Technology · c. 1440–1455 CE
Gutenberg's printing press
Mainz (Germany)
Around 1440 the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing system that combined movable metal type cast in a hand mould, an oil-based ink and an adapted screw press. His Mainz workshop finished the 42-line Bible in 1454 or 1455, in an edition of perhaps 160–185 copies.
Printing spread fast: by 1500 about 270 European cities had presses, which had turned out more than 20 million copies.
Why it mattered
Cheap printed books spread literacy, scholarship and new ideas across Europe and helped make the Protestant Reformation possible, when Martin Luther became Europe's most published author.
Elsewhere
Metal movable type had already been used in Korea, where the Jikji of 1377 is the oldest surviving book printed with it.
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