Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
GUTENBERG REINVENTED PRINTING
Johannes Gutenberg
In Europe, the printing press did not appear until 150 years after Wang Chen’s innovation. Goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg was a political exile from Mainz, Germany when he began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France in 1440. He returned to Mainz several years later and by 1450, had a printing machine perfected and ready to use commercially: The Gutenberg press.
Gutenberg Press
Integral to Gutenberg’s design was replacing wood with metal and printing blocks with each letter, creating the European version of moveable type.
In order to make the type available in large quantities and to different stages of printing, Gutenberg applied the concept of replica casting, which saw letters created in reverse in brass and then replicas made from these molds by pouring molten lead.
Researchers have speculated that Gutenberg actually used a sand-casting system that uses carved sand to create the metal molds. The letters were fashioned to fit together uniformly to create level lines of letters and consistent columns on flat media.
Gutenberg’s process would not have worked as seamlessly as it did if he had not made his own ink, devised to affix to metal rather than wood. Gutenberg was also able to perfect a method for flattening printing paper for use by using a winepress, traditionally used to press grapes for wine and olives for oil, retrofitted into his printing press design.
Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg borrowed money from Johannes Fust to fund his project and in 1452, Fust joined Gutenberg as a partner to create books. They set about printing calendars, pamphlets and other ephemera.
In 1452, Gutenberg produced the one book to come out of his shop: a Bible. It’s estimated he printed 180 copies of the 1,300-paged Gutenberg Bible, as many as 60 of them on vellum. Each page of the Bible contained 42 lines of text in Gothic type, with double columns and featuring some letters in color.
For the Bible, Gutenberg used 300 separate molded letter blocks and 50,000 sheets of paper. Many fragments of the books survive. There are 21 complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, and four complete copies of the vellum version.
Gutenberg’s Later Years
In 1455, Fust foreclosed on Gutenberg. In an ensuing lawsuit, all of Gutenberg’s equipment went to Fust and Peter Schoffer of Gernsheim, Germany, a former calligrapher.
Gutenberg is believed to have continued printing, probably producing an edition of the Catholicon, a Latin dictionary, in 1460. But Gutenberg ceased any efforts at printing after 1460, possibly due to impaired vision. He died in 1468.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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