About this series. History-Makers profiles people whose specific, documented contributions changed human life at enormous scale. It began with five and now runs to ten. The criteria remain the same: an unusually direct contribution, unusually well documented, touching an unusually large number of lives. "Top ten" is still a contestable judgement, not a ranking. Each piece names the people it could just as easily have been about, and the complications of its subject.
What existed before
Gutenberg didn't invent printing, and he didn't invent movable type. In 11th-century China, a craftsman named Bi Sheng made movable type from baked clay. In Korea, the Buddhist text known as the Jikji was printed with movable metal type in 1377, 78 years before Gutenberg's Bible; it is the oldest surviving book printed that way, now held by the National Library of France. Woodblock printing had been used in East Asia for centuries (see The Silk Roads, in History & The Changing World).
In Europe, though, books were still mostly copied by hand. A single Bible could take a scribe many months, which made books rare, expensive and the property of churches, universities and the rich.
What Gutenberg actually put together
His achievement was a system, several pieces that together made printing fast, cheap and precise enough for an alphabet of a few dozen letters:
| Piece | What it solved |
|---|---|
| A hand mould for casting type | Thousands of identical letters, cast quickly and accurately |
| A metal alloy of lead, tin and antimony | Type that melted easily, cooled fast and was durable |
| An oil-based ink | Ink that clung evenly to metal type, unlike the water-based inks used for woodblocks |
| A press adapted from screw presses used for wine and oil | Even pressure across a whole page, again and again |
The result was the Gutenberg Bible, finished around 1454–55: about 180 copies, roughly three-quarters on paper and the rest on vellum. Forty-nine survive at least in substantial part, and they are among the most valuable books on Earth.
Gutenberg didn't make the first printed book. He made printing a process that could be copied, and then everyone copied it.
The explosion
Printing spread astonishingly fast. By 1500, about 270 European cities had printing presses, and Western European presses had produced more than 20 million copies of books. By 1600 the estimate is 150–200 million.
The consequences reached into almost everything:
- Religion. When Martin Luther challenged the Church in 1517, printers turned his writings into Europe's first media sensation: by one count, about 300,000 copies of his works were distributed between 1518 and 1520. Earlier reformers had been suppressed; this time the ideas outran any authority's ability to stop them.
- Science. Scholars could now work from identical copies of the same text, diagram and table, check each other's results, and build on them. Many historians see this as essential to the Scientific Revolution.
- Economies. The economist Jeremiah Dittmar found that European cities that adopted printing by 1500 grew about 60 percent faster during the 16th century than similar cities that didn't.
- Language and identity. Printing helped fix spelling and standardise national languages, as printers chose one dialect over others.
The historian Elizabeth Eisenstein argued in 1979 that the press was an "agent of change" in its own right, driving the Renaissance, Reformation and Scientific Revolution through dissemination, standardisation and preservation. Others, like the historian Adrian Johns, reply that printing was more a vehicle for changes already underway, and that early printed books were often unreliable. The debate is about how much credit the machine deserves, not whether it mattered.
The honest complications
He went broke. Gutenberg borrowed heavily from a Mainz businessman, Johann Fust. Around 1455–56, Fust sued for repayment, won, and took control of the Bible workshop. Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt. In 1465 the Archbishop of Mainz gave him a court position with a stipend, food and wine, a late recognition. He died in 1468, and his grave is lost.
We know frustratingly little. Even his birth year is uncertain (around 1400 is a convention), and no book carries his name as printer. Much of his story is pieced together from lawsuits and business records.
Printing spread lies as well as truth. The Malleus Maleficarum, a manual for identifying and prosecuting witches first printed in 1486, went through some 28 editions by 1600 and was used by courts during the European witch hunts. Historians debate how much it caused, but it's a reminder that a technology that multiplies ideas multiplies bad ones too. That lesson keeps repeating with every new medium since.
He wasn't first. East Asian printers had movable type centuries earlier. Gutenberg's case for this list rests on scale: his system, combined with an alphabet and a hungry market, is the one that spread across a continent and then the world.
Honorable mentions
- Bi Sheng (11th century), the first known inventor of movable type.
- The printers of the Jikji (1377), whose metal-type book is the oldest that survives.
- Cai Lun, traditionally credited with improving papermaking in 2nd-century China; without cheap paper, the press would have been useless.
- Aldus Manutius (c. 1450–1515), the Venetian printer who made books smaller, cheaper and portable.
The takeaway
Johannes Gutenberg combined a type-casting mould, a durable alloy, oil-based ink and a screw press into a system that made printing fast and cheap in Europe around 1450. Within fifty years, about 270 cities had presses and more than 20 million books had been printed, helping drive the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and the rise of literate publics. He wasn't the first to print with movable type, he died with little reward, and printing spread falsehood as readily as truth. But few inventions have done more to put ideas within reach of ordinary people.
Try this: pick up any book near you and look at how identical each letter "e" is to every other. That sameness, so normal it's invisible, is the whole of Gutenberg's revolution in one glance.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources
- Gutenberg's biography, innovations, the Fust lawsuit, the 1465 stipend and his death in 1468; the Gutenberg Bible (c. 180 copies, 49 surviving at least in part, the March 1455 Frankfurt letter): standard references and library census data.
- Bi Sheng's clay movable type (11th century); the Jikji (1377), held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, UNESCO Memory of the World (2001).
- Spread of printing: about 270 European cities by 1500; more than 20 million copies by 1500 and 150–200 million by 1600 (estimates from incunabula research, e.g., Buringh & van Zanden).
- Jeremiah Dittmar, "Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011).
- Luther's printed output (about 300,000 copies, 1518–1520).
- Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), and Adrian Johns's critique.
- Malleus Maleficarum: first printed 1486, about 28 editions by 1600; historians' debate about its influence.
Go deeper
- 📘 The Gutenberg Revolution — John Man (a lively, accessible biography of the man and his machine)
- 📘 The Printing Press as an Agent of Change — Elizabeth Eisenstein (the classic argument, in full)
- 🌐 British Library — Gutenberg Bible (see a surviving copy)
- 🌐 Companion piece in this library: Writing: The Invention That Made History Possible