This city square is lying to you
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Gutenbergplatz in the German city of Mainz isn't being totally honest with visitors. Let's talk about Mainz's surprising place in the world, and the truth (as far as we know) about its most famous son.
Chapters:
00:00 This square is lying
00:19 The French connection
00:57 Destruction and reconstruction
01:22 The 50th parallel?
01:39 Not where it should be
02:03 The old university
02:28 Gutenberg
03:23 Not a good likeness
03:51 Scarce information
04:15 Not his real name
04:39 The print revolution
05:12 Two lies: excusable?
Music:
"On My Way Home"
by The 126ers
RUclips Audio Library
"Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com/
Creative Commons Attribution licence
Street map created with data from:
OpenStreetMap openstreetmap.org/
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Send letters and postcards to:
Rewboss
Postfach 10 06 29
63704 Aschaffenburg
Germany
Please don't send parcels or packages, or anything that has to be signed for.
1:53 I assume that ought to be 49°59'56", right?
Ah, of course, a mistake I didn't catch.
@@rewboss Again! Ach Mein Gott! 😰
His 50' was close but good enough
@@RobMoerland I just know enough navigation trivia to know that that‘s not the case. 1 minute on the equator is eqivalent to 1 nautical mile…
@@theoztreecrasher2647 Ach Mainz Gott :(
While it isn't at the 50th parallel using the coordinate system that GPS uses (WGS84), it is on the 50th parallel using Germany's DHDN coordinate system at about 50°0'0.2" N
The latitude marker might have been correct when it was laid down. Due to a revision of the geoid, the zero meridian marker at Greenwich isn't at zero longitude anymore, either.
You are thinking about longitude. The latitude was pretty well known how to measure even before Gutenberg printed books and pamphlets.
@@deelkar The point still stands, for the most part. Back in the 18th and 19th century, things had to be approximated a whole lot more. Which led to a multitude of reference systems because it was a bungle of regional "close enoughs." It was only with the advent satellite navigation that there was one unified frame of reference. Meaning that things got a whole lot precise in 1984. So a change of 120m, was it?, to the North is actually pretty good.
Some GPS software/devices may allow you to select the correct datum for the UK, as used on OS maps (OSGB).
@@deelkar No. Both Latitude and Longitude were moved by several meters when the WGS84 system was introduced, in (guess when?) 1984.
"Mercifully, they kept to low rise building so that the cathedral would still dominate the skyline". Actually, before the war, the cathedral was hidden by the surrounding buildings, so visibility of that skyline was sort of an innovation.
Which Buildings were higher than the Mainzer Dom at that time?
@@ForodirThey weren't higher, but they obstructed the view anyway.
@@ReinholdOtto
You mean the Domplatz was smaller and so the Dom was not so nice standing out, yes that could be true
To answer your question about the 50-degree line is not where you expected it.
You need to go and talk to the people at the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy - they will be better at explaining it than me.
When that line was worked out they probably used the German version of the globe before GPS was a thing.
Because the earth is not 100% round or unformed and equal, over time each country or head of the cartography science office developed its own model (a fully round model overlaid on the earth) so it is easier to work out/draw/print maps etc, do cartography stuff and draw longitude and latitude lines etc.
Because your phone would be using the USA GPS system or the European GPS systems based upon the USA model of the round earth - so things do not crash into other things...
Thus because the starting point of both the USA and German models, even with the 1884 Washington DC for the International Meridian Conference agreeing on that Greench was the start line, it is not a fully agreed upon construct because each country uses its own round model to fix issues.
QED comparing the two models USA vs Germany you have differences and issues - which you found out in this video.
GPS uses the WGS84 Geoid. I assume the 50°N marker is based on the old Coordinate Reference System used in RLP (GK3 on the Bessel ellipsoid). That one isn't in use anymore. Since 2010 RLP uses the ETRS89 Reference System which originally was quite similar to WGS84 but the continental drift since 1989 lead to a difference of ca. 1 meter by now.
