Gutenberg's workshop, Mainz

The press that changed everything

Around 1450 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg brought together several inventions into one system: a hand mould that could cast identical metal letters quickly and cheaply, a durable oil-based ink, and a screw press adapted from those used for wine and paper.

His masterpiece was the 42-line Bible of about 1455 — the first major book printed in Europe with movable type, and still, to many eyes, one of the most beautiful ever made.

How it worked

A compositor picked individual cast letters from a case and set them, upside down and backwards, into lines and then full pages held in a frame. The page of type was inked with leather "ink-balls," a damp sheet of paper laid over it, and the screw turned to press the two together.

The crucial idea was reuse: once printed, the type could be broken up and reset for the next page. A single press could now produce in a day what a scribe had needed months to copy by hand.

The Gutenberg Revolution

Within fifty years, printing presses had spread across Europe and produced millions of books, where before there had been only painstakingly hand-copied manuscripts.

That flood of cheap text fed the Renaissance, made the Reformation possible, and powered the scientific revolution — arguably the most consequential information technology before the internet. Few rooms have changed the world as much as this one. Gutenberg himself, sued by his financier Johann Fust, lost control of his press and died with little to show for it.