Sometime between 1440 and 1450, the German Johannes Gutenberg put individual metal letters together for the first time in Europe in order to be able to print texts faster than ever. The technology soon caused a true revolution. But Gutenberg's life had a lot of setbacks. “Perhaps I am more of a creative entrepreneur looking for opportunities than a real inventor.”
After Gutenberg introduced his new way of printing, information could be multiplied faster than ever before. The art of printing spread like wildfire through late Middle Ages Europe.
A little later this also applied to printed pamphlets with all kinds of deviating views on the organization of the state and the church. In that sense, Gutenberg's invention was a kickstarter for the Reformation and all kinds of later developments within science and technology.
Congratulations! Your printing press was named the greatest invention of the millennium in 1997 by Time Life Magazine. Did you expect that?
"Thank you. That's a huge honour. In any case, I have noticed that there is already a lot of interest in my idea. Since I completed my first complete printed Bible in 1455, printeries have sprung up all over German-speaking areas. I think there is money to be made on beautiful printed bibles for monasteries and churches. But unfortunately I'm not a very good businessman. I could never get enough capital. It is nice that your contemporaries attach so much value to my invention, but it has never made me rich.”
“By the way, it is clear to me that you do not live in the fifteenth century. A printing press has been around for a long time. Books have already been printed. In my time, the idea arose to cut a whole page in mirror image from a block of wood and then print it on a piece of paper. But that took a long time and the block could only be used for one page.”
“One cutting mistake and you could start again. My idea was to cast individual letters in metal and place them one after the other in a box to compose a text. You only had to make those letters once, it went very quickly and you can reuse them for all kinds of printed matter.”
So you became one of the most important inventors in centuries. But we don't know much about your life. You come from a considerable family, right?
“Yes, the family on my father's side is called Gänsfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (that's a mouthful, everyone calls us Gutenberg). We are traditionally a family of metal workers. We supplied metal for the Imperial Mint and were involved in detecting counterfeiting.”
“In 1411 riots broke out in Mainz against noble families. Around that time I left for Strasbourg. Through connections my maternal family had there, I was able to join the goldworkers' guild quite easily. That gave me a somewhat privileged position in the city. I decided to make a living by teaching others the art of working precious metals for a fee. So it was in Strasbourg that I slowly got the idea for what you have come to call the most important invention of the millennium.”
Before we talk about that, you also got involved in a lawsuit in Strasbourg. Would you like to tell us something about that?
“When I lived in Strasbourg for a few years, I wanted to start a lucrative business in sacred mirrors together with Andreas Dritzehn and Andreas Heilmann, two high-ranking bourgeois friends. Every seven years, all kinds of relics, including those of Saint Charlemagne, were exhibited in Aachen. That always attracted thousands of pilgrims.”
“With the mirrors we made, those pilgrims were able to capture the sacred rays of those relics. If they kept the mirror well covered during the return journey, they could trap the rays to release at home on a sick loved one, or on a cow that was no longer giving milk.”
“We had invested almost all of our money in this small business. But the 1439 exhibition was unexpectedly postponed for a year. So then we suddenly found ourselves with 32,000 mirrors that we couldn't get rid of. To bridge the year, I decided to initiate Dritzehn and Heilmann into a secret. Something with a wooden printing press and gold molds (laughs mysteriously). 'Art and adventure', I called it. Unfortunately, Dritzehn fell prey to the plague shortly afterwards.”
“His brother Jörg then, as legal heir, demanded initiation into our secret enterprise, but I didn't feel like it. He took me to court, a case I lost. Jörg then became the owner of the company, but I don't think he ever got it off the ground.”
Modern historians suspect from the source material used in the lawsuit that your "secret" was a movable type printing press. How long did it take before you could really get started with your invention?
“All in all, my experiment in Strasbourg had ended in a financial catastrophe. A few years later I returned to Mainz. Of course I wanted to expand my secret idea further. But the metal needed was expensive and I didn't have the space to build a printing press either. I borrowed a small capital from Arnold Gelthus, a distant relative, and set up a small workshop with it”
“I tried to make a quick buck and printed some Latin grammar books and small calendars. You never found anything from this era with my name on it, did you? Probably because the small print shop was never fully owned by me, but I had to share everything with my investors.”
“It didn't do me much at all, but I thought it was great to start again with something new, to come up with new concepts. I also never saw printing books with interchangeable letters as a substitute for the old, solid handwritten book. I saw it more as a new craftsmanship that I was trying to master myself. Perhaps I am also more of an entrepreneur who sees opportunities than a real inventor.”
Speaking of something new, your next project was printing an entire Bible. The 'Gutenberg Bible' would become a monument in the history of printing. Why did you decide to start printing Bibles?
