The Korean alphabet and Gutenberg's press are the same age: King Sejong proclaimed Hangul in 1446, and around 1450 Mainz began printing with movable type.
The events
- King Sejong promulgates Hangul1446 · Hanseong. King Sejong the Great of Korea promulgated the Hunminjeongeum, a phonetic alphabet created under his direction in 1443. The simple Hangul script let literacy spread beyond the elite schooled in Chinese characters.
- Gutenberg's printing pressc. 1450 · Mainz. 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.
More amazing facts
- 1445 Haast's eagle hunted moa up to 15 times its own weight.
- 1446 King Sejong promised that a wise man could learn his alphabet in a morning and a fool in ten days.
- 1449 · 1457 A Chinese emperor was captured by nomads and later became emperor again.
- 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
- 1450 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.
- 1450 · 1453 When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.