@@lukasrentz3238 Good point about the continental drift (I forgot about that) - Australia Is drifting north so fast GPS can't keep up - last time I looked it was 2 to 5 meters out
@@QALibrary Thanks for that. I always wondered why the road track on my old vehicle GPS system was over in the trees when out in the back blocks. 😉😊
As a Brit from the Westcountry who found himself staying in the countryside around Aschaffenburg almost a decade ago, I too went for a day out in Mainz... but never knew about this, so thanks for the additional info!
As soon as I saw the statue on the thumbnail, I knew which city you're talking about...
4:12 David Mitchell is by far the best imagination of Shakespeare one can have :D
Given what Shakespeare did for a living, I doubt he would have cared about the exact shape of the beard. His "historical" pieces used a lot of artistic license.
How do you know ?
lol I didn't even recognize him with the wig and bald cap combo. But I find it even more hilarious he included Doctor Who's version ^^
@@gingeridot The real version you mean. After all Dr Who went back in time to talk to him, so it must be correct!
@@KaiHenningsen He also used artistic license in how to write his name, or rather, used many different spellings.
there are so many Geoids (Referencing system, representing the shape and gravity field of the earth) perhaps the line was not drawn on WGS84, but European 1979, or WGS-72 or even European1950. they are off by a few or even 300m, depending the region. (my favourite is Bermuda 1957, because i always expect things to magically disappear if i set my garmin to that.)
It somehow always surprises me to see how far South the UK actually reaches, although I know it. Something in my brain holds on to the thought, that all of the UK is North of any part of Germany.
It's exactly the same for me. For some reason I always think London lies farther north than Hamburg, when in reality, Hamburg is "more northern" than London.
@@wohlhabendermanager Hamburg is just 15 minutes of latitude further north than Liverpool, which may be why The Beatles liked it so much
Imho Mainz is the most livable city in the triangle of Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Mainz. But that is only me, I think.
As someone who's always lived in villages or small towns (8000 ppl max.) living in Mainz is like living in a large village with actual public transport. Best of two worlds if you ask me.
Wiesbaden resident here. Mainz is the best i agree
Gutenberg made lies harder to maintain, he made statements check able. Like where EXACTLY the 50th parallel is. He is a hero he didn’t intend
It was more like transporting messages or knowledge, instead of sending out a person telling a story. It became a multiplier of ideas.
There still must be a lot of trust in the author, and the idea was, you don't take the effort to print something, to spread a lie. It's the believe in the good in the human.
One of the opinions on the bible then was that it's an old book with a fair share of nonsense.
And the book Don Quichotte of 1605 starts from the idea that people can have access to large corpus of fantasy literature and be lost to reality.
There's a nice Tom Scott video from nearly a decade ago called "Why The Prime Meridian Isn't At 0º" that explains a similar (though about meridians and not parallels) observation about the prime meridian in Greenwich. Isn't it possible, that the in principal same explanation applies here and that this marking of a parallel is less a lie and maybe more kind of another perspective?
I love the Tom Scott videos, and I kind of miss them. Also, I would agree with your assumption that a similar principle applies in Mainz (and surely many other places as well). It affects longitude and latitude likewise.
I don't know him and his videos, but the parallels are defined purely by geometry (position on the sphere between fixed pole = 90° and equator = 0°) while the meridian actually is randomly set by 0° = Greenwich.
@@ralfjansen9118 The Tim Traveller has an interesting video about the Parisian competitor to the Greenwich Meridian, btw.
@@ralfjansen9118 well, that would be true, if the Earth would be a perfect rotational ellipsoid or perfect spheroid, which it is not. As we are talking here about a deviation of a bit more than a hundred meters, we are also talking about an error of around 0.01% against the simplified geometrical model. I am not sure, if this definitely counts as "lie".