“I saw a commercial opportunity there. Some seventy abbots from Benedictine monasteries gathered in Mainz in 1449 to agree on reforms. They felt that all those monasteries should have a modern, well-readable Bible in their library. A wonderful opportunity of course. Shortly afterwards I met the wealthy merchant Johann Fust, from whom I could borrow the money to set up a larger printing house. This was much needed because each Bible had 1,272 pages, with 42 lines on each page. In the beginning we also tried to print the colorful decorations, but that turned out to be too much work.”
In 2013, a complete Gutenberg Bible would be worth an estimated 25 million euros. What did you earn from it?
“I am quite blown away! I did make some money selling Bibles, but another lawsuit soon followed. Fust thought I was misusing the profit and demanded his investment back. The judge agreed with him. Then I was completely bankrupt. I started again, but only with difficulty could I set up a small printing business, barely making the money to pay off old debts.”
“In 1462, Mainz was conquered by the troops of Archbishop Adolf II of Nassau. Many printers fled the city, causing the art of printing to spread further throughout the German Reich. That same archbishop later offered me shelter in his palace. I still live there. I am not rich or successful, but I am well taken care of here and I am safe here.”
One last question, Mr. Gutenberg. On the Grote Markt in Haarlem is a statue of Laurens Janszoon Koster, who in that city is said to be the inventor of the printing press. What do you think?
“I understand that the story is that he accidentally discovered the art of printing when he dropped a carved letter in the sand in the city forest and saw the print. That story seems nonsense to me. As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, the technique of printing with wooden blocks has been around for much longer.”
“In Holland they were quite advanced with that. But the technique with metal, interchangeable letters really originated in Strasbourg and Mainz thanks to me. The Koster story seems to me to be a typical example of a local myth.”
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Out and about with Turing or Tesla
What would it be like to spend the day talking to famous inventors like Nikola Tesla or Alan Turing? That's what we tried to imagine at Kennislink. We pretended we could, a series of fictitious interviews. In these conversations we tried not only to learn everything about inventions, but also to penetrate into their private lives. In this slideshow you will meet eight famous inventors.
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The self-made woman
The woman in our list of famous inventors initially developed her device to lend a helping hand. But especially hotels and medical institutions saw the usefulness of the fast and boiling hot washing machine. Kennislink spoke to Ms Cochrane about her difficult road to success and the inspiration for her invention.
Read the interview with Josephine Cochrane here
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The thoughtful
Alexander Graham Bell was born with the fascination for sound. His father and grandfather were speech teachers who taught the deaf to speak, and Bell was involved in this throughout his life. In his spare time, this workaholic worked on several inventions. Kennislink talked to him about his most important invention:the telephone. A phone interview, of course. “People remember me because of the telephone, but my real mission may have been to teach the deaf to speak.”
Read the interview with Alexander Graham Bell here
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The outcast
Today, many see him as the “father of the computer.” In 1936, British mathematician Alan Turing devised a number of important concepts that formed the basis for the computer revolution. But the brilliant Turing also struggled with his homosexuality at a time when it was all but accepted. “Into the cell or chemical castration, what would you have done?”
Read the interview with Alan Turing here
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The loner
The stubborn go-getter Theodore Maiman manufactured the first laser in 1960 thanks to a special combination of knowledge, skill and character. He was a real inventor, who was not taken quite seriously by the scientific establishment. And the press didn't like his 'death ray' at first either. Maiman blows off steam in this fictional interview. “I don't get discouraged easily.”
Read the interview with Theodore Maiman
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The troublemaker
A genius, genius inventor, provocateur and a racist. Few inventors of the twentieth century are as controversial as the American physicist William Shockley. Partly thanks to his work, the transistor was created, which laid the foundation for today's computers. “I've loved provoking all my life.”
Read the interview with William Shockley
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The entrepreneur
Sometime between 1440 and 1450, the German Johannes Gutenberg first put individual metal letters together in order to be able to print texts faster than ever. The technology soon caused a true revolution. But Gutenberg's life had a lot of setbacks. “Perhaps I am more of a creative entrepreneur looking for opportunities than a real inventor.”
Read the interview with Johannes Gutenberg
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The modest
He is the discoverer of penicillin, a bactericidal substance that could suddenly cure all kinds of infectious diseases. But he himself never understood that such a fuss was made about it. Kennislink held a fictional interview with the modest Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. "A contamination in my experiment eventually earned me the Nobel Prize."
Read the interview with Alexander Fleming here
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The Eccentric
Nikola Tesla is a born inventor, he is adept at it from an early age. Later on, the originally Serb will provide important amounts for our current electricity grid. But he also works on radio communication and wireless energy transfer. Tesla is often portrayed as an almost mythical figure, a legend. Kennislink finds out what he really was like. “I just loved working on my inventions, all by myself.”
Read the interview with Nikola Tesla
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Other fictional interviews
Handsome minds over a cup of coffeeBrilliant biologists over a drink
This article is part of the series 'Speaking of frenzied inventors' , in which eight famous inventors are 'fictitiously interviewed'.