These days, we don’t think much of books, do we? They’re here, they’re there, they’re everywhere. Right in your own house, you probably have hundreds of them! They’re cheap, mass-produced volumes of information, education, joy and delight. They’re full of fancy typography, bright pictures, diagrams and indices. They have paperback covers with pretty, colourful designs on them. It’s hard to imagine the world without books, isn’t it?

And yet…this was a reality for thousands of people, once upon a time. Once upon a time, centuries ago, before a German goldsmith looked at a wine-press and got a brainwave so big, it swept into Rennaissance Europe like a tsunami and changed everything forever. That brainwave was the printing-press and the little German goldsmith was a fellow named Johannes Gutenberg. Gutenberg the goldsmith had, almost singlehandedly, revolutionised the world when he invented his newest and greatest machine…the printing-press.

Before books went to Press

Of course, books existed before Gutenberg had his big idea. They were all big, handsome, leatherbound volumes sitting on shelves or in bookcases in massive institutions such as monastries, churches, schools and universities. Some people were lucky enough to own books in their houses, usually massive castles or manor houses with their own private libraries. While books certainly were not new in Gutenberg’s time, one thing that made these books different from the books that he would create, was that nearly all pre-Gutenberg books were handwritten! They were created by scholars, monks, scribes and priests in universities, abbeys, monastries and churches all over Europe and they were frightfully expensive! To write out by hand, a copy of the Bible, in Latin, with a quill pen, took months, even years of dedicated, daily hard work, and the poor scribe couldn’t afford to make a single mistake! Not easy to do when you’re in a freezing cold scriptorium writing by candlelight.

Because books were so hard to reproduce in the Middle Ages, they were naturally extremely expensive. Few people knew how to read or write, which made this reproduction even harder, and even fewer people could afford to buy such pretty things as books! This was what the world was like when Gutenberg came into the world, ca. 1398, as a kicking, screaming baby named Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg!

The Birth of Gutenberg

Gutenberg’s date of birth is not precisely known. It could be 1395, 1398 or, to make it nice and tidy, even 1400! But nobody has ever figured it out for sure. What is known is that he was born in the city of Mainz in Germany, that his parents were Friele and Else Gensfleisch and that his original surname translates as “Goose meat” (or “Goose flesh”) in English! It would hardly do for a great inventor to have a name that sounded like a Christmas dinner, which is why it was later changed to the more acceptable ‘Gutenberg’, which was the name of his father’s ancestors.

Gutenberg came from a pretty well-to-do family which happened to be one of the wealthiest in Mainz. He grew up around the goldsmiths in Mainz and eventually, he became one himself, a profession that would prove invaluable to him in his later years. Gutenberg’s father died in 1419 and by the late 1430s, Gutenberg was making a living as a goldsmith.

The Birth of the Press

Growing up in (what is now) western Germany in the Rhineland, Gutenberg had probably seen the great successes of the German winemaking industry, which flourished in the rich valleys and soils of the region. It is thought that Gutenberg got the idea for his printing-press by examining the massive wine-presses then in operation at the enormous vineyards dotted throughout the countryside.

In the “old days”, wine was pressed by hand, with people climbing into big tubs of grapes and smashing them down with their feet to get out the grape-juice. In Gutenberg’s time, vinters were using the mechanical power of the threaded-shaft wine-press to crush the grapes to get out the juice. Machines like this were everywhere in the Rhineland and it’s not too hard to see where Gutenberg got the idea for his printing-press. In the mid-1400s, these were the modern equivalent of food-processors, taking something that previously took hours by hand (or, in the case of grape-crushing, foot) and speeding it up so that grapes could be crushed in great quantities in a matter of minutes, producing rich, concentrated and cleaner grape-juice.

A miniature model of a wine-press

Ideas were all well-and-good, but one big problem was that in order to create what was then a truly revolutionary machine, the printing-press, Johannes Gutenberg would need money. And lots of it. Even though Gutenberg’s family was wealthy, it wasn’t exactly swimming in gold. In the 1410s, the Gutenberg family (along with several other aristocratic Mainz families) were forced out of the city in an uprising and made to settle elsewhere. And at any rate, Mainz, once a bustling city, was no place for Gutenberg to try and start up a new business. It had been hit hard by the Black Death of the 1340s and 50s and it was now a shadow of its former self. In order to raise the money needed to create his new toy, Gutenberg would have to go to the city of Strasbourg, two days boat-ride down the Rhine from Mainz.

Over the next few years, Gutenberg met up with goldsmiths, carpenters and investors who were becoming interested in his idea. Of course, printing (of a sort) had existed before Gutenberg’s time, but such printing was woodcut block-printing; it wasn’t as versatile or as long-lasting as what Gutenberg had in mind. Wood-block printing could only be used to print copies of one specific thing, and since the printing-surface was made of wood, it didn’t last very long due to contact with water-based inks.

