Adam Savage Learns How Old Books Were Made!

“Yes including human skin, which is boring”. 🤣 damn, sister’s cold as ice, I love it

“the whole point of a book is to protect the information inside it.” — so simple yet so profound; That made the video for me. Keep rocking Adam 👊🏼🙏🏼💜

Thank you Adam and Madeleine! Thank you for your enthusiasm and your expertise and the heart behind your videos.

I did not expect this video to be as enthralling and educational as it was! I LOVE her! She's an absolute natural and a treasure! ❤

Considering the fact that the codex was invented to transmit the Christian Bible I think it's fitting to refer to the "common era" as "After Christ" in a book binding museum. Just saying

I imagine this would be a great introduction to bookbinding. Thanks for sharing the tour!

I noticed several great demonstrations by master bookbinders in the suggested videos. A few years ago I got into paper marbling for work and ended up heading through book binding all the way to masters programs in book preservation from Oxford. Same year I made a comment on a video about wanting to tour German bakeries some day which lead to 6 months of behind the scenes, daily routines of German bakeries. I still want to taste the real thing though and learn to really make it.

truly fascinating video, so cool to learn about this

Very very enlightening!!!!

My dad worked at Lockheed Martin and they occasionally issued tools to mechanics. He gave me a tool once and I asked him what it was. Said he didn't know and the person that gave it to him didn't know either. Ive had it for 30 years now and I've never figured it out.

this is like Adam talking to a female Adam.

I took a calligraphy class in college and we had to make a book. It was really cool! Loved this video, thanks!!

I’m having such a good time, rewatching this on a lazy Sunday over brunch, before heading out to a flea market.
I absolutely love this video, it’s one of my favorite Tested videos. I’m a bit surprised to not see Madelines name mentioned in the videos description. She is such an amazing character, credit is due!
@tested

I love her hair! What an awesome lady.

Could you make this space into a 360 virtual space that one could use their VR headset and walk (virtually) through this space and explore your collection? I would absolutely die for that opportunity.

NEATO!!!
I LOVE old books!!!
Especially old school texts and old reference books. I’ve always gravitated towards those too type specifically. But my most prized bibliographic possessions are these three first edition “The Addams Family” hardcover comic/cartoon books from back in the day. Some of them are in terrible shape (resale wise) but I ADORE them!!! I found them at the dump one day!!! Score!!

Would love to see how book binding rolls into the modern age with electricity and true mass production.

im a athiest but i still find something mildly offensive about a book binding historian using the terms common era when religeon played a fundemental role in not only the writing of the callender shes refferencing but the writing and history of many of the first books

This is interesting. School taught me about the impact of printing press, but never mentioned this part of the process.

One thing I absolutely despise is the ongoing trend in the 21st Century where many books are starting to be inappropriately and wrongfully sold as hardcover when they're actually glue bound paperbacks glued to a "hardback" and are sold at what would be hardcover market prices. It doesn't make any sense either, as machines do the string sewing and binding it isn't done by hand anymore except for a few publishers like Easton Press which has a beautiful leather-bound partially hand made (it isn't for instance hand-pressed) set of Tolkien's best works and yes they do payment installments with 0% interest though the full price upfront isn't too expensive for I think it's 5 real leather-bound hardcover volumes. Whenever I purchase new books that're sold as hardcover and weren't via clearance pricing and are actually glue bound, look for the strings in between the pages, I return it and get a cheaper paperback instead which is literally the same thing that is glue bound. 🙄 I don't understand it...gluebound doesn't last forever, anywhere near as long as string bound binding can....nope. Even as recent as the 1970s there were "premium" paperbacks that were still string bound but in the cheaper paperback cover instead of heavy cardstock or leather covers...Dover Publications was one of the presses doing that with their older editions of "premium" paperbacks. And the advantage of a real hardcover string bound book is that if the cover were to deteriorate and fall apart, the book usually is still intact and can always be rebound by yourself or to be sent out to a professional book binder or hobbyist crafter that knows how to do it and do it right to save the book...unfortunately if it's a collectible it isn't worth as much without the original cover but at least it's salvaged and if done right shouldn't be a terrible concern. 🤷‍♂️ People have that done with family heirloom bibles, for instance, that're very old and falling apart, have those sent out to be rebound to the original cover if that can be repaired or a new one. Are publishers destroying and throwing away their real hardcover book machinery!? Why is that otherwise happening? With those machines that still exist, the cost "savings" of ripoff glue bound editions is negligible, isn't it? Have you noticed that? What do you think of that? I don't care how much "better" 21st Century book binding glue is than it used to be as it still will dry out and otherwise string binding will always be better and much more reliable. I think it's disgusting that there's publishers world wide doing that, including major publishers. Just because they glued a "hardback" to a paperback doesn't make it a "hardcover book" and worthy of being sold for the same pricing as the market prices are for real hardcover books. Great video though, I was already familiar with some of it regarding the traditional industrial publishing of real hardcover books though getting to see what the machinery looked like and how it was used and kept getting better and easier is impressive. I love quality books; I'll never switch to ebooks if I can help it!

