Gutenberg's printing press
Books go mass-market — and Europe starts reading
In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable metal type on a press. His Bible appeared around 1455; printing made books cheap and accelerated the spread of knowledge, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 15th century
Did you know
The oldest dated printed book, China's Diamond Sutra of 868, is almost 600 years older than the Gutenberg Bible.
Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
Machu Picchu and Gutenberg's press are the same age: around 1450 the Incas were building their mountain estate while Mainz printed its first books.
When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.
Korean monks printed the Jikji with movable metal type in 1377, some 70 years before Gutenberg's press.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Middle East
- 1453 Fall of Constantinople — 3 years later
Asia
- 1446 King Sejong promulgates Hangul — 4 years earlier
Americas
- c. 1438 Pachacuti founds the Inca Empire — 12 years earlier
- c. 1450 Building of Machu Picchu — same year
- c. 1450 Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy — same year
Oceania
- c. 1445 Extinction of the moa — 5 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Johannes Gutenberg (aged 50)
- Mehmed II (aged 18)
- Sejong the Great (aged 53)
- Charles VII (aged 47)
- Murad II (aged 46)
- Pachacuti (aged 32)
- Louis XI (aged 27)
- Ashikaga Yoshimasa (aged 14)
- Ivan III (aged 10)
- Nezahualcoyotl (aged 48)