What Gutenberg had in mind was a proper printing-press with movable type. The stamps or more correctly, ‘type-pieces’, would be cast out of metal to make them long-lasting and they would be cast in individual letters so that the printer could rearrange them in any order and position that he desired, to create new words, new paragraphs and new pages, making it literally ‘movable type’.

The problems facing Gutenberg were numerous in number and considerable in their impediment of his progress. To get the money needed to build the press and mass-produce the hundreds of little metal letter-blocks needed to fill the press-bed and to get the vellum and the paper needed to print on, Gutenberg turned to a man named Johann Fust, a moneylender who loaned him 800 Guilders to help him on his way. Apart from all this, Gutenberg also had to get his hands on ink! Traditional handwriting ink, which was water-based, was too liquid to be used on the printing-press with its smooth metal type-pieces. Instead, Gutenberg had to create a whole new kind of oil-based ink which was thicker and which he could rub and work onto the type so that he could print pages reliably.

Making the metal type-pieces for his printing-press was one of the bigger challenges that Gutenberg faced. Although paper could be produced rather cheaply, for his printing-press to work, Gutenberg needed hundreds, possibly thousands of copies of the alphabet so that he could start printing. This involved extensive and tricky metalworking. To make one type-piece, he needed to engrave the letter into a block of metal, the engraved block was then used to strike a matrix, or a mould, which would be used to create the typeface. With the matrices and moulds created, Gutenberg was able to cast the hundreds of letters and punctuation marks that would be necessary to fill the press-bed and create a page of type.

By the 1440s, Gutenberg was ready to print. He had the press, the type, the paper and the ink. Now it was time to start working!

Going to Press

Gutenberg is most famous for printing the Bible, however, he didn’t start off with the Bible. Such a massive and important tome as that would have to wait until he had perfected his craft! Instead, he started by printing small pamphlets and leaflets, small religious documents and other test-pieces, to see how well his machine worked.

In the early 1450s, however, Gutenberg started with his grand dream: Printing the Bible!

When exactly Gutenberg started printing and therefore, how long it took him to finish the Bible, is unknown, but the first copies of Gutenberg Bibles became available in about 1455. The Gutenberg Bible was certainly a massive undertaking, and when you see what went into making just one bible, you’ll understand why Gutenberg practiced on smaller jobs first!

A modern replica of a Gutenberg Press

Gutenberg’s Bible (also called the ’42-Line Bible’ because each page had 42 lines of text) was not just a book, it was an elaborate artwork of illustrations, flourishes, colour-printing and typographical perfection. This amazing, illuminated manuscript was Gutenberg’s crowning achievement as a printer, something he must’ve felt very proud of.

A page of the famous Gutenberg Bible

Gutenberg experimented with a lot of things when he printed; by inking certain parts of the movable-type different colours, he was able to create colour-printing, with various parts of the text printed in red or blue ink, to make it stand out even more and make it more noticable.

Gutenberg’s press was a revolution. Although it would take a few years to catch on, Gutenberg had done what nobody else before had managed to do: make printing easier, more efficient and cheaper. It’s often believed that Gutenberg invented printing outright – this isn’t true. He merely improved on printing-methods of the day to produce something that would benefit mankind much more than any other system of mass-printing that had come before. By the 1500s, the press was spreading throughout Europe and for the first time in history, news, information and literature could be mass-produced cheaply and quickly and sent all around the continent.

The End of Gutenberg

Although Gutenberg had revolutionised the world of writing and printing in the same way that Henry Ford would eventually revolutionise the world of transport five hundred years later, unlike Ford, Gutenberg didn’t exactly live to see fame and fortune.

In 1455, Johann Fust, the moneylender who had loaned Gutenberg his much-needed start-up cash, demanded his loan be paid back. He took Gutenberg to court, claiming that the funds he had given to Gutenberg had not been used for the purpose that Gutenberg had borrowed them for. Fust’s determination and evidence caused the court to rule in his favour, leaving Gutenberg a broken and bankrupt man. It would be another ten years, in 1465, that Gutenberg finally got the credit he deserved, for the mark that he’d made upon technology. Gutenberg was rewarded by Adolph II of Nassau, Archbishop of Maintz with the title of ‘Gentleman of the Court’. This title came with a court outfit, a stipend and two tonnes of grain and wine, tax-free. Gutenberg, with the help of friends and relations, also eventually rebuilt his business as a printer, although he didn’t make the fortunes that he hoped he would, from his printing business. He died on the third of February, 1468, at the age of seventy.