Media History Timeline: Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg was born in Mainz, Germany in 1397, and began his life as an inventor by studying metallurgy in Strasbourg. His first creations were trinket mirrors to be sold to religious pilgrims. Through this experience he learned that there was a highly profitable market among the faithful for Church-related products -- most significantly, the indulgence.

Gutenberg's major contribution to printing came while he was working as a goldsmith, back in Mainz. He knew if he could produce indulgences quickly and by the hundreds he could pay off some of his debts from his trinket selling days. So he created metal molds for letters, which were then filled with a molten lead alloy. The cast letters were uniform in size so that they could be aligned easily on a frame, and once assembled in proper order, the frame holding the letters was then pressed against parchment or vellum. The result was an exactly repeatable, error-free piece of "writing." Gutenberg may have printed thousands of indulgences (whose abuse by the Catholic Church annoyed a certain Martin Luther).

However, by 1452, with the aid of more borrowed money, Gutenberg began his famous Bible project. Two hundred copies of the two-volume Gutenberg Bible were printed, a small number (possibly as many as 50) of which were printed on vellum. The expensive and exquisitely beautiful Bibles were completed and sold at the 1455 Franfurt Book Fair, and cost the equivalent of three years' pay for the average clerk. Roughly a quarter of all the Gutenberg Bibles survive today.

Although the Bibles and the indulgences helped Gutenberg's financial situation, they apparently weren't profitable enough to pay back Gutenberg's debtors. In 1455 he lost his press to his investor, Johann Fust. Gutenberg invented, too, other mainstays of traditional printing. His ink, a mixture of oil, copper, and lead, remains bright over 500 years later. Gutenberg died in 1468.

Sources for the timeline and accompanying information.