The Printing Press

The story begins not where you expect. In 868 CE, six hundred years before Gutenberg, a Buddhist scroll was printed in Tang Dynasty China — complete with a woodcut illustration that remains the oldest dated book art. This Diamond Sutra now sits in the British Library, proof that printing's roots run deep into Asian soil.

Around 1040, a commoner named Bi Sheng created something even more revolutionary: movable type. Individual characters, carved into clay, baked hard, and arranged to print any text — then rearranged for the next. The concept Gutenberg would “invent” 400 years later.

In the 1440s, in the German city of Mainz, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenbergwas working on something he called “aventur und kunst” — adventure and art. He was secretive, working in borrowed spaces, borrowing money.

What he created wasn't printing — that existed. It wasn't movable type — that existed too. What Gutenberg created was a system: movable metal type (cast in a hand mold from a lead-tin-antimony alloy that melted easily and held precise shapes), oil-based ink (water-based ink beaded up on metal), and a wooden screw press (adapted from wine-making).

Each element existed before. The combination changed everything.

= The European Printing Revolution

In 1462, two German printers — Arnold Pannartz and Conrad Sweynheym — carried Gutenberg's secrets across the Alps to a Benedictine monastery at Subiaco, near Rome. Italy had printing. By 1467, Rome. By 1469, Venice — which would become the printing capital of Europe with 150 presses by century's end.

The spread was explosive. Cologne (1466). Paris (1470). Buda and Kraków (1473). London never — until a merchant named William Caxton learned to print in Cologne, set up a press in Bruges, and in 1476 established England's first printing shop in Westminster.

The master printers spreading the technology were overwhelmingly German — Gutenberg's apprentices and their apprentices, carrying knowledge outward in widening circles.

Aldus Manutius in Venice introduced italic type and the pocket book, making Greek and Latin classics affordable to ordinary readers. His dolphin-and-anchor emblem is still used by Doubleday Books today.

On October 31, 1517, a professor named Martin Luther composed 95 propositions for academic debate about the sale of indulgences. He may have posted them on the church door at Wittenberg — the standard way to announce a scholarly disputation.

He expected a local conversation among theologians.

Within two weeks, the 95 Theses had spread throughout Germany. Within two months, throughout Europe.

Luther became the first bestselling author. Between 1517 and 1520, thirty of his pamphlets ran through 370 editions — roughly 400,000 copies flooding Germany. By 1525, his complete works totaled 287 tracts and some two million copies. He wrote in German, not Latin, expanding his audience beyond the educated elite.

The Reformation might have been impossible in the pre-Gutenberg age. One man with strong opinions had always existed. A technology that could multiply those opinions faster than any authority could respond — that was new.