Yes this is exactly right, the line is on the 50th parallel in Germany's DHDN coordinate system, but not in the one GPS uses
Before GPS and adoption of newer positional systems similar to WGS84 datum which is used on GPS receivers and phones, the official map datum used in Germany by geographic surveys was the Bessel Ellipsoid based Potsdam Datum, often not given in degrees and minutes but instead in Gauss-Krüger coordinates. The reference point for the terrestrial triangulation network was the TP Rauenberg which is actually NOT in Potsdam, but since the hill was destroyed a marker in Potsdam was used later keeping the original coordinate system. You can visit a replica of the original TP today in the district Berlin-Tempelhof. Not sure about your app, but dedicated GPS receivers usually have a setting to change the map datum. The same situation exists in Neu-Ulm which lies on the East 10th meridian, and a strip marks this fact which is clearly off if you use a WGS84 datum based GPS device.
Actually the family Gensfleisch lived in Eltville across the big stream ... Eltville at the time was a suburb of Mainz connected to Mainz with a roped ferry ... Gutenberg later helped friends to establish themselves as printers in Eltville - family Bechtermünz - . The Hof Bechtermünz still exist and is incorporated into a winery/restaurant from the family Koegler ... certainly worth visiting! btw ... it is said that Johannes Gutenberg took his inspiration for a printing press from wine presses he had seen in his families home ... Dates and Places where Gutenberg stayed during his lifetime are only documented sparely ... hence the inacurate information ...
Another interesting fact about Shakespeare (the "correct" spelling of his name is disputed) is that we don't have any of the original manuscripts of his plays (some of the sonnets of which he wrote more than plays) but all we have of his plays are copies made and no-one knows why.
And something I read about the printing press is that it didn't cause a jump in literacy immediately, with the European literacy rate remaining roughly as it was before right up until the 19th century when it skyrocketed with the advent of the Newspaper and Magazine, with the key difference in the 15th and 16th Century being it allowed the fledgling Bourgeoisie to afford books which they hadn't been able to before (it wasn't until the 19th century that printing advanced enough for books to be affordable to the working class).
Yeah, literacy comes from teaching people how to read and having stuff they want to read.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Giving both skill and the incentives to hone and grow those skills.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Or rather perhaps, having more generally an incentive to read. When industrialisation started dragging the population from farms to urban areas, the ability to read became more valuable for work, shopping etc. Also, although printed newspapers and magazines had existed since the 17th century, the use of cheap wood-pulp paper and steam-powered printing presses in the 19th century made them much more affordable, so you got phenomena like Charles Dickens' weekly-episode novels.
It might have been the exact Location of 50°N in the past since the standard Coordinate System have changed. In RLP it changed from presumably EPSG 31467 to 25832 in 2010.
Also your Compass App doesn't use the Coordinate Reference System used in RLP now but most likely a different one (EPSG 4326). Or they just made it wrong.
It was marketing. On one of the busiest squares in the city it looks better than 100 meters to the north where it doesn't cross anything comparable
@@user-td4kc1ps6y Thats an Option as well. There is an AZ Article Available which may explain it, but sadly behind a Paywall.
4:40 "The impact of the printing press can't be understated" seems like a rather controversial opinion 😉
But maybe it also serves to increase comment engagement, which has definitely worked in my case 😁
LOL! You caught that too?! Even the Captions rolled their eyes and Auto-Corrected that one at my end! 😜😂😂
Lol, I thought I misheard that, because the subtitles are correct on that line. :D
The captions didn't auto-correct. I write them by hand, and that's when I realized I'd goofed. I wrote what I intended to say in the captions, but by this point I'd already had to re-record two sentences and I felt this one was a minor problem that most people won't notice.
@@rewboss Dang! Being a real new-chum to this computer game I had thought that the reason why many of the captions were so bad was because they were auto-generated by a Chinglish bot! 😉😊
@@theoztreecrasher2647 Auto captions are available: they do a reasonably good job if the dialogue is clearly spoken, but usually need a lot of editing to make them perfect. In many cases, though, people don't speak clearly enough for auto captions to work well.
I just find it easier and quicker in the long run to write them by hand, instead of having them auto-generated and then have to go through and edit all the mistakes out of them.
Hey when did you film the video? I was sure I saw you in the city! But I was too afraid to ask😢
Super video, Andrew. Thanks again & Cheers.
