The Gutenberg Bible
A page from the Gutenberg Bible, printed at Mainz around 1455, the first substantial book produced in Europe with movable type.
Gutenberg's achievement was not the idea of printing but the system around it: a durable metal alloy, a hand mould that cast identical letters at speed, oil-based ink and an adapted press. Roughly 180 copies were made. Within fifty years European presses had produced millions of books, and every state that mattered had discovered it now had to decide what could be printed. Read the full story in our article on Paper Empires: The Spread of Printing Technology and State Power in Early Modern France, 1500–1700.
CC BY-SA 2.0 — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
