Цена путевки на боро боро,
Поиск тура в египет корал,
Горящие туры иваново.

Contrary to “common knowledge”, Gutenberg did not invent the printing press any more than Henry Ford invented the automobile. Nor did he invent movable type. He certainly did not invent the paper and ink that I heard him given credit for by a keynote speaker at an annual Society for Technical Communications conference.

The whole process of printing already existed, but each piece of type was hand-carved, making the type itself the most expensive part of the process. Gutenberg was a silversmith and his invention was a reusable mold with interchangeable faces that let the type be cast instead carved. He turned the most expensive task into the cheapest. With CAST type, the number of pieces you had was no longer the bottleneck, you could choose your pieces from a veritable FOUNTAIN of type — “font” in French.

That’s the parallel with your story about Paul MacCready. He changed the most time consuming part of the project, the rebuilding, into the fastest and cheapest, and thereby changed everything.

And that’s what have done several times in digital publishing projects: I have automated what had been the bottleneck to totally change the nature of the workflow. If you’re interested in talking about this, I have several soapboxes that I can step up onto.