Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, called Gutenberg, was born in Mainz in 1397. He is considered the inventor of letterpress printing.
Childhood and Adolescence
Nothing is known about Gutenberg’s childhood and youth. However, it can be assumed that he received the usual education for patricians’ sons, probably at a city monastery school. It has been assumed that he studied in Erfurt, as several sons of patricians in Mainz and his relatives did.
What is Johannes Gutenberg famous for?
In the Middle Ages, Johannes Gutenberg revolutionised the world with a new printing technique. The man from Mainz invented letterpress printing with movable letters and characters. This meant that many books could be produced with little effort. This was a great success, because the more books there were, the more knowledge was spread.
Books used to be luxury
Books existed even before Gutenberg, but it was very time-consuming to produce them. They were either handwritten or the fonts were carved mirror-inverted into wooden blocks, brushed with paint and then pressed onto paper. You can imagine that it took a few months to complete a book in this way. Books were a treasure at that time – they were hardly affordable.
New technology, great success
Gutenberg simplified letterpress printing by breaking down sentences and words into their individual parts. He developed a separate stamp made of lead for each letter and punctuation mark. In this way, a book was made up of many individual parts that could be used again and again. He also invented a suitable printing press – the Gutenberg press – for this purpose.
Can you imagine what the press looked like? Choose your colours and then you can start painting!
The Gutenberg Bible
Since he wanted to print great works, he set his sights on the most important book of the time in Western Europe: the Bible. Between 1452 and 1454 Gutenberg and his assistants printed 180 Bibles, the famous Gutenberg Bibles. Around 550 years ago, the Bible was thus the first mass medium.
He changed world events
Gutenberg’s invention had a very great influence on society. Nevertheless, hardly anything is known about the person Johannes Gutenberg. We do not know exactly what he looked like, in which year he was born and even the date of his death is unknown. What is certain, however, is that he died on 26 February 1468 at the latest.
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