The Invention of the Printing Press

Dim candlelight and silence, but for the rush of quill pens across parchment. Heads lowered, shoulders hunched, hands cramped. Squinting eyes strain to decipher the angular letters crowded into thin columns of text. Imagine life as a medieval scribe, laboriously copying biblical excerpts or books of liturgy in the drafty scriptoria of a monastery.



As a result of the difficult and lengthy production process, as well as the very low literacy rate, books during the Middle Ages were both scarce and expensive. The largest quantities of books were concentrated in the libraries of monasteries and universities and, less frequently, in the private collections of the very wealthy. Even a university such as Cambridge, however, could boast of fewer than 150 volumes in the early 15th-century.



By the middle of the 15th-century, all of this was about to change. The Renaissance had stimulated a vast rediscovery and revaluation of classical texts, thus resulting in an increased need and desire for accessible and accurate scholarship, unmarred by scribal errors. This intellectual revival, in addition to the growing spiritual needs of the masses, called for new modes and methods of expression. In other words, books that could be produced in large quantities and with some degree of uniformity were suddenly in demand.



The 15th-century had ushered in two major technological developments to Western civilization that would eventually make the printing of books possible: the widespread manufacture of paper and the invention of movable metal type. Paper made from rag pulp had been in use in China since the 2nd-century AD. During the 8th-century, the Chinese revealed the secrets of the craft to their Arab captors, who, in turn, introduced the process to the Spanish during the Islamic conquests of the 12th-century. Shortly thereafter, the technology of paper production traveled throughout the continent, and by the 15th-century, Italy and France were producing vast supplies of paper to replace the more expensive vellum sheets that had been chiefly used for the copying of manuscripts.



Tracing the history of the printing process is a more complex matter. Like rag pulp paper, precursors of European wood block printing and movable type were in use in Asia for centuries prior to the development of their European counterparts. Although there has been much speculation on the connection between Asian and European printing mechanisms, no certain relationship between the two has been established. Printing from wood blocks, a technique used primarily for the recording of Buddhist scripture, was in use in the 6th-century in China. By the 11th-century, the Chinese had also devised a system of movable type comprised of blocks that could be reassembled to print different works. The great number of characters required in Chinese writing, however, rendered this system impractical. Consequently, these incredible inventions were largely abandoned for methods more suited to Chinese script.



In Europe, printing from wood blocks began sometime during the late Middle Ages, but was primarily used for the production of single-page images of religious subjects that occasionally included scanty lines of narrative text. From these single-page images arose the concept of block-books, small books composed of printed sheets also produced from wood blocks. Block-books, which consisted of multiple pages of illustrations and some brief text, were generally concerned with biblical stories or spiritual instruction.



One other important technology also proved instrumental in the development of printing: metal casting. Used for the production of coins, seals and jewelry, metal casting relied on several of the tools and principles that would eventually provide the important components for the invention of movable metal type. Perhaps most importantly, the metal mold allowed for type to be cast precisely and in large quantities.



Although the signature of German entrepreneur and master craftsman Johann Gutenberg appears nowhere on any printed work, he has long been acknowledged as the inventor of typography and the printing press. Until very recently, it was thought that Gutenberg invented the metal mold method of printing; however, current research on texts printed by Gutenberg's press now suggests the use of a sand casting method instead. How the metal matrix came into being is not known, but Italian documents dating to the 1470's make specific reference to this method of printing, thereby dating its invention to sometime between 1450-1470. Although this new information may force the rewriting of the history of printing to some extent, it in no way decreases the importance of Gutenberg's role--the metal matrix may not have been his invention, but he was the first person to mass-produce books and he still retains his position as the inventor of the printing press. Additionally, Gutenberg is credited with the formulation of printing ink, which differed in consistency from the ink used for wood block printing.



The German printer's signature work remains one of the finest books ever produced: Gutenberg's Bible, completed in 1455, was a large, two-volume Bible with 42 lines of type to each column of text. With no less than 290 types required to print the text, this Bible was several years in the making. It is believed that only 180 copies were printed. Of the 48 extant copies still in existence, only three are known to be complete: two are housed in the British Library; the Library of Congress claims the third.



Despite the success of his invention, Gutenberg defaulted on a loan granted to him by his financial backer, Johann Fust. The litigation brought against Gutenberg cost him his printing establishment. Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, a former scribe in the Gutenberg enterprise, won the lawsuit and set up their own, very prosperous, printing shop. The press of Fust and Schoeffer produced some of the finest books available during the infancy of printing. As the details of Gutenberg's technological triumph spread throughout Europe, a number of other important print shops sprang up across the continent and a variety of advancements were made in the printing process.



One of the most fascinating fields of book collecting focuses on the early stages of printing. Known as incunables, books produced during the first 50 years following the invention of the printing press are of great historic and typographic interest to the collector. Some of the most finely crafted and beautifully printed books were published before the year 1500. In addition to the quality of craftsmanship that lends appeal to early printings, incunables are also highly valued by collectors for their textual content and typographical clues, as well as the instrumental role that many early books played in the history of ideas in Europe. Although a number of important early printers were at work refining the printing process and producing magnificent works, two in particular warrant mention for their specific achievements: Anton Koberger and William Caxton.



Anton Koberger, the most renowned German printer at the end of the fifteenth century, established a prolific trade in books, building a publishing enterprise that extended throughout Germany, as well as to every major European capital. By 1509 Koberger had a total of 24 presses, a bindery, and such a massive work load that it was necessary to commission other printers. Koberger printed a large number of Bibles and many philosophical and theological texts, but the work most closely associated with him, and indeed one of the most beautifully printed and illustrated works ever produced, is the Nuremberg Chronicle. Illustrated by Michael Wolgemut, Albrecht Durer's teacher, the Nuremberg Chronicle features 1,809 exceptionally detailed woodcuts, as well as the first modern map of Europe and Ptolemy's map of the world. The text, composed by Hartmann Schedel, was no less ambitious: it attempted nothing short of a comprehensive world history. Equally impressive volumes, both the German and Latin editions were printed by Koberger's press in 1493.



While Anton Koberger was producing masterpieces of early printing in Germany, the first English printer was operating a very successful press across the English Channel. William Caxton, who learned the trade in Cologne and then established his first printing press in Bruges, published the first printed book in the English language--The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, 1474. In 1476, Caxton returned to England and set up a press at Westminster. Here Caxton produced many of his most famous works: Troilus and Creseide, Morte d'Arthur, The History of Reynart the Foxe and, perhaps most importantly, two editions of The Canterbury Tales (1478 and 1483). The second edition of Caxton's Canterbury Tales, although marred by certain textual shortcomings, is most remarkable for its lively woodcut characterizations of the various pilgrims, 26 in all. Over the course of his career, Caxton printed more than 70 books, many of them his own English translations. Although the errors and omissions in some of his translations reflect the haste with which books were being printed in order to see a quick return on the capital invested in production costs, Caxton did recognize the importance of producing translations in a style that would be readily accessible to English readers. Caxton's greatest contribution to both English literature and printing history, therefore, was his success in producing numerous popular and useful books and making them widely accessible and available to English readers.



Despite the somewhat murky origins of the printing press, there can be no doubt that the invention of the press marked a critical moment in history. As fundamental as the invention of the wheel or the discovery of fire, the printing press has played a central role in the dissemination of ideas and the subsequent shaping of the last 500 years of human history.