Interesting video. In the Santa Claus village in Rovaniemi, Finland there is the arctic circle marked to the ground similarly, and it is fake too. Of course it is nice for tourists who can jump over the line and take selfies, but it is about 2 km south from the real circle, which is actually moving 14.5 meters in a year because of the Earth axle wobbling.
From what I remember, what we do know about how he looked like is that, given the time he lived and his standing, he wouldn't have had a beard.
Regarding Gutenberg not looking like his statue:
Talking about the constellations of stars, Dr. Richard Berendzen pointed out that Orion doesn't look like Orion, Cassiopeia doesn't look like Cassiopeia.
They are named in honour of their subjects, not because they resemble them.
Not sure, but at the end you seemed to duck the issue.
From the point of view of a real "Mänzer" it really won’t make any difference regarding the exact positioning of the 50th parallels presentation as locals will commonly saying _"Mainz liegt auf dem 50. Breitengrad"_ that in fact is true. And the naming of "Johann Gutenberg" is simply a shortened version of _"Johannes Gensfleisch von und zu Gutenberg"_ …like today’s Donald John Trump is often abbreviated as DJT instead.
It might have been the exact Location of 50°N in the past. Today, World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) is used. Historically (and sometimes even today), other coordination systems were used, e.g. different versions of WGS or European Datum 1950 (ED50) and its successor ED 77 and ED 79. And these are just a few coordination systems from the 20th century.
I know that Platz … it's where I got off the bus whenever I went into Mainz from the University campus when I was there in Wintersemester 1989! 35 years ago…
Ah, memories.
And, to be fair to Mainz, when that marker for the 50th-parallel was put in, we didn't have GPS. So I'm not at all surprised that it's off by a few seconds-of-latitude.
He made a small mistake by saying "can't be understated". In the English subtitles it is corrected to "can't be overstated", but in RUclips's automatic subtitles it is still "can't be understated".
Thank you for showing us Mainz - but that shopping centre that almost swallows that medieval stair well is a bit grim!
I'd like to add the fact that the clothes of the statue are pure fantasy, they don't even look close to the 15th century fashion Gutenberg had most likely worn, plus long beards weren't a thing in the early to mid-15th century. Also there have been German language translations of the bible or parts of it as early as the 9th century. The Gutenberg printing process simply enabled a larger distribution.
I also think that lying is a bit too strong of a word to describe inaccuracies or simplifications ;-)
Mainz is such an interesting city with so much history. And (if I dare say it), it retains a bit of the 1950's "Wiederaufbau" flair (or lack of flair) that other cities have long polished away.
At 4:40, it is stated that "The impact of the printing press can't be understated", but you probably mean "overstated"?
What about the 50° N marker at Schloss Johannisberg? Is that a lie, too? (I'm counting on you to sort this out)
Cheers from Mainz!
Also, considering Gutenberg's actual surname, missed opportunity there filming a duck instead of a goose. But there were probably no geese anywhere nearby, so…
I read the thumbnail as the German imperative of "Lesen". So I thought this would be about reading.😂
Just clicked on this because of the picture of Mainz where I had lived for many years.
I really liked this one.
Is your device correct, though? Don't iPhones use the American model, which is tuned to USA and thus it's off by some margin in Europe?
The bass timbre of this video is making things on my table shake. It's pretty comical.
What do you say to Germany's easier self identification law? Have you been in the UK recently?
Based on the weather, it looks like we were in Mainz on the exact same day 😮
Caution, the GPS coordinates given by your phone are probably based upon a different geodetic datum to historic Latitude and Longitude references. Your phone is probably giving WGS84 datum coordinates, coordinates in the UK for example are in OSGB datum coordinates. The name WGS84 refers to the date of the standard, 1984.
There is a death mask (plaster cast) of William Shakespeare in the university library in Darmstadt. So his appearance should not be that unknown.
It's not considered to be authentic. It was discovered in Germany in 1849, and there is no evidence to connect it with Shakespeare in any way -- it just looks a bit like some of the supposed portraits, but there are problems with all of them, and one of them might not even be of Shakespeare at all.
