The 42-line Bible of about 1455 (c. 1455)
Named for the number of lines on most of its pages; perhaps 180 copies were made and 49 survive in whole or in part
General knowledge · Inventions & discoveries
The printing press
c. 1440s, Mainz
Invention — printing
Johannes Gutenberg's workshop in Mainz combined cast, reusable metal type with an oil-based ink and a screw press adapted from winemaking, producing a machine that could turn out identical pages in quantity. His 42-line Bible of about 1455 is the first substantial European book printed from movable type. Within fifty years presses were running in most major European towns, and the flood of cheap printed matter underpinned the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and the standardisation of national languages.
How to spot them
- ▸Mainz in the 1450s; a goldsmith turned printer; a lawsuit brought by his financial backer Johann Fust
- ▸Movable metal type cast in a hand mould; an oil-based ink; a screw press borrowed from the wine trade
- ▸Books printed before 1501 are called incunabula, or incunables — 'things in the cradle'
- ▸Earlier East Asian precedents: Bi Sheng's ceramic type, and Korea's metal-type Jikji of 1377
Key facts
A goldsmith of Mainz, sued by his backer Johann Fust in 1455
Fust won the case and took over the workshop, which he ran with Gutenberg's foreman Peter Schoeffer
Books produced before 1501 are called incunabula because of it
From the Latin for swaddling clothes or cradle: the infancy of the craft
William Caxton set one up at Westminster in 1476
The first in England; his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, printed in Bruges c. 1473, was the first book printed in English
Bi Sheng made ceramic versions of its key component around 1040
Movable type existed in China four centuries before Mainz; the Korean Jikji of 1377 is the oldest surviving book printed with metal type
Luther's 95 Theses spread across Germany in weeks because of it
The technology that made the Reformation unstoppable; Luther called it 'God's highest and extremest act of grace'
Its key trick was not the machine but the hand mould for casting type
Interchangeable letters cast in a lead-tin-antimony alloy, identical every time and reusable for any text
Key ideas
- The real invention is a system: a punch-and-matrix hand mould for casting identical letters, a durable type-metal alloy, a sticky oil-based ink that clings to metal, and a press strong enough to print evenly
- Economics matter more than speed: type can be redistributed and reused, so the cost per copy collapses once a run is long enough
Quick-fire facts
- •Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, born in Mainz c. 1400, died there in 1468
- •The 42-line Bible is also called the Gutenberg Bible or the Mazarin Bible; the Library of Congress copy is one of only three perfect vellum copies
- •Type metal was an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, chosen because it expands slightly as it sets and so fills the mould crisply
- •Printed indulgences, not Bibles, were the workshop's reliable earner
- •Around 1455 Johann Fust sued Gutenberg over their loan; Fust and Peter Schoeffer went on to print the Mainz Psalter of 1457, the first book with a printed date and colophon
- •Aldus Manutius of Venice introduced the small, affordable octavo format and italic type around 1500-01
- •Estimates suggest some 20 million volumes were printed in Europe before 1501
- •Letterpress terms survive in everyday English: upper and lower case, stereotype, cliche, out of sorts, mind your ps and qs
- •Gutenberg was voted man of the millennium in several end-of-century polls, including A&E's in 1999
Drill it — 10 cards
1 / 10new card
Sources
- Library of Congress — The Gutenberg Bible (Library of Congress exhibition) Date, place, 42-line format and surviving copies
- John Man — The Gutenberg Revolution: How Printing Changed the Course of History