Johannes Guttenberg (1390-1468)

German craftsman who invented the method of movable type printing that was used without significant change until the twentieth century.

Gutenberg was born in Mainz in the last decade of the fourteenth century. Very little is known about his early life, but a bitter struggle between the guilds and the patricians forced him to move to Strassburg in about 1428. Here he engaged in different crafts and taught crafts to pupils.

In the mid 1430s, Gutenberg had begun working on his invention, but he was keeping his work secret.  In 1450 after Gutenberg had returned to Mainz, his printing experiments had reached a level of refinement that allowed him to borrow 800 guilders, a considerable sum, from Johann Fust, a wealthy financier.  Fust made a further investment of 800 guilders two years later and became partners with Gutenberg.  Fust and Gutenberg later fell out over their enterprise: Fust was looking for a quick return, Gutenberg wanted to perfect the process.  In 1455 Fust brought a suit against Gutenberg that enforced him to repay both loan and interest.

By 1455, Gutenberg had completed his masterpiece, the Forty Two Line Bible, which was the first book printed from movable type.  The three volume work, in Latin, was printed in forty two line columns.  Like other contemporary works, it contains no title page and no page numbers.  The level of technical ability displayed in the work was not substantially improved upon before the nineteenth century.  It is not known how many copies of this work were made, but there are 40 still in existence.

After winning the case, Fust took control of the type for the Bible and some of Gutenberg's other printing equipment.  With this equipment and the assistance of his son in law, Peter Schoffer, who had been Gutenberg's most skilled employee, he continued to print.  They also took the type for another of Gutenberg's masterpices, the Psalter.  This book is decorated with hundreds of two color initial letters and scroll borders that were printed in an ingenious technique using multiple inks on a single metal block.

In January 1465 the archbishop of Mainz granted Gutenberg a pension.