The only academic who thinks it's genuine is Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, who reckons that a swelling of one of the mask's eyes corresponds to a swelling she claims is visible in several of the portraits, even though all but one of those portraits were made after his death and several of them are confirmed fakes. When one of the portraits was revealed to be a fake, she claimed that it must have been substituted for the one she had personally tested and found to be genuine, so I don't think we can unquestioningly believe everything she says. Also, the portraits don't show a lump where she says there is one.
@@rewboss As always, you are very well informed. Yes, there was a lot of cheating at that time, because it was also very difficult to uncover such fraud. Souvenirs like death masks were very popular and, as far as I know, copies were sold in huge quantities back then. In the 90s, when I last saw the mask, it was simply lying in a display case in the Darmstadt University library in the castle next to the entrance, not particularly well secured.
@@rewboss Ok, another lie. As always, you are well informed.
Interesting - I‘d be curious to understand why the position of the line was chosen as it is now - perhaps a measurement error? 🙂
By the way, I‘d like to recommend the book „Gutenberg's Apprentice“ to anyone interested in Gutenberg and his invention - it is a novel written from the point of view of someone hiring on with Gutenberg - who ran a start-up company by all definition of the term! The book is a novel but based on detailed research by the author, so a lot of it is based on historical recordings. His first means of making a return on the years-long path to the final printing press, by the way, is by printing indulgences for the Catholic Church, by the way…
Thank you for the video!
Different reference system.
The thumbnail confuses me. What do I have to read?
Would be interesting if there is a common modell from the earth. In which the 50° is exactly at this line
Nice thumbnail - LIES! is the German translation of READ!
Rather fitting for a video about the guy who greatly improved the people's ability to read for themselves ;)
LIES war auch der Slogan bei Koranverteilaktionen, als gefestigter Atheist habe ich das auch englisch gelesen.
Squares are usually not to be trusted, I prefer a nice triangle or even a circle.
That duck tho
I cannot help hearing "Herr Gensfleisch" as 'Mr Goosemeat', however inaccurate that interpretation of the etymology of Gutenberg's family name may be... Perhaps some native speaker will correct my ideas on that 🤞 - the issue seems to have been ducked, but presumably no geese were available to make any photographic representations on the matter 😂
John Goosemeat of Good Mountain. I can see why he dropped the "Gensfleisch" for professional reasons.
The earth moved, The question is the line still straight?
If u read comments thank u for the great content
Always thought Gutenberg built hist Press in Strasbourg in Exile, while on the run from people whom he owed money... Nice to see some Mainz; I grew up there =)
Nice
When I read "LIES!" I first start to wonder what I am supposed to read.
"Lies" is the German imperative of "lesen" (read) ... at least for those people who still know proper German and not use crooked forms like "lese", "gebe" or "nehme".
Was sagt denn die Stadt, warum sie den 50ten Längengrad falsch angibt? 🤔
A lot of downtown Mainz might be new but at least the taxis are still mostly beige Mercedes instead of Skoda Superbs or Ford Transit Connects with full ad wraps.
What are 150 meters relative to the distance of moon and earth? 🤷🏻♂️
Given that the distance between Earth and Moon differ over the orbit, it's about 2 417 333:1 (perigee) to 2 702 677:1 (apigee), with an average of 2 562 660:1 (semi-major axis)
Or the other way around, it's about 0.000037% to 0.00004137%, with an average of 0.00003902% of the distance to the moon.
That obviously doesn't include the distance from either point (the wrong or the correct one) of 50° north but from the reference point of the earth.
@@HappyBeezerStudios with greetings from Wolframalpha 😉
5:25-5:30
Cool pants and shoes 😄
It's not 50 degrees according to the observatory of Greenwich, but to the publisher house of the London Times (...printing... Gutenberg)
Winnie-peg?
