Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg
Born	c. 1398 Mainz, Germany
Died	c. February 3, 1468
Occupation	goldsmith and inventor

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1398 – c. February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and inventor who is usually considered to have invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.

Gutenberg's main contribution may have been in the combination of the use of movable type, the art of making such type, the use of oil-based ink, and the wooden printing press, which was presumably derived from the various presses in use at the time, including those for book-binding and those used in wine-making and in olive-oil production. Gutenberg's technology for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a mould for casting type accurately.

The use of movable type constituted an improvement on the block printing already in use. Gutenberg himself was well versed in woodcut printing, having been for a period apprenticed to a playing card printer. (Similar techniques were used at the time for the production of printed textiles.) Combining these elements into a production system permitted the rapid printing of written materials, which fed the information hungry world of Renaissance Europe.

A similar printing technology was known in Korea and China by at least in 1234, but did not have such a widespread cultural and commercial impact as Gutenberg's printing technology, which spread rapidly throughout Europe, and is generally thought to have led to great strides in the European Renaissance.

Gutenberg, due to his invention and its influence, remains a towering figure in the popular image; in 1999, the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg at #1 on their "People of the Millennium" countdown.

Life

Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz, as the son of a merchant named Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, and Else Wyrich. The family adopted the surname "zum Gutenberg" after the name of the house where the family had moved, but not until after Friele had died. Gutenberg's family traced their lineage back to the 13th century; most family members were goldsmiths and coin minters.

Gutenberg began experimenting with metal typography after he had moved from Mainz to Strasbourg (then in Germany, now France) around 1430. However, even his successful printing system brought Gutenberg little profit. His business partner was Johann Fust who was more of a banker than a printer. A 1568 history by Hadrianus Junius of Holland claims that the basic idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster in the late 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment to Mainz, though this theory is not given much credence even in Coster's home country of Holland.

In 1436, at the beginning of their partnership, Johann Fust extended Gutenberg 800 guilders, to allow him to set up his press. Gutenberg earned some money from his printing but not enough to repay Fust for his investments, which eventually exceeded 2000 guilders. Fust sued, and the court’s ruling not only effectively bankrupted Gutenberg, but it awarded control of the type used in his Bible, plus much of the printing equipment, to Fust. While Gutenberg ran a print shop until shortly before his death in Mainz in 1468, Fust became the first printer to publish a book with his name on it.

Gutenberg's Method of Printing

The printing process that made printing widespread and brought in vast changes in Renaissance Europe involved creating a punch to make a mould in which to cast a letter. A letter, carved back to front on a hard metal punch, was hammered into the soft metal copper, creating a mould or matrix. This was then placed into a holder, and cast by filling with hot type-metal, which cooled down to create a piece of type. The matrix could now be reused to create hundreds of identical letters, so that the same type appearing anywhere in the book would appear similar, giving rise to the growth of fonts. Subsequently, these letters would be placed on a rack, inked and, using a press, endless copies could be made. The letters could be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of 'movable type'. (For details, see Typography).

This is the process that has been widely attributed to have been Gutenberg's invention, but it is possible that Gutenberg's actual process was somewhat different.

Was the type produced by punches and copper matrices?

Whether Gutenberg used this very process, or a somewhat primitive version, has been the subject of considerable debate. If he used the punch and matrix approach, all his letters should have been identical, within some variation possibly due to inking. However, the type used in Gutenberg's printed Bibles were quite irregular. The 19th c. printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg might not have been using type cast with a reusable matrix, but possibly wooden types that were carved individually. This position however was repudiated.{fact}

In 2001, the physicist Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Princeton librarian Paul Needham, used digital scans of the Gutenberg Bible in the Scheide Library, Princeton, to carefully compare the same letters (types) appearing in different parts of the Gutenberg 42-line Bible . The irregularities in Gutenberg's type, particularly in simple characters such as the hyphen, made it clear that the variations couldn't have come from either ink smear or from wear and damage on the pieces of metal on the types themselves. While some identical types are clearly used on other pages, certain variations, subjected to detailed image analysis, made for only one conclusion: that they could not have been produced from the same matrix. They hypothesized that the method used involved using the punch to make a mould, but that the process of taking the type out would disturb the mould, resulting in non-identical type.

Thus, they feel that "the decisive factor for the birth of typography", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, might have been a more progressive process than was previously thought; they suggest that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until 20 years later, in the 1470s.

Was it movable type?

Others have challenged whether Gutenberg used movable types at all. In 2004, Italian professor Bruno Fabbiani claimed that examination of the 42-line Bible revealed an overlapping of letters, suggesting that Gutenberg did not in fact use movable type (individual cast characters) but rather used whole plates made from a system somewhat like our modern typewriters, whereby the letters were stamped successively into the plate and printed much as a woodcut would have been. Fabbiani created 30 experiments to demonstrate his claim in a "mock trial of Gutenberg" at the Festival of Science in Genoa, but scholars boycotted the session and dismissed it as a stunt. However, this has been repudiated, for instance in James Clough's article in the Italian magazine Graphicus.

Gutenberg's Printed Books

In 1455, Gutenberg demonstrated the power of the printing press by selling copies of a two-volume Bible (Biblia Sacra) for 300 florins each. This was the equivalent of approximately three years' wages for an average clerk, but it was significantly cheaper than a handwritten Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare.

