Speaking of Type | Johann Gutenberg

By Marjorie Crum

It’s a wonder moveable type ever caught on! Learn how Gutenberg’s Bible almost didn’t make it.

One of the first things graphic designers learn in typography class is how Johann Gutenberg invented moveable type and the printing press. But what isn’t often talked about is this—how the genius who figured out how to strengthen metal and create the printing press lost the business before the publication of the first book was finished.

Johann Gutenberg was trained as a goldsmith so he knew how to work with metal. It is claimed that he knew something about printing because he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of the Playing Cards. Gutenberg’s method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Gutenberg’s printing technology spread rapidly throughout Europe and is considered a key factor in the European Renaissance.

Gutenberg was a perfectionist. He tinkered with all parts of the printing process. It is his obsession with this new technology —bringing moveable type and improvements to inks and paper—that consume his time and attention. When he decides to print his first major work he continues to tinker with type setting making a 40-, then 41-, and ultimately a 42-line book known as the Gutenberg Bible. All the focus on improvements and additional printing to increase the production run and replace the earlier editions done at different sizes, took an exceptionally longer time than anticipated. Gutenberg is not a sound businessman. He borrows money, several times, from a wealthy businessman named Johann Fust to keep him and his shop going while making changes.

Sometime in 1455, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, and Fust demanded his money back, accusing Gutenberg of misusing the funds. Meanwhile the expenses of the Bible project had proliferated, and Gutenberg’s debt now exceeded 2,000 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop’s court. A November 1455 legal document records that there was a partnership for a “project of the books,” the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favor of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles.

Thus Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or re-started) a small printing shop, and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he at least supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain, and there is consequently a considerable amount of scholarly literature on this subject. It is also possible that the large Catholicon dictionary, 300 copies of 744 pages, printed in Mainz in 1460, may have been executed in his workshop.

Meanwhile, the Fust-Schoffer shop was the first in Europe to bring out a book with the printer’s name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg.

Posted by newyorkupstate in Design Education | April 6, 2010