Remember: Whatever your phone tells you, is the truth
Indeed, one must be careful when describing what Gutenberg did. He invented A printing press; not THE printing press. He used movable metal type to print an old and very important book in large numbers. It revolutionized the transmission of knowledge in the West, in a way that printing in the East never did. You just can’t go overboard and say it was the first, oldest, whatever without clarifying /in Europe/.
I wouldn't call the statue a lie.
Since we don't know how he looked like, you can't really lie about that.
You can make unlikely images of him. Things which don't make sense in comparison with the time he lived in.
But I wouldn't call that lying since for me that requires you to know the truth or know that what you are saying isn't true.
Grüß meine Oma von mir.
Third lie: the “square” is not in the shape of a square
It pretty much is, actually; it's certainly rectangular. But the German word for it is "Platz", which just means "place".
Ah yes, Whinnie-peg.
You say:"Lies!"
Und ich las: "50 Grad Nö."
🤷?
Nitpick: Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press, that was already centuries old by his time. Gutenberg is credited with inventing *movable type,* which made the process of setting a page much, much faster, allowing it to be assembled from sets of pre-cast letters, compared to having to carve an entire page out of a single block of wood.
I didn’t know France annexed parts of Germany.. 🤔
Ever heard of Alsace and Lorraine? :) Those are parts of Germany that France kept for good. The annexation mentioned in this video happened in a different era though: During the Napoleonic era France conquered vast parts of Europe, but at first they remained separate countries. During a certain period Napoleon decided to annex certain sections though and make them parts of France proper. That included large sections of northern Italy, The entire Netherlands, and parts of western and northern Germany. Hamburg was at one time part of France - département Bouches-de-l'Elbe. All of that has been undone after Napoleon fell.
@@xaverlustig3581 Thank you for the info! 🤗 I guess the bitterness between the two countries started a long ago lol
@@stephanieparker1250 I don't think it's bitterness, it's just the old-fashioned idea of having more territorry, let you appear more important.
@@holger_p yea that’s probably true 👍
@@holger_p Since when is that old-fashioned? It's actually pretty modern again
How do you know he didn't know about the Chinese printing press? They knew about gun powder and paper money. They traded with China extensively.
"that their Priests had been lying to them" -hmmmm bit inflammatory, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it provoked a spirited discussion on the interpretation of scripture. Otherwise pretty cool video .
All scriptures lie per default. And "interpreting" to your own favour (convenient, how that works, right) is at best priests lying to themselves and at worst, lying to the people that can't read latin. However you see it, a lot of lying involved.
@@MoxxoM Lying is only, if you have bad intention. Without, you just might mistake something, or you are errorous.
@@holger_p My guy. If we believe the bible, the earth is about 6k years old. The Hebrew bible was written waaay later. So either the people that wrote Genesis were on really hard drugs, had severe mental illnesses(in which case you would be right), or they were lying their butts off to control people. And let me tell you something: People with severe mental illnesses, that would cause such hallucinations, are not stable enough to be taken seriously by a large group of people. So even within the context of people not knowing much/anything about the mechanisms that drive the universe, those people just made things up to fit their knowledge. Instead of saying „I don’t know“ they made things up. That’s lying.
And please correct me this the right quotes if I‘m wrong, I am more than willing to concede that point, but where exactly come letters of indulgence into play in the bible? Wasn’t that just gaining money for the clergy with bad intention, if that either wasn’t necessary for redemption or if no redemption could be gained from giving your money to the church?
@@holger_p Bad intentions like making the poor pay up for even the slightest "sins" by abusing their fears of divine punishment after death?
@@shrouddreamer and knowing you are wrong, is the other condition for a lie. Don't know if people able to read latin were enlighted in such a way. Cause it's a believe, and a lie , no matter in what language. Even in german it stayed all Nonsense.
Neverheard that the Chinese invented the printing Press earlier. My Main Take Out of this video.
So you are just clickbaiting us with a raunchy title just to relativize yourself in your video. Cheeky Rew!
Sooooo The same content as in 2017... a little bit lazy ;)
So you are one of those fools who believes everything your mobile/internet tells you.
Call it a Lie and you get views
When I hear "lying", I think of Israel.