50 Fun Facts About Johannes Gutenberg

What did Johannes Gutenberg invent?

Movable type already existed in East Asia, but his press made printing vastly faster.

In which German city on the Rhine was Gutenberg born?

The Gutenberg Museum was founded there in 1900 for the 500th anniversary of his birth.

What was Gutenberg's major work, acclaimed for its aesthetic and technical quality?

It is also called the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42.

What three metals made up Gutenberg's type-metal alloy?

It melted at a low temperature for cheap casting and produced durable type.

What kind of ink did Gutenberg introduce for printing books?

Scribes' water-based inks would not adhere to metal type; his ink was mainly carbon with copper, lead and titanium.

Gutenberg's wooden printing machine was similar to what existing device?

Screw presses were used for wine and olive oil.

Why is 1400 commonly given as the year Gutenberg was born?

Estimates range from 1393 to 1406, based on a document showing he had come of age by 1420.

On which feast day is Gutenberg traditionally said to have been born?

Children were often named for their birthday's patron saint, though 'Johannes' was so common the guess is unverifiable.

What was the inventor's original family surname, before the residence names were added?

'Laden' and 'Gutenberg' were the names of family residences in his home city.

Why could Gutenberg never succeed his father at the Mainz mint?

One historian thinks this disillusionment pushed him towards his unusual career as an inventor.

To which nearby town did the Gutenberg family flee during Mainz's guild conflicts of 1411 and 1413?

His mother had inherited a house on the town walls there.

Gutenberg is assumed to have studied at which university, where 'Johannes de Altavilla' enrolled in 1418?

Altavilla is the Latin form of the Rhineland town where his family had taken refuge.

In which city was Gutenberg living by 1434, where he was a goldsmith enrolled in the militia?

He had relatives on his mother's side there and stayed until at least 1444.

What was Gutenberg taken to court over in 1436-37?

The woman was named Ennelin; whether they ever married is not recorded.

What did Gutenberg plan to sell to pilgrims travelling to Aachen in 1439?

The mirrors were believed to capture holy light from relics; a flood delayed the exhibition by a year and the venture failed.

What was the mysterious name of the secret enterprise Gutenberg is said to have unveiled in 1440?

It means 'enterprise and art'; whether early trials of movable type happened there is unclear.

Which wealthy moneylender lent Gutenberg 800 guilders around 1450, and then another 800 for the Bible?

His brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus had lent him money in 1448, possibly for the press.

Who joined the enterprise, became Fust's son-in-law, and likely designed early typefaces?

He had worked as a scribe in Paris.

What lucrative church documents did Gutenberg's press print by the thousand in 1454-55?

Ironically, indulgences were the target of Luther's Ninety-five Theses, which printing later spread.

How many lines per page does the famous Gutenberg Bible have?

The first pages printed actually had 40 lines; the count was raised to save paper.

Roughly how many copies of the Gutenberg Bible were printed?

Three quarters were on paper and the rest on vellum.

What did a Gutenberg Bible cost when it was new?

Still far cheaper than a manuscript Bible, which took a single scribe over a year.

Which future pope wrote in March 1455 that he had seen pages of the Bible displayed in Frankfurt?

His letter is the most reliable evidence for the Bible's date.

Of which Latin text is the Gutenberg Bible an edition?

It has no page numbers, indentations or paragraph breaks.

How many pages does a complete Gutenberg Bible have?

Each copy needed 322 sheets of paper, usually bound in two volumes.

How many master characters did the Gutenberg Bible's typeface require?

Upper and lower case, punctuation and ligatures such as 'fi' all needed their own sort.

What happened when his moneylender sued Gutenberg in 1456?

The debt had grown to 2,026 guilders at six percent; Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt.

What was Europe's first book to carry its printer's name and date, from the Fust-Schoffer shop in 1457?

It made no mention of Gutenberg.

In which town was a 36-line Bible printed around 1459, possibly with type supplied by Gutenberg?

Much of it was set from a copy of the 42-line Bible, disproving the idea that it came first.

Which archbishop, having sacked Mainz in 1462, gave Gutenberg the title of Hofmann in 1465?

The honour came with a stipend, a court outfit, 2,180 litres of grain and 2,000 litres of wine tax-free.

What is known about Gutenberg's grave?

He was buried in 1468, likely as a tertiary in a Franciscan church.

When did the first portrait of Gutenberg appear, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction?

It was in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans.

What is the upper estimate for the number of individual pieces of type Gutenberg's Bibles required?

Setting a single page may have taken half a day.

What did a 2001 study of a papal bull by Agüera y Arcas and Needham suggest about Gutenberg's type?

Irregularities in simple characters like the hyphen could not have come from a single matrix; the theory remains disputed.

Which Dutchman from Haarlem was claimed in a 1568 book to be the true source of movable type?

The claim is now regarded as legend; the first securely dated Dutch printed book is from 1471.

Who invented the first movable type, in 11th-century China?

His characters were made of baked clay; Gutenberg's innovation was the press and metal type system.

Which schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus may Gutenberg have printed in the early 1450s?

Such texts were more lucrative than the Bible and probably kept the press afloat.

How many Gutenberg Bibles were known to survive as of 2009?

Fragments used in the bindings of later books may represent about 16 more copies.

For how much did a complete Gutenberg Bible sell at auction in 1978?

That copy went to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas; estimates for a complete copy have since risen to $25-35 million.

Where is the only Gutenberg Bible volume held outside Europe and North America?

Keio's HUMI project is known for its high-quality digital images of the Bibles.

Which sculptor made the 1837 statue of Gutenberg in Gutenbergplatz, Mainz?

The square is also home to the Gutenberg Museum and the university named after him.

What is Project Gutenberg?

An asteroid, 777 Gutemberga, and two operas also commemorate him.

Where did Michael H. Hart rank Gutenberg in his 1978 book The 100?

He placed him below Cai Lun, the traditional inventor of paper, but above Columbus, Einstein and Darwin.

In which year was the Gutenberg Museum founded in Mainz, marking 500 years since his birth?

The museum publishes the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, the leading periodical on the history of printing.

Which publication in 1997 named Gutenberg's invention the most important of the second millennium?

Gutenberg is regularly cited among the most influential figures in human history.

Roughly what fraction of the 180 Gutenberg Bibles were printed on paper rather than vellum?

The rest were printed on vellum, the more expensive animal-skin parchment.

Besides a stipend and a court outfit, Gutenberg's 1465 honour granted him tax-free grain and how much wine a year?

The title of Hofmann came from Archbishop Adolph von Nassau, three years before Gutenberg's death.

From which relative did Gutenberg take out a loan in 1448, possibly to buy a printing press?

He had returned to Mainz after a four-year gap in the historical record following his Strasbourg years.

Which explorer's father bought him a geography book printed with movable type, now held in Seville?

The book is kept in the Biblioteca Colombina; Italy quickly became the centre of the printing trade.

In which year did the US Postal Service issue a stamp for the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg's press?

He is also commemorated in space by the asteroid 777 Gutemberga.