Gutenberg Prints Bible: Movable Type Changes Everything

Every book you have ever read exists because of a goldsmith in Mainz who figured out how to cast individual metal letters and lock them into a frame. Johannes Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, completed around 1455, was not the first printed book in the world — the Chinese had been printing with woodblocks for centuries — but it was the first major work produced with movable metal type in Europe, and it triggered an information revolution that rivals the internet in its impact. Gutenberg had spent nearly two decades developing his system. A trained metalworker, he created an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony that could be cast into precise, durable letterforms. He designed a hand mold that allowed rapid production of identical type pieces, adapted a wine press to apply even pressure across a page, and formulated an oil-based ink that adhered to metal type far better than the water-based inks used by woodblock printers. Each innovation was essential; none worked without the others. The Bible he produced was a masterpiece of both technology and aesthetics. Each page contained forty-two lines of text in two columns, printed in a Gothic blackletter typeface that mimicked the finest manuscript calligraphy. Gutenberg printed approximately 180 copies — about 135 on paper and 45 on vellum. The work required roughly 300 individual letter molds and an estimated 100,000 individual pieces of type. Each page was printed separately, and the process took several years to complete. Before Gutenberg, a single book required months of hand copying by a trained scribe. Within fifty years of the Bible's completion, printing presses had been established in every major European city, and an estimated twenty million volumes had been produced. The Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the spread of literacy all accelerated on the back of Gutenberg's invention. Of the original print run, forty-nine copies survive, each valued in the tens of millions of dollars, making them among the most precious objects on Earth.