One copy of the Biblia Sacra dated 1455 went to Paris, and was dated by the binder. At least 59 early copies exist, including one in the Library of Congress and two at the British Library that you can view (and compare) online )

Gutenberg Bible, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

The Gutenberg Bible, in imitation of the manuscript books of its era, lacks many print features that modern readers are accustomed to, such as pagination, word spacing, indentations, and paragraph breaks. As of 2003, the Gutenberg Bible census includes 11 complete copies on vellum, 1 copy of the New Testament only on vellum, 48 substantially complete integral copies on paper, with another divided copy on paper, and an illuminated page (the Bagford fragment).

The Bible was not Gutenberg's first printed work, for he produced first copies of a papal letter soliciting fundes, and possibly two versions of an indulgence. He also printed other works, notably several of the many printed editions of Ars Minor, and other portions of Aelius Donatus's schoolbook on Latin grammar. The first edition has been variously dated believed to to between 1451 and 1452,in which case it would have preceeded the Biblia Sacra,and to 1455, in which case it would have followed.

He also produced another edition of the Bible, the 33-line Bible. This has almost always been dated several years after the first edition, the 42-line bible, but it remains conceivable that it might have been produced as a prior version.

Hypothesised Relationship between East Asian and European Printing

Since the use of printing from movable type arose in East Asia before it did in Europe, it is therefore relevant to ask whether Gutenberg may have been influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Korean or Chinese discoveries of movable type printing.

Block printing, whereby individual sheets of paper were pressed into wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them, was first recorded in Chinese history, and the documentably oldest surviving printed book, a copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, is dated 848 AD. By the 12th and 13th centuries, many Chinese libraries contained tens of thousands of printed books.

The earliest woodblocks used for printing in Europe, in the fourteenth century, were remarkably similar to Chinese woodblocks, and a possible connect has been hypothesised, The 19th century traveller Robert Curzon(1810-1873). wrote that "the process of printing them must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travelers, whose names have not been handed down to our times." In Joseph Needham's scholarly Science and Civilization in China a chapter suggests that "European block printers must not only have seen Chinese samples, but perhaps had been taught by missionaries or others who had learned these un-European methods from Chinese printers during their residence in China." Despite these positive statements, there has apparently been no direct evidence whatsoever. Nonetheless, the Asian methods are of the greatest interest both in their own right and as a comparison.

The transition from block printing to movable metal type occurred in Korea sometime in the thirteenth century to meet the heavy demand for both religious and secular books. A set of ritual books, Sangjong Gogeum Yemun were printed with the movable metal type in 1234.

This description of the Korean font casting process was recorded by Song Hyon in the 15th c.:

At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills a trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [molds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative molds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged.

Among books printed with movable type, the oldest surviving books are from Korea, dated at least from 1377.

The credit for the first metal movable type may go to Chae Yun-eui of the Goryeo Dynasty in 1234, , and the first movable type was invented in China, traditionally credited with Bi Sheng, between 1041 to 1048.

It is not clear whether Gutenberg had heard of these existing techniques. Given two centuries of trading contact with the East, it possible that some news of these processes had filtered into the general knowledge of Europeans using similar technology.

In spite of the earlier invention in Asia, historians continue to credit the invention of printing in Europe with fostering a cultural revolution.

Legacy

File:915h Johannes Gutenberg (Gensfleisch) statue, Mainz, 1 Ma.jpg

Gutenberg statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen in Mainz, Germany

Although Gutenberg was financially unsuccessful in his lifetime, the printing technologies spread quickly, and news and books began to travel across Europe much faster than before. It fed the growing Renaissance, and since it greatly facilitated scientific publishing, it was a major catalyst for the later scientific revolution.It fed the growth of scholarship by the widespread availability of copies of the Greek and Latin classics. The ability to produce many copies of a new book, and the availability of Greek and Latin Bible texts in printed form was a major factor in the Reformation, utilized by both the Protestant and Catholic sides.

The term incunabulum (incunabula is the Latin for "swaddling clothes") refers to any western printed book produced between the first work of Gutenberg and the end of the year 1500.

There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany; one of the more famous being a work by Bertel Thorvaldsen, in Mainz, home to the Gutenberg Museum.

The Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz is named in his honor.

The Gutenberg Galaxy and Project Gutenberg also commemorate Gutenberg's name.

Matthew Skelton (an English writer) recently wrote a book Endymion Spring which explores a controversial theory about Johann Gutenberg and his partner Fust.

See also

• Printing
• Printing press
• Spread of printing
• Bi Sheng
• Typography
• Incunabulum
• Francysk Skaryna
• William Caxton
• Diamond Sutra

Further reading

• Michael H. Hart, The 100, Carol Publishing Group, July 1992, paperback, 576 pages, ISBN 0-8065-1350-0
• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press, September 1980, Paperback, 832 pages, ISBN 0-521-29955-1

External links

• English homepage of the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz, Germany.
• Historical overview of printing at the Silk Road site.
• The Digital Gutenberg Project: the Gutenberg Bible in 1,300 digital images, every page of University of Texas at Austin copy.
• Template:Fr icon Biographie de Johannes Gutenberg, inventeur de l'Imprimerie (a biography of Gutenberg at Histoire et Geographie site).