PrintBerlin, 6 April 2006 – Johannes Gutenberg is buried in debts. For years the goldsmith and writer has been taking out loans. He searches laboriously for financiers and doggedly convinces friends, acquaintances, and strangers to lend him money. He cannot pay the debts back and even owes the interest. Despite all the claims from his creditors, despite all the litigation, he never gives up his dream. And it is an expensive one: to make his dream of modern letterpress printing come true, which from 1450 onwards will change the world, he needs a workshop, a printing press, lead, and tin – and they all cost money. For his “Bible Project” he takes on debts equal to four times the cost of a house – an investment equivalent to millions in today’s money.
Not very much is known about Gutenberg except that he was born in about 1400 as the son of a patrician family in Mainz. Most of it is speculation. A few letters and some court papers provide a little information about his life, which ran between the Middle Ages and the modern age in a society that was torn this way and that between technical innovations, efforts at reform of the church, the first flowering of humanistic philosophy, terrible Inquisition trials, and wars all across the continent.
Background information on the "Modern Book Printing"
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Selected Page from the Gutenberg bible. Photo: www.gutenbergdigital.de |
The time arrived in the mid-1550s: the world’s first book lies on a workbench in Mainz that has been printed with movable type. It is a Bible, Gutenberg’s life’s work.
Gutenberg’s invention is as simple as it is convincing. Texts are reduced to their smallest units: letters and symbols. Gutenberg cuts and casts a total of 290 different characters: 47 upper case letters, 63 lower case letters, 92 symbols with abbreviations, 83 combined letters and 5 punctuation marks. The core of his invention is a hand-casting instrument and a printing press. He develops an alloy of lead, tin and antimony and casts durable letters with a uniform depth. The specially equipped spindle press makes it possible to apply the ink uniformly onto the dampened paper.
Gutenberg works with a number of presses. One pull on the lever and up to eight pages can be printed simultaneously. It takes over two years to cast, set, and print the Bible. 230,760 working steps have to be completed, but the book is then something to be proud of: 1,282 pages each of 42 lines, and every letter razor-sharp.
The art of printing as such is already far older. So-called wood-block printing had been develop in East Asia about 700 AD, a process in which the complete text is carved in wood and rubbed off onto paper, which is very time-consuming. The Chinese are already aware of the system of movable letters, but the many thousands of characters in their language prevent them from producing printing plates quickly and easily.
There has never before been anything comparable to Gutenberg’s invention. The “Book of books” can now go into series production. Gutenberg prints 180 copies, thus bringing the first bestseller onto the market. The knowledge of the world spreads unstoppably across the globe from this moment on. Half a million Luther Bibles are already in existence by 1550. Gutenberg’s technology remains almost unchanged for more than 400 years. It is only then that high-speed presses, and later digital printing, are introduced and other working processes become established.
The invention of letterpress printing leaves its mark on politics and culture like no other innovation. The dissemination of the printed work adds impetus to the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment and supports the worldwide spread of literacy. Philosophers and poets make use of the new technology and bring the German book landscape to its highest flowering – censorship and barbarism having almost destroyed it. On 10 May 1933, all over Germany the Nazis start burning the works of modern authors and critics of the regime. The book-burning puts a temporary end to the 500-year German culture of books and indicates one of the darkest chapters in our history.
It is not until the war is over that Germany can once again develop a free and diverse media landscape. In September 1949, the doors of the famous Frankfurt Book Fair open again after about 200 years. More than 200 exhibitors meet in the Frankfurt St Paul’s church and enable an old tradition to flourish again. This is a tradition that started even before Gutenberg’s day: the very first Frankfurt Book Fair presented the first books about 500 years earlier. Until well into the 17th century Frankfurt am Main remains the central book fair city in Europe. As a consequence of political and cultural turmoil this role is passed on to Leipzig during the Age of Enlightenment.
Nowadays it has resumed its place in Frankfurt, the world’s largest book fair. The numbers speak for themselves: 168,790 square metres of exhibition floor space, 7,233 exhibitors from 101 different countries, about 1,000 authors, more than 100,000 new publications, and about 300,000 visitors in 2005.