That Woman could not even bring herself to A.D. pretty sad.

How awesome that a dutch text ended up on the wall behind the book binding unit.

Awesome video!

My mother was a bookbinder in Reading England. She was a apprentice during the late 1930s. She took over the job in January 1940 the man who was tra8ng her enlisted. He was killed at Dunkirk 6 months later. Her job considered essential, continued thru the war. They printed officers log books all the way to manuals and medical books. She came to the US in the 1950s .
On her daily walks, to and from work to home, she was straffed by stray aircraft machine gun rounds while the RAF were shooting at bombers during the blitz.

Smyth is still around making book sewing machines today.

are they still pooping in the streets in SF?😂

She's got the SF blue hair but loves when the rich man takes the invention away from the poor inventor.

I found me the only set "modern carpentry" on Amazon. Score

She couldn’t say AD had to say common era disregarding the Jesuit monks making our Georgian calendar which fixed the major problems we had I hate political correctness

wow. So many questions answered.

30% of viewers liked this? Now thats what you call good content! The lady is soo lovely!

Lol...she calls literally the most interesting factoid by far (the human skin part) boring 😂

After watching this, I'd say a book is like a box: a hinged container for information rather than material.

Them books weren't old when they was made...

She did an incredible job, I didn't expect this to be so interesting

Books? I didn't know that you could read.

I did go to a bookbinders school when i was young. This realy takes me back to that time. My god 60 books an hour! I was happy when i sewed 1 book in an hour. But then you had to learn to make the books as perfect as posible so time was not an isue.
We had also such a bookbinding machines with needles. You could sew a book in under 10 minutes.
We had also a guillotine but computer assisted. You could program it to cut a series of cuts in a row so you don't have to set the mesurement for each cut. But this guillotine is much cooler and you get a good exercise.
I also worked in a museum where they restored damaged books. They also did work most with leather and gold cover printing.
They also made marble paper that was used to cover books with. Very cool to see.
Now i don't have the pacience anymore. I did work some time in a printing office where this realy came in handy.
By the way. Plano = a single sheet, Folio = 1 times folded sheet, Quatro = 2 times folded sheet, Octavo = 3 times foldet sheet, Cedecimo = 4 times folded, Duodecimo = 4 times folded (different foldmethod).

Fascinating video and Madeline is a delight! I was lucky enough to see the Book of Kells exhibit at Trinity College and a good portion of the exhibit went over the book making process, including the binding, but also procuring the materials to make the pigments for the illuminated manuscripts. The monks used very much the same process for binding described here and I did not know that survived all the way up to the 19th century.

I like her

My uncle has a 1890s copy of the iliad printed with the original ancent greek

I adore this type of content!

So cool she talking about Gilding as it's such a not talked about thing or well documented on the internet. Yet I LOVED gilded books!

I could watch this for a week.

Fantastic. I own 100s of leather bound books from 18-19C but I never knew how they are bound. This is why it is almost impossible to restore antique books today. This craft is almost lost.

museum??? YES please

I liked the little blurb about Gutenberg and how the Chinese had movable type before Gutenberg. Someday I must find and admire Gutenberg's 42-line Bible. As a person who studied Graphic Arts / Printing at a vocational high school, I found this video fascinating.

This is another museum I could spend hours in marveling and admiring the craftsmanship and skills of book binding. The docent was excellent, and I could see myself having an extended conversation with her, given the chance.