Ink, Type, and Revolution: Exploring Gutenberg’s Legacy at the Gutenberg Museum

If you’re a regular reader, you know I recently went on a river cruise through Germany. One of the places we stopped was the city of Mainz.

In case you don’t know, Mainz was the home of Johannes Gutenberg, which makes it hallowed ground for writers because without his press, our profession wouldn’t be possible. Yes, there were writers long before Gutenberg. What was missing was readers. Mass literacy wasn’t possible until books became relatively cheap and easy to produce. Before Gutenberg, reading was for the educated elite.

Gutenberg didn’t invent the press. The Chinese did that about 350 years earlier. What Gutenberg did was invent movable type made of metal alloys instead of wood, which wore out and needed constant replacing. He also created an ink that was thick enough to adhere to vellum or parchment, and he adapted a pre-existing press to allow it to apply firm, even pressure to printing surfaces.

When Gutenberg started printing in the mid-fifteenth century, he didn’t only print Bibles. His main source of income was indulgences for the church. This had copiers and illustrators of the day worried, with good reason, that their jobs would disappear. However, the press made possible widespread public education, which led to the creation of more professions than Gutenberg could ever have dreamed of.