Johannes Gutenberg: the king of printing and the “man of the millennium” to lose everything

“The Millennial Man.” These were the words with which the British Library named Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, said Johannes Gutenberg: the man who invented the printing press.

While much of his life is shrouded in mystery, historical records indicate that this goldsmith He was born around 1400 in the city of Mainz, which today belongs to Germany, but which at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire.

According to historians, at the end of 1430, and in an attempt to pay off the debts he had after a business of small metal mirrors which had failed and ended a complaint against you for theft of metals, he started to develop a device to print texts more efficiently.

Eventually, he invented a machine that replaced the hand-carved wooden letter and graphic blocks of the traditional printers by easy-pouring types of metals, which were then dipped in proprietary ink to print entire pages at a time.

The first text you printed using mobile types it was a short school writing, which was only 28 pages long. However, he quickly took a leap and was the protagonist of a much more ambitious project: its creation made it possible to print the Bible in Latin.

In addition, the man who developed the modern printing press incorporated a work team (which he called “my 26 tin soldiers”), with whom he printed – on average – 3,600 pages per working day. Yes indeed, led the first large-scale book production in Europe and has managed to significantly reduce the price of these, making them more accessible.

It is estimated that in the 16th century, 200 million books were printed thanks to this, so that as of Gutenberg’s printing press is at the origin of a new era of mass communication and the media, with the rise of the press.

Anyway, despite its importance and the fact that it was a key part of cultural evolution in the world, it had to face significant debts.

The last of his usurious lenders refused to extend his credit and sued him for delinquency, so the great inventor he lost his printing press, all his materials and the Bibles already printed. He was left in complete darkness, on the streets, and coin-free, until finally, on February 3, 1468, when many others were filled with money with his invention, Gutenberg died.

Today, his legacy lives on through Project Gutenberg: a digital library that offers more than 60,000 free books. Added to this, exactly 21 years ago (April 14, 2000), the Gutenberg Museum launched a retrospective exhibition in his honor, which is the one that Google commemorates today, by dedicating its famous doodle.

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