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 invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.

Movable type technology was known in Korea and China by at least 1234, but Gutenberg's printing technology was most likely an independent invention. Gutenberg's main contribution appears to 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.

Gutenberg's printing technology rapidly spread throughout Europe and is generally thought to have been a key development leading to the European Renaissance. Consequently, Gutenberg 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

Early life and education

Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz, the son of coiner Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, and Else Wyrich. Friele worked in the bishop's mint at Mainz, and Gutenberg may have learned the art of dealing with soft metals from him. Gutenberg's family traced their lineage back to the 13th century; most family members were goldsmiths and coin minters.

Sometime after 1419 when his father died, the family adopted the surname "zum Gutenberg" after the name of the house ("Good Hill") in Mainz where the family had moved. The house had previously been known as "Judenberg," Jewish Hill. According to historian John Man, "In the 1282 pogrom, fifty-four Jewish properties were abandoned and were grabbed by the rich and powerful. It seems that the Gutenberg house fell to the archbishop's treasurers... It was later acquired by the great-great-grandfather of our inventor and stayed in the family." He goes on to speculate why the family of Gensfleisch ("Gooseflesh") house kept that name instead of taking the Gutenberg name that would associate them with the Jewish history of the place, until much later.

Career

Sometime around 1430, there was a rising in Mainz against the ruling merchant guilds, and the Gutenberg family moved to Strasbourg. It is here that Gutenberg first appears on record, a goldsmith member enrolled in the Strasbourg militia. During this period, before developing the technique of printing with movable type, Gutenberg apparently used the art of printing from woodblocks, though it is not completely certain what of his works with this technique survive,

He may have started experimenting with metal typography around this time; legend has it that the idea came to him "like a ray of light". In 1448 he moved back to Mainz. In 1450 he set up a printing shop in partnership with the lawyer-banker Johann Fust. Another partner was Fust's son-in-law Peter Schoeffer, who had worked as a scribe in Paris; eventually he would design the typeface for the 42-line Bible. In 1450, a German poem was printed on the press, possibly the first item to be printed there, but this is not certain..

Business dealings

At the beginning of their partnership, Fust had extended Gutenberg 800 guilders, to set up the press. Gutenberg was already in debt - he had lost a good bit of money on a misadventure making mirrors for pilgrims to Aix-la-Chapelle. Gutenberg was counting on printing the Bible to repay Fust's loan, but this process took far longer than expected, and it was not until 1455 that Gutenberg could bring out his first batch of the 42-line Bible. Expenses had proliferated, and his debt now exceeded 2000 guilders. Fust had gone to court, and the ruling of November 1455 effectively bankrupted Gutenberg and awarded control of the types and plates used in his Bible, plus much of the printing equipment, to Fust. Subsequently the Fust-Schoeffer shop were the first to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg.

Later life

In 1462, during a conflict between two archbishops, Mainz is sacked by Adolf of Nassau, and Gutenberg was exiled. He returned in 1465 and was awarded a pension and a tax exemption by the Archbishop Adolf, but the reasons for this honour are not known..

Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried in the Franziskanerkirche, Mainz, his contributions largely unacknowledged. In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleons biography of famous Germans.

Gutenberg's printed books with movable type

In 1455, Gutenberg brought out copies of a beautifully executed folio Bible (Biblia Sacra), with 42 lines on each page, for 30 florins each. This was roughly equal to 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 common with 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).

Before he printed the Bible, Gutenberg produced copies of a papal letter soliciting funds, and possibly two versions of an indulgence. He also printed several of the many printed editions of Ars Minor, and other portions of Aelius Donatus's schoolbook on Latin grammar, the first edition of which has been dated either 1451-1452 or 1455. With the earlier dating it might have preceded the Biblia Sacra. Another, 36-line edition of the Bible was also printed, dated several years after the first edition.

Gutenberg's method of printing with movable type

Gutenberg's early printing process, and what tests he may have made with movable type, are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed six pages at a time, and would have required 100,000 pieces of type—making the type alone would take two man years. Setting each page would take at least half a day, and considering all the work in loading the press, inking the type, hanging up the sheets, etc., it is thought that the Gutenberg–Fust shop might have employed about 25 craftsmen.

Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. In the following decades, punches and copper matrices became standardized in the rapidly disseminating printing presses across Europe. Whether Gutenberg used this sophisticated technique or a somewhat primitive version has been the subject of considerable debate.

In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch (with the letter carved back to front) is hammered into the soft metal copper, creating a mould or matrix. This is then placed into a holder, and cast by filling with hot type-metal, which cooled down to create a piece of type. The matrix can now be reused to create hundreds of identical letters, so that the same type appearing anywhere in the book will appear similar, giving rise to the growth of fonts. Subsequently, these letters are placed on a rack and inked; using a press, many hundred copies can be made. The letters can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of 'movable type'. (For details, see Typography).

Was the type produced by punches and copper matrices?

Such is the process that has been widely attributed to have been Gutenberg's invention, but it appears from recent evidence that Gutenberg's actual process was somewhat different. 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.

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, other 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 (also see Adams 91 Chapter 4). 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.

Other hypotheses

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}

It has also been questioned 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 a modern typewriter, whereby the letters were stamped successively into the plate and printed much as a woodcut would have been. Fabbiani demonstrated this method 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.

Other claimed European inventors

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 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment to Mainz. While Coster appears to have experimented with moulds and cast-able metal type, there is no evidence that he had actually printed anything with this technology. There is even less evidence for other claimants such as Panfilo Castaldi.

Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian printing?

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

Movable types made from clay were introduced in China by Bi Sheng, between 1041 to 1048. Cast metal movable type was introduced during the Goryeo dynasty of Korea and is associated with Chae Yun-eui (around 1230). A set of ritual books, Sangjong Gogeum Yemun were printed with the movable metal type in 1234. The oldest surviving book printed with movable type is from Korea, dated 1377, but unlike the metal punch system thought to be used by Gutenberg, the Koreans used a sand-casting method.

However, there is no actual evidence that Gutenberg may have known of the Korean processes for movable type. In his 2007 article, Tom Christensen conjectures on this possibility:

What is certain, however, is that printing with movable wooden type is documented from the eleventh century; that printing with movable metal type had been an active enterprise in Korea since 1234; that other printing technologies had Asian origins and were subsequently transmitted to the West; that a single empire (the Mongol khanates) stretched from Korea to Europe through much of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, facilitating cross-cultural exchange across a large region; that there was considerable East-West travel, contact, and exchange during this period; that the written record of such contacts records only a fraction of what actually occurred; and that there was awareness of Asian printing in Europe in the centuries before Gutenberg.

Whatever may be the facts regarding primacy in this invention, there can be no doubt that it was Gutenberg's printing technologies that considerably accelerated Europe's renaissance.

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 through 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.

For some time the papal court debated whether to require that printing presses should have a license from the church, fortunately this was never decreed. However, books produced by hand were considered superior and many rich patrons looked down on printed books. Demand for printing presses however, kept on growing. Early printed texts (prior to 1500) are known as incunabulum.

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
• History of typography in East Asia

• Typography
• Incunabulum
• Francysk Skaryna
• William Caxton

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).