Germany has always remained true to Gutenberg’s legacy. Further work has been done constantly on printing technology ever since modern letterpress printing was introduced. Lithography and the technique now in widespread use, offset printing, were developed here.
One of the world’s leading manufacturers of printing machinery, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, is at home in Germany. In 1850, Andreas Hamm established the firm in Frankenthal as a bell-foundry and engineering factory. It did not move to Heidelberg until nearly half a century later, in 1896. The first offset printing machine was produced in 1962; until then the firm had only produced letterpress printing machines. In 1967, the firm was renamed Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. At this time the firm is one of the few in the world with a level of awareness of almost 100 per cent (amongst printers) on all five continents.
Gutenberg’s invention is as simple as it is convincing. Texts are reduced to their smallest units: letters and symbols. Gutenberg cuts and casts a total of 290 different characters: 47 upper case letters, 63 lower case letters, 92 symbols with abbreviations, 83 combined letters and 5 punctuation marks. The core of his invention is a hand-casting instrument and a printing press. He develops an alloy of lead, tin and antimony and casts durable letters with a uniform depth. The specially equipped spindle press makes it possible to apply the ink uniformly onto the dampened paper.
Gutenberg works with a number of presses. One pull on the lever and up to eight pages can be printed simultaneously. It takes over two years to cast, set, and print the Bible. 230,760 working steps have to be completed, but the book is then something to be proud of: 1,282 pages each of 42 lines, and every letter razor-sharp.
The art of printing as such is already far older. So-called wood-block printing had been develop in East Asia about 700 AD, a process in which the complete text is carved in wood and rubbed off onto paper, which is very time-consuming. The Chinese are already aware of the system of movable letters, but the many thousands of characters in their language prevent them from producing printing plates quickly and easily.
There has never before been anything comparable to Gutenberg’s invention. The “Book of books” can now go into series production. Gutenberg prints 180 copies, thus bringing the first bestseller onto the market. The knowledge of the world spreads unstoppably across the globe from this moment on. Half a million Luther Bibles are already in existence by 1550. Gutenberg’s technology remains almost unchanged for more than 400 years. It is only then that high-speed presses, and later digital printing, are introduced and other working processes become established.
The invention of letterpress printing leaves its mark on politics and culture like no other innovation. The dissemination of the printed work adds impetus to the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment and supports the worldwide spread of literacy. Philosophers and poets make use of the new technology and bring the German book landscape to its highest flowering – censorship and barbarism having almost destroyed it. On 10 May 1933, all over Germany the Nazis start burning the works of modern authors and critics of the regime. The book-burning puts a temporary end to the 500-year German culture of books and indicates one of the darkest chapters in our history.
It is not until the war is over that Germany can once again develop a free and diverse media landscape. In September 1949, the doors of the famous Frankfurt Book Fair open again after about 200 years. More than 200 exhibitors meet in the Frankfurt St Paul’s church and enable an old tradition to flourish again. This is a tradition that started even before Gutenberg’s day: the very first Frankfurt Book Fair presented the first books about 500 years earlier. Until well into the 17th century Frankfurt am Main remains the central book fair city in Europe. As a consequence of political and cultural turmoil this role is passed on to Leipzig during the Age of Enlightenment.
Nowadays it has resumed its place in Frankfurt, the world’s largest book fair. The numbers speak for themselves: 168,790 square metres of exhibition floor space, 7,233 exhibitors from 101 different countries, about 1,000 authors, more than 100,000 new publications, and about 300,000 visitors in 2005.
Germany has always remained true to Gutenberg’s legacy. Further work has been done constantly on printing technology ever since modern letterpress printing was introduced. Lithography and the technique now in widespread use, offset printing, were developed here.
One of the world’s leading manufacturers of printing machinery, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, is at home in Germany. In 1850, Andreas Hamm established the firm in Frankenthal as a bell-foundry and engineering factory. It did not move to Heidelberg until nearly half a century later, in 1896. The first offset printing machine was produced in 1962; until then the firm had only produced letterpress printing machines. In 1967, the firm was renamed Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. At this time the firm is one of the few in the world with a level of awareness of almost 100 per cent (amongst printers) on all five continents.
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