The inventor of the movable type printing press, German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398–1468) made mass production of books possible. His press, a wooden frame with rows of letters made from lead and copper, had far-reaching consequences: Within a century of its introduction, books manufactured on Europe’s new printing presses had sparked an intellectual and religious revolution across the continent.
Gutenberg was born in Mainz, a city in western Germany, into an upper-class family. He attended the University of Erfurt and may have been trained as a goldsmith. After several failed business ventures, including an ill-fated mirror business, and a lengthy lawsuit involving several of his partners, he unveiled his first press in 1450.
Prior to Gutenberg’s press, most books were copied by hand, making them extremely expensive. Because the copyists were usually monks, the traditional method of producing books also meant that the Roman Catholic Church had virtually complete control over the material available to European readers.
Gutenberg’s printing process, while slow by modern standards (his famous Bible may have taken about five years to produce), was far quicker than traditional hand copying. In Gutenberg’s original press, each letter was made from lead and then arranged into pages of type. After printing, the type could be broken apart and the letters reused for other pages.
Gutenberg was never a particularly savvy businessman, and the cost of running the press eventually drove him deep into debt. He was briefly exiled from Mainz, but was granted a pension by the city’s archbishop in 1465. Gutenberg died in the city of his birth three years later, just as the radical implications of his invention were starting to become clear. Within fifty years of his death, his invention had spread across the continent. Independent printing presses would play a crucial role in fostering the Protestant Reformation.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Time magazine proclaimed Gutenberg one of the ten “people of the millennium” in 1992, alongside Albert Einstein, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, and other luminaries.
- Copies of an original Gutenberg Bible are among the most sought-after collector’s items in the world. Only about 180 were produced. The last time one of the originals was auctioned, in 1987, the top bid was $5.4 million.
- Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz was established nine years after Gutenberg’s death. It is now one of the largest universities in modern Germany, with about 35,000 students.
