Books
An invention that changed the world
Published 11 February 2002
The Gutenberg Revolution
John Man Review, 312pp, £14.99
ISBN 0747245045
In 1455, all Europe's printed books could have been carried on a single wagon. Today, ten billion books are printed each year, according to John Man, comprising 50 million tonnes of paper. If we add in the world's newspapers and magazines, that figure rises to 130 million tonnes, a pile more than 2,000 feet high, twice the height of the Empire State Building. All of the books published since 1455 would make 100 pyramids, each twice the size of the Great Pyramid.
The real quantum jump arrived in the late 15th century with Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type. By 1500, there were already a million volumes in existence, representing more than 10,000 titles. By any reckoning, then, Gutenberg deserves the title of "genius" that Man gives him. Here indeed was an invention that changed the world.
Born into an aristocratic family in Mainz in 1400, Gutenberg began his career as a goldsmith. Although it is not strictly correct to hail him as the inventor of printing (there had been earlier, primitive systems of type in Holland, and even among the Mongols), Gutenberg was the first to show how the invention could be marketed as a universally viable concern - in this sense, he was the George Stephenson rather than the James Watt.
Against the cliched image of the lone, mad inventor, Man shows how much of Gutenberg's achievement came through synergy and teamwork. His two principal collaborators were the German goldsmith Johann Fust and his ambitious son-in-law Peter Schoffer. In the early 1450s, Gutenberg entered into partnership with Fust, who supplied the money for a printing press. When this loan was not repaid on the due date in 1455, Fust sued and received the printing press in lieu of payment. With the Gutenberg partnership dissolved, Fust and Schoffer printed the famous Bible that Gutenberg had begun. The so-called Gutenberg Bible (also known as the Mazarin or 42-Line Bible) was a three-volume Latin work, printed in columns of 42 lines. Gutenberg, meanwhile, went into partnership with Konrad Humery and set up another printing press; the principal product of his last years (he died in 1468) was the edition of Aelius Donatus's Latin school grammar.
Man provides much fascinating detail on medieval German social history and the mechanics of early printing, together with an explanation of Gutenberg's system that some will find tougher reading. But his penchant for wandering down historical byways is, I think, a sign that he lacks confidence in Gutenberg as a biographical subject. After all, there is no clandestine romance, intrigue or high adventure in this story, only 99 per cent perspiration and the taking of infinite pains.
But there can be no denying his central thesis that, without Gutenberg and printing, there would have been no Reformation. A third of all books published in Germany between 1518 and 1525 were by Martin Luther - of the million volumes a year being turned out by German printing presses, more than 300,000 were by Luther. Bestselling author indeed. A contemporary British author would have to sell 300 million copies a year to equal that - a feat way beyond even the Archers and Jackie Collinses.
This is a very good introduction to Gutenberg and his world, but I wish that, instead of going back in time to the Mongols, the author had traced the long-term impact of Gutenberg, rather as Marshall McLuhan did. There is a strong case for saying that the Reformation was the first historical result of the invention of printing. Later consequences were nationalism, the industrial revolution, the Newtonian conception of the universe, modern (that is, post-Descartes) philosophy, perspective in art, the notion of causality in the sciences, narrative chronology in literature, individual psychology, and perhaps even modern phenomena as diverse as Henry Ford and the assembly line on the one hand, and Freud and psychoanalysis on the other.
Gutenberg was a devout Catholic and thought that his invention would unify the warring factions of the faith. What it did, instead, was to destroy the age of belief and blow apart the Church's claim to a monopoly on knowledge.
Frank McLynn's most recent book is Villa and Zapata: a biography of the Mexican revolution (Pimlico)
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