course, that would have been bad advertising.
Sure, right. And also, the word graphic comes from those days, because Mr. Gutenberg, whose original name was Mr. Badenberg, was very graphic with his first printed novels. A lot of bad language, I'm guessing. Yes, yeah. And I know that the Pope came down hard on bad language books, as they were called in the early days of printing. Yes, bad language books. Printing was... I was just going to say, printing was... Yes. And then I was going to say, yes, um... Printing was a very controversial way to express oneself back in the day, because there were only controversial opinions back then.
Unlike today, we did not know how to get along. That's right, and so many opinions today are bland. That's one of the things I would like to have been, a Gutenberg or a Badenberg, because at least you knew which side you were on, and an argument was an argument was an argument. Well, interestingly, so when Badenberg created his first typograph, and his first lettering, his rival, which was Johanna Berg, she did not need good or bad. She was just sort of the middle Berg. Yes. She was creating her own typograph across town. Oh, so a little bit of competition?
Yeah, and completely different letters. So pretty sure Gutenberg used the Roman letters that we know today. What was Johanna's using? She used the letters of the hieroglyphic. Oh, so probably even then, there was a pretty small market for anything printed in hieroglyphs? I mean, there was no market for anything printed yet, Dano. And if she'd been able to have her way, we would still be using hieroglyphs today, which... We'd still be speaking hieroglyphic. Which, you know, that is shepherd's crook, shepherd's crook, bird, bird, shepherd's crook. Tell me about it, jackal head.
Right? So much easier, and I feel like I would be, my emotions would be understood with what I'm saying. Yeah, sometimes it's easier to express yourself in a language that seems on its face to mean either nothing at all, or exactly what it seems to say. So you mentioned that she was a Middleburg, and that actually makes me ask another historical question about type, movable type, as we know it. A lot of folks know that our expression of uppercase letters and lowercase letters come from the printer's actual physical cases full of letters, individual letters.
So there were uppercase and lowercase. I've heard tell of a middle case. I can tell you, Dano, middle case was the hieroglyph. There you go. Yes. That's why we don't hear about it anymore. It has been erased from our history. So it's almost an expression now. You say, oh, well, I'll express my opinion in all uppercase letters, and that means it's big and bold, or just the opposite. You shouldn't express your opinion in lowercase letters. But some people, even today, could be expressing themselves in middle case letters. If we could express ourselves in middle case hieroglyphs, what a more gentle and peaceful planet this would be.
And again, before we had movable type, words had no meaning. People on the street would say words at each other in really kind of random orders, letters in random orders. They just were not sure what letter came before what letter, because you're saying it out loud into the air. What does it mean? It's nothing. Well, I know I've seen pictures in fairy tales and things. I know they had street signs, for example, and those were made up of letters. But I'm getting the sense from what you're telling me that those were random letters that coincidentally came to spell what we now know as words, but that were at the time just a mix.
Just a random pile of letters put on a sign. It must have been hila to live in those days. You know, I sometimes, I can't help but wonder if maybe it wasn't more pleasant. If words had no meaning, could you really be mad at someone for what they said? Yeah, you can't hold it against somebody. Well, you can't hold it because there's nothing like a printed thing to hold. You know, puppies were never scolded with a newspaper rolled up because no such thing existed. No newspaper. Nor did children ever get scolded. Back in that day, with the meaninglessness of words, communication was simply visual.
A lot of pointing, I guess. There was a lot of pointing. Gutenberg was famous for his movable type, which sort of implies that previously people had been printing with immovable type. Can you tell us a little bit about immovable type? It must have been heavy. Well, Danno, yes. It was heavy. You couldn't move the letters around. And again, they were in random order. So it was basically the same paper every day. Coming back around to your modern day Invisiprint, that makes me think about the economies of scale that because you can't see what's printed on the page, you could actually use the same paper repeatedly.
And my God, that's good for our Earth's gentle ecosystem. Thank you. It is. We have been experimenting with a type of DNA print, fingerprint-based communication. To completely obviate the need for printing anything, because we'd be communicating otherwise? Yes. Yeah. I was hoping I'd misunderstood that, but that's what it is. That's what it is. And it's not working. I'm sure you know as well as I do. I can see it in your eyes, and I'm getting a kind of eerie sensation from you that psychic communication is almost impossible. Dana, I'm going to tell you, as an expert in printing from the early days of the Bergs on through to my pioneering work with Invisiprint, I feel like the future is living hieroglyphs.
So every person carries with them some shepherd crooks, a jackal, a couple of birds. Oh, Claire, this is just so beautiful. I'm just picturing it. Anytime you need to make an utterance, you place your figures, your living figures, into position to communicate your message. Exactly. I've got a jackal head on my shoulders, I've got an owl to my left, and an ankh to my right, and you know what I'm saying, right? I get you, and I agree with your opinion. Since we started with business cards, I think it might be appropriate to finish with business cards. In this day and age, do you think that the business card is actually a useful accessory for people in business?
I don't want to tell people their business, but I'd like to know what their business is when they hand me a card. That said, you know, it's gone the way of the dodo, which I'm also bringing back into the hieroglyphs. What would the dodo represent in hieroglyphs? Something that is extinct? Yes, or stupid. Stupidly extinct. You'd have to be stupid. To be extinct. To be extinct. Yeah, yep. And on that cheerful note, we will bid farewell to tonight's expert, Claire Sarah, with her deep knowledge of the wonderful world of printing. Claire, thank you. Pleasure. The Expertise Spelldron podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome.
Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are. You'd have to be so stupid to be extinct. Jackal, jackal, onk. Ah-ha! Oh, that was her onk. Onk if you love Jesus.
