In Gutenberg put his press to commercial use, producing thousands of indulgences for the Church. The following year he printed his famous line Bible, the first book printed on a moveable type press in the West. Gutenberg's press was the combined effort of several discoveries and inventions. The printing press was built around the traditional screw press, a precursor to today's drill press, with an added matrix on which individually-cast letters and symbols could be arranged to form the desired text.
This moveable type design allowed pages of text to be quickly assembled from a pre-cast selection of letters and symbols rather than laboriously carved from a block of wood as in the block printing method.
Gutenberg also created a unique oil-based ink which transferred from his metal type to the printing substrate much more effectively than the water-based inks that other printers of the era used. Gutenberg died in approximately in Mainz. It should be noted that others in history claim to have come up with the idea of movable type earlier than Gutenberg did, including a Dutchman and a Chinese inventor.
A system similar to his is said to have also been used in the 12th century in Korea. The printing press and all that it brought to the masses helped to inspire a religious revolution, as families were, for the first time, able to possess a Bible for their own interpretation. It also factored into the progress of science, general education, and is said to have been key in moving the world out of the Medieval era into the Early Modern period.
Don't miss our next newsletter! Cricket Media Articles. Invention Activities. For Educators InvenTeam Grants. Professional Development. He then created a revolving table for typesetters to organize with more efficiency, which led to greater speed in printing.
It was exported to Europe and, coincidentally, documented many Chinese inventions that have been traditionally attributed to Europeans. Goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg was a political exile from Mainz, Germany when he began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France in He returned to Mainz several years later and by , had a printing machine perfected and ready to use commercially: The Gutenberg press.
In order to make the type available in large quantities and to different stages of printing, Gutenberg applied the concept of replica casting, which saw letters created in reverse in brass and then replicas made from these molds by pouring molten lead.
Researchers have speculated that Gutenberg actually used a sand-casting system that uses carved sand to create the metal molds. The letters were fashioned to fit together uniformly to create level lines of letters and consistent columns on flat media. Gutenberg was also able to perfect a method for flattening printing paper for use by using a winepress, traditionally used to press grapes for wine and olives for oil, retrofitted into his printing press design.
Gutenberg borrowed money from Johannes Fust to fund his project and in , Fust joined Gutenberg as a partner to create books. They set about printing calendars, pamphlets and other ephemera. In , Gutenberg produced the one book to come out of his shop: a Bible. Each page of the Bible contained 42 lines of text in Gothic type, with double columns and featuring some letters in color.
For the Bible, Gutenberg used separate molded letter blocks and 50, sheets of paper. Many fragments of the books survive. There are 21 complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, and four complete copies of the vellum version. In , Fust foreclosed on Gutenberg. Gutenberg is believed to have continued printing, probably producing an edition of the Catholicon , a Latin dictionary, in But Gutenberg ceased any efforts at printing after , possibly due to impaired vision.
He died in One notable detail about this edition is the inclusion of a colophon for the very first time in history. A colophon is the section of a book that details publication information. Ten copies of this edition of The Book of Psalms are known to still exist. The spread of printing as a trade benefited from workers in Germany who had helped Gutenberg in his early printing experiments and then went on to become printers who taught the trade to others.
By , Italian printers began to make a successful trade in printed matter. German printers were invited to set up presses at the Sorbonne in Paris in , and the librarian there chose books to be printed, mostly textbooks, for the students. By , other German printers had moved to Paris and set up private companies. Spain welcomed German printers in in Valencia, spreading to Barcelona in
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