In 1445, Johannes Gutenberg invented. See what "Gutenberg, Johann" is in other dictionaries

The German Johannes Gutenberg, whose biography is described in this article, had a tremendous impact on the entire the world. His invention truly changed the course of history.

[show]Ancestors of Johannes Gutenberg

Since he was born and lived in the fifteenth century, very little information about him has been preserved. In those distant times, only prominent political and church figures were honored to be included in documentary sources. However, Johann was lucky. Contemporaries appreciated his work, information about him is found in various historical descriptions of that time.

It is known for certain that Johannes Gutenberg was born into a wealthy family of Friel Gensfleisch and Elsa Wirich. This happened around 1400.

His parents married in 1386. Mother came from a family of cloth merchants, so their union was considered unequal. From time immemorial, there has been a struggle in the city between the patricians (the upper strata of the burghers, the father's family) and the workshops (artisans, the mother's family). When the confrontation in Mainz escalated, the family had to leave, so as not to endanger the children.

In Mainz, the family had an estate named after their father, Gensfleisch, and the Gutenberghof farmstead.

It is possible that the inventor had a knighthood, although the origin of his mother and his own activities contradicted this. However, there is an ordinance signed by the French king Charles the Seventh, in which the name of Gutenberg appears.

Childhood and youth

A brief biography of Johann is not contained in any of the ancient sources. It can only be restored from fragmentary data. That is why reliable information about the first years of his life simply does not exist.

There are no records of his baptism. However, some researchers believe that his birthday is June 24, 1400 (the day. There is also no exact information about the place of his birth. It could be either Mainz or Strasbourg.

Johann was the youngest child in the family. The eldest son's name was Frile, there were also two girls - Elsa and Patze.

After leaving school, the young man studied handicraft, deciding to follow in the footsteps of his mother's ancestors. It is known that he achieved the highest skill and received the title of master, since he subsequently trained apprentices.

Life in Strasbourg

Johannes Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg from 1434. He was engaged in jewelry business, polished precious stones and produced mirrors. It was there that the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bcreating a machine that would print books was born in his head. In 1438, he even created an organization under the mysterious name "Enterprise with Art". The cover was the manufacture of mirrors. This partnership was organized jointly with his student Andreas Dritzen.

Around this time, Gutenberg and his team were on the verge of a brilliant discovery, but the death of a companion delayed the publication of his invention.

The invention of printing

The starting point of modern printing is considered to be 1440, although there are no printed documents, books and sources of that time. There are only circumstantial evidence, according to which a certain Waldfogel, since 1444, has been selling the secret of "artificial writing." It is believed that it was John Gutenberg himself. Thus, he tried to get funds for the further development of his machine. So far, it was only raised letters, made of metal and carved in its mirror image. In order for the inscription to appear on paper, it was necessary to use special paint and a press.

In 1448, the German returned to Mainz, where he made a deal with the usurer I. Fust, who paid him eight hundred guilders annually. The profit from the printing house was to be divided by percentage. But in the end, this arrangement began to work against Gutenberg. He stopped receiving the promised money for technical support, but still shared the profits.

Despite all the troubles, Johannes Gutenberg's machine by 1456 acquired several different fonts (five in total). At the same time, the first grammar of Aelius Donatus was printed, several official documents and, finally, two Bibles that have become historical monuments for printing.

The 42-line Gutenberg Bible, printed no later than 1455, is considered Johann's main work. It has survived to this day and is kept in the Mainz Museum.

For this book, the inventor created a special font, a variety. It turned out to be quite similar to a handwritten one and due to the many ligatures and abbreviations that were customarily used by scribes.

Since the existing colors were not suitable for printing, Gutenberg had to create his own. Due to the addition of copper, lead and sulfur, the text in the book turned out to be blue-black, with an unusual sheen, red ink was used for headings. To match two colors, one page had to be passed through the machine twice.

The book was published in a circulation of 180 copies, but few have survived to this day. The largest number is in Germany (twelve pieces). There was one copy of the first printed Bible in Russia, but after the revolution, the Soviet government sold it at an auction in London.

In the fifteenth century, this Bible was sold for 30 florins (3 grams of gold in one coin). Today, one page from the book is valued at $80,000. There are 1272 pages in the Bible.

Litigation

Johannes Gutenberg was twice called to trial. This happened for the first time in 1439, after the death of his friend and companion A. Dritzen. His children claimed that the machine was actually their father's invention.

Gutenberg easily won the case. And thanks to his materials, the researchers learned at what stage of readiness the invention was. The documents contained such words as "stamping", "printing", "press", "this work". This clearly indicated the readiness of the machine.

It is known for certain that the process stopped due to the lack of some of the details that Andreas had left. Johann had to restore them himself.

The second trial took place in 1455, when I. Fust sued the inventor for non-payment of interest. The court ruled that the printing house and all its components pass to the plaintiff. Johannes Gutenberg invented printing in 1440, and fifteen years later he had to start from scratch.

Last years

Having hardly survived the consequences of the trial, Gutenberg decided not to give up. He came to the company of K. Gumeri and published in 1460 the work of Johann Balba, as well as a Latin grammar with a dictionary.

In 1465 he entered the service of Elector Adolf.

At the age of 68, the printer died. He was buried in Mainz, but the location of his grave is currently unknown.

Distribution of printing

What Johannes Gutenberg became famous for attracted many. Everyone wants easy money. Therefore, many people appeared who pretended to be the inventors of printing in Europe.

Gutenberg's name was recorded in one of his documents by Peter Schaeffer, his apprentice. After the destruction of the first printing house, its workers dispersed throughout Europe, introducing new technologies in other countries. Johannes Gutenberg was listed as their teacher. Typography quickly spread in Hungary (A. Hess), Italy (Sweichnheim), and Spain. Ironically, none of Gutenberg's students went to France. Parisians independently invited German printers to work in their country.

The final point in the history of the creation of printing was put in his work by Anthony van der Lind in 1878.

Gutenberg studies

The personality of the European printing pioneer has always been popular. Researchers in many countries did not miss the opportunity to write any work about his biography or activities. Even during his lifetime, disputes began about the authorship of the invention and the place (Mainz or Strasbourg).

Some connoisseurs called Gutenberg an apprentice of Fust and Schaeffer. And despite the fact that Schaeffer himself called Johann the inventor of printing, these rumors did not subside for a long time.

Modern researchers call the main problem that in the first printed books there is no colophon, that is, a mark of authorship. By doing this, Gutenberg would be able to avoid a lot of problems and would not allow his legacy to vegetate.

A little more is known about the identity of the inventor, also because there is no personal correspondence, a reliable image. The amount of documentary evidence is insufficient.

Johannes Gutenberg invented unique typefaces, thanks to which it was possible to establish and confirm his legacy.

In Russia, interest in studying the life of a printing pioneer appeared only in the middle of the twentieth century. It was the 500th anniversary of the invention of printing. The first researcher was Vladimir Lyublinsky, a representative of the Leningrad scientific community.

In total, more than 3000 books have been written and published in the world. scientific papers(these include short biography Gutenberg).

Memory

Unfortunately, no lifetime portraits of Johann have been preserved. The first engraving, dated 1584, was painted in Paris from a description of the inventor's appearance.

Mainz is considered not only the hometown of Johann, but also the place of invention. Therefore, there is a monument to Gutenberg, his museum (opened in 1901).

An asteroid and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

Rice. 3.14. "Ship of Fools" by S. Brant. Title page Rice. 5.15. "Bible of the Poor" by A. Pfister, 1462 Rice. 3.21. Evangelist Luke. From The Apostle, 1564 Rice. 3.22. The first sheet of the "Apostle", 1564 Rice. 3.23. Beginning of afterword from "The Apostle", 1564

From the above it is clear that by the middle of the XV century. in Europe, the main processes were known, which formed the basis of the greatest invention made by I. Gutenberg. The following printing processes have been used for a long time: colorless embossing, printing on fabrics, printing from woodcut forms. Sometimes typesetting forms were also used, for example, for embossing ornaments on binding covers, typed using separate small stamps. Metal engraving processes and casting processes also began to be used. It is believed that the design of the printing press was based on the design of squeezing presses that pressed grapes for wine, and then found wide application. In everyday life, non-ferrous metals were used, for example, various dishes were made from low-melting tin. Tin was included in the composition of the alloy for printing letters. In Mainz, jewelry was well developed, with which coinage is closely related - a process similar in many respects to the manufacture of typefaces. The genius of Gutenberg was that he combined already known technologies, equipment and used all this to reproduce textual information.

There was also an objective need for the invention of printing. In Germany, paper mills were created, hence, cheap printing material appeared. In the XV century. handwritten book on paper has become more familiar, accessible to a fairly wide range of wealthy people. It has ceased to be considered an expensive rarity. Small private libraries appeared in the homes of professors, scientists, and writers. The requirements for the quality of books have increased, and the question of the unification of texts, the main reason for the distortion of which was manual correspondence, came to the fore. Often scribes distorted the texts, making their own changes to them. The only way to combat this was with the help of printing. Only in typography did the text reproduced in the form of hundreds and thousands of completely identical copies become the norm.

Every year the demand for educational literature increased, and manual correspondence could not satisfy it. Schools and universities needed in large numbers books, teaching aids that had a uniform content; only mechanical reproduction of texts could give such uniformity. It is not surprising that after the invention of printing, along with religious literature, Donates, textbooks on classical Latin grammar, occupied a significant place among printed books, because Latin was the language of science in those days.

Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz. Exact date his birth is not known, because no relevant records have been preserved in church books. Some documents allow us to conclude that this event took place between 1394 and 1399. His family belonged to the patricians, so his father had the right to lead a group of four accountants who followed the minting of coins in Mainz. It is not known what kind of education I. Gutenberg received, but there is no doubt that the inventor was the most educated person of his time. To print books, it was not enough to have a sum of technical techniques. The typographer had to be highly cultured, because in those days he was both a publisher, and an editor, and a proofreader. Almost all editions of Gutenberg are printed in Latin. Obviously, he had to be fluent in this language of medieval science and theology. Gutenberg learned to read and write at a school attached to a monastery or church fraternity. Here he received basic knowledge Latin. But this knowledge, of course, was not enough to select a satisfactory handwritten copy of the Latin Bible for printing their main edition, to unify the spelling, to eliminate grammatical, stylistic and textual errors, i.e. carry out editing. The first printer had to have a university education. It is believed that in 1419-1420. he studied at the University of Erfurt.

In addition to university knowledge, the future inventor had to master certain technical skills. For example, to make a typographic font, you need to be able to engrave on metal, know the basics of foundry. It is believed that Gutenberg could get acquainted with the methods of metal processing at the mint where his father worked. Despite the fact that the first printer was the son of a patrician, he could well become an apprentice artisan and learn this or that craft. Technical skills appeared in 1430, when Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg and made mirrors there, and had already begun to work on his invention.

The first books printed by Gutenberg are, unfortunately, undated. Therefore, the exact year of the invention can be established only by indirect data. Most scientists consider date of the invention of printing is 1440. All over the world it is customary to solemnly celebrate the anniversary of printing every hundred years. It was celebrated for the first time in 1540.

Gutenberg's invention made it possible to reproduce only textual information. There were no illustrations in his books, although he thought about how to reproduce them. What was Gutenberg's invention? The following three components can be distinguished:

• casting process- production of the same letters in a sufficiently large quantity;
• typesetting process- manufacturing text printing form, composed of separate pre-cast letters;
• printing process- getting a set identical impressions by transferring ink under pressure from a printing plate to paper or other material.

Let us consider in more detail each of these parts of the invention.

Lettering process. For the manufacture of letters, Gutenberg used a casting process consisting of the following (Fig. 3.1). A punch was made from a steel bar. To do this, a relief mirror image of the letter was engraved in the upper part of the bar (Fig. 3.1a). Then the punch was pressed into a copper plate, on which a matrix was obtained - an in-depth direct image of the letter (Fig. 3.1b). For the manufacture of matrices, copper was chosen, because. on the one hand, it was easy to stamp, and, on the other hand, it did not soften when molten metal was poured into the matrix during casting. With the help of such a matrix, inserted into a tool specially designed by Gutenberg - manual word form- it was possible to cast as many identical letters as you like. The word-casting form was a fairly simple tool, consisting of two halves. On fig. 3.2 shows a cross-sectional form. When the form is closed, a hollow space is formed inside it in the form of a small rectangle 2 with a conical extension for pouring metal (sprue) on top 3. Below was a matrix 1. The form itself was metal, but it was placed in a wooden case so that the typewriter could hold it when casting in hand. Metal was poured into the sprue. When the metal solidified, the mold was opened, it was possible to remove the letter from it - a metal bar with relief image letters - points (Fig. 3.1c). On fig. 3.3 shows the main elements of the letter: the number 1 indicates a point. The upper and lower sections of the site 2, on which the point is located, were called shoulders. On the leg of the letter 3 was the signature 4, which was intended for the compositor to correctly set the letters. The number 5 indicates the size of the font - the font size (or size), which was subsequently measured in printing points, but at the first time the set existed, such a unit of measurement did not yet exist, and each printer cast fonts of their own sizes. The final finish consisted in the fact that a conical outgrowth 1, formed by a casting hole, was cut off from the letter (Fig. 3.4 a). For casting letters, apparently, was used typographical alloy (hart), consisting of lead, antimony and tin, which was used to make various types of text forms throughout the entire period while the metal set existed (over 540 years). However, some scholars believe that Gutenberg cast his characters from tin, despite the fact that this metal is much more expensive than printing alloy. On fig. 3.5 “Slovoletets” (according to the woodcut by I. Amman) depicts an artisan engaged in casting letters. In his left hand he holds a casting mold, and in his right hand he holds a spoon with which he pours molten metal into the mold.

The recruiting process. The text was typed from separate letters. After each word, to form an interword gap, a special gap material was placed - spacing. The space was a metal bar of a smaller height than the letter and did not have a point. The typesetting tools used by Gutenberg have not come down to us. However, it can be assumed that, as in later times, the font was stored in type box office- flat boxes with compartments, each for letters of the same type. On fig. 3.6 shows the equipment and tools for the set. In the foreground is a real - a table for storing type-setting cash desks. On the upper sloping cover of the real there is a font box office.

Typing was carried out on a workbench (Fig. 3.7 a). This was the name of a small box with two fixed walls and one movable. The movable wall made it possible to type lines of various lengths. Several lines were typed into the workbench, which were then put on the galley. This was the name of a large board with three fixed walls, on which it was possible to form strips of the future edition (Fig. 3.8). The type-setting ruler (Fig. 3.7b) made it possible to correctly set the length of the set line, as well as set the set in the galley. Rice. 3.9 illustrates the process of typing into a workbench and placing lines in a galley. In the days of Gutenberg, both the workbench and the galley were made of wood. The finished strips were firmly bound so that the set did not crumble.

Advantages of the typesetting. The advantage of the form, typed from individual letters, was the possibility reuse set material. After the circulation is printed, the form can be disassembled, and the font can be used in the future. Another advantage of this form is the ease of proofreading. Erroneously typed letters can be replaced with correct ones without re-typing the entire strip. Finally, the typesetting process itself was carried out by an experienced typesetter faster than manual correspondence.

Printing process. Although, as we know, the printing process has been known for a long time, it was first mechanized with the help of a printing press designed by I. Gutenberg. On fig. 3.10 is given general form of this machine, reconstructed according to the fragments that have come down to us, and the diagram in fig. 3.11 illustrates the principle of its operation. A typesetting form, fixed in a special frame, was placed on a smooth surface of a printing press - a taler 6. A taler was placed between two massive pillars 1. A screw 3 went between the pillars in the crossbar 2, at the end of which a smooth board was fixed - pian 5 In order to lower the board, it was necessary to turn a special handle 4. Lowering, the pian tightly pressed the paper sheet against the inked printing plate. When the handle was pulled back, the pian rose, and it was possible to take out the finished print, apply paint to the form, put paper and repeat the printing process. To obtain a high quality print, it was necessary to ensure a uniform distribution of pressure (pressure) over the surface of the printing plate. However, the letters cast in those days did not have strictly the same height, in addition, the press did not ensure strict parallelism of the pian and thaler. To create an even pressure, Gutenberg placed a deckle - a soft material, fabric or parchment - between the pressure plate and the paper. Covering the form with paint, putting paper and deckle on it when it was under the pressure plate was inconvenient. Therefore, Gutenberg did not set the form directly on the table, but on a movable carriage. Finally, the printing press was provided with a special device that facilitated the exact application of a paper sheet to a printing plate.

Printing ink. One of the components of the invention of printing was the composition of printing ink. Gutenberg made printing ink from a mixture of drying oil and carbon black. Soot is a black pigment. Pigments are insoluble powders. They are distributed in the binder - drying oil and give the paint color. To this day, carbon black is used in printing inks as a pigment. Research conducted in the late 80s. of the last century showed that in order to improve the printing properties of the ink - to increase the viscosity - Gutenberg added oxides of certain metals to it. The ink was applied to the printing plate by hand using a leather cushion with a handle - matzah.

The first printed books. In 1457, a magnificent large-format Psalter was published in Mainz, the first book in the world in which the names of printers are named. These are Johann Fust and Peter Schaeffer, students of Gutenberg, but their teacher's name is not mentioned there. At the same time, there are earlier editions in which the names of the printers are not mentioned, but nevertheless, by indirect evidence, scientists have established that they were printed by I. Gutenberg. This is, for example, a 42-line Bible; some researchers consider it generally the very first printed work. According to indirect evidence, it is dated 1455. In fig. 3.12 shows a strip from a copy of a 42-line Bible found in Burgos (Spain). The multi-colored ornament on it is made by hand. There are also two printed indulgences printed by I. Gutenberg, dating back to the middle of the 15th century. It is believed that around 1444 the Sibylline Book was printed, and in 1445-1448. the first donations and calendars came out. So, the “Astronomical Calendar”, printed at the end of 1447, the “Turkish Calendar”, printed in 1454, has come down to us. In 1458-1460. a 36-line Bible was printed, and in 1460 - "Katolikon". In 1461-1462. Gutenberg prints indulgences for the Neuhausen monastery.

Ancient printed books differed from modern ones both in design and format. In the first printed books, as well as in the ancient manuscripts, there was no title page, and the title was not printed on the cover either. Handwritten books did not need advertising, as they were usually made to order. But for successful sale printed books, published in hundreds and thousands of copies, it was necessary to attract buyers. Therefore, around 1500, a title page appeared in books - on the first page of the book, its title began to be printed in large print. In the old days, these titles were very detailed so that the buyer could understand what this book is about and who wrote it. Such a name could take up to ten lines.

Distribution of printing. Even during the life of Gutenberg, the printing press began to be used in many European countries. In 1461 printing houses appeared in the German cities of Bamberg and Strasbourg. Four years later, Gutenberg's students begin printing books in Italy. In 1468, printing was used in Switzerland, in 1469 - in Holland, in 1470 - in France, in 1473 - in Hungary, in 1474. - in Spain, in 1476 - in Poland, in 1478 - in the Czech Republic, in 1490 - in Turkey. At the end of the XV century. the first book in the Slavic language was published, it happened in 1491 in Krakow.

For 50 years in different countries more than 1,000 printing houses were created, which produced a total circulation of about 10 million copies of printed books. Only a small part of them, about one hundredth, has come down to us. Such books are great monuments of culture. Historians call them incunabula. The Latin word "cunabulum" means "cradle", and "incunabula" - "in the cradle". These are books of the lullaby period of the development of printing.

Improving the drawing of fonts. Typeface design plays an important role in the design of the publication. Already in the first years of the existence of the typesetting form, this drawing was improved. Every year the range of fonts expanded. The first German typographers used acute-angled Gothic fonts for typesetting, the outline of which repeated handwritten letters. Then in early XVI in. a typeface was created called fractura, the letters of which were decorated with bizarre curls. In Italy, a rounded, well-read antiqua font appeared. It was first applied in 1465, then up to the 16th century. it was improved by artists who worked in the field of book design. This font was again revived in Italy in 1939. In 1501, also in Italy, a font with oblique characters was created - italic. In English, italic is called Italic, i.e. "Italian". Nowadays, italic refers to the typeface, and many typefaces have this typeface.

Already in 1486, the typographer Erhard Ratdolt, who made a great contribution to the development of printing, published the first type catalog in the history of printing. It was a leaflet with texts printed in various fonts. A total of fourteen fonts were used - ten Gothic, three Latin and one Greek.

Starting from the 16th century, attempts were repeatedly made to use mathematical laws when creating a font pattern. Similar constructions are shown, for example, in Fig. 3.13. They are described in the books of Albrecht Durer, Geoffroy Tori, as well as Leonardo da Vinci's student Luca Paccioli and others. Some fonts created in the 16th century are still used today, slightly revised and already in a computer version. These fonts include, for example, Garamond, Antique.

Woodcut. In editions of Gutenberg, illustrations, initial letters and ornaments are drawn, not printed, so they are different in all copies of the same edition. The book was first illustrated with woodcuts in 1461 at the printing house of Albrecht Pfister, a student of Johannes Gutenberg. It was extremely difficult to combine a metal set and a woodcut in one form, because. these forms had different heights. That is why the first such engravings were full-page and printed separately from the text, such as the title page of S. Brant's book "Ship of Fools" (Fig. 3.14). In the future, small-sized illustrations began to be printed on pages on which the text had been printed in advance. Finally, in 1462, A. Pfister managed to print text and illustrations at the same time. To do this, he made text and illustration forms, as they say in printing technology, of the same height (that is, the same height). Since then, illustrations have taken their place on the pages of books, and in the manufacture of printing plates, they began to use a new operation - illustration layout, in which the set and woodcut were combined in one printed form. On fig. 3.15 shows a page from the "Bible of the Poor", printed by A. Pfister in 1462 from the laid-out strip.

In the XV-XVI centuries. Pfister and other craftsmen engraved rip cut boards; this type of woodcut is called longitudinal or edged. Edged engraving was called because to form a relief, the strokes were cut off with a special tool on both sides, and due to this, deep gaps were formed. The quality of the images engraved on the longitudinal boards was affected by the arrangement of the strokes, because the wood resisted the cutting tool in different ways, depending on how the cut was made - along or across the grain. For three centuries, the woodcut technique has remained the same, but its pictorial possibilities have been improved. Such outstanding masters as Albrecht Durer (1471-1428), Hans Holbein (1497-1543), Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) and others made the most full use of the possibilities of edged engraving.

Metal engraving. Simultaneously with woodcuts in the XV-XVI centuries. in-depth engraving on metal developed. Most often, copper was used for this. Such engraving can be considered the first form of intaglio printing, but, unlike modern forms, all its printing elements had the same depth. The paint was applied to the form by hand, carefully removing it from the gaps. For printing engravings on copper, more than high pressure, therefore, a special metallographic machine was created, made entirely of wood (Fig. 3.16). The scheme in fig. 3.17 explains the principle of obtaining an impression on such a machine. The engraving 4, covered with paint, and the paper sheet 3 were passed between two rollers, the upper one of which 1 was manually rotated using a crank. The paper was pre-moistened, and the form was heated before applying the paint.

The Englishman Caxton was the first to use such an engraving in printing. Illustrations printed from in-depth engravings on copper, he pasted to pages containing text. Subsequently, engravings began to be imprinted on pages with text. Thus, printing was carried out in two runs. First, the text was printed on a Gutenberg machine, and then an in-depth engraving was imprinted on the free places on a metallographic machine. The principle of making a cut engraving is illustrated in Fig. 3.18. First, a thin layer of soot 1 is applied to a polished copper plate 2. An engraving pattern was scratched into the soot to copper, which was clearly visible on the black surface (Fig. 3.18b). Then, with the help of cutters with a tetrahedral section, recessed printing elements were cut out (Fig. 3.18c). Making an engraving with a cutter required a lot of physical effort. Therefore, later (in the 16th century) a method called etching appeared. It consisted of the following. An acid-resistant varnish 2 was applied to the surface of the copper board 3, on which a layer of soot 1 was deposited (Fig. 3.19 a). The drawing was scratched with a needle so that the metal was exposed (Fig. 3.19b). The board was treated with concentrated nitric acid (in French eau forte, hence the name etching). From fig. 3.19c it can be seen that the shape of the printing elements of the etching differs from the printing elements of the engraving engraving. They are rounded and, apparently, perceive a little more paint, which explains the high visual possibilities of etching. If necessary, the etched printing elements of the etching were additionally deepened by hand engraving. From the middle of the XVI century. in-depth engraving begins to be used in book printing quite widely and has been used for over 250 years.

Color woodcut. By the end of the XV century. also include attempts to use colored woodcuts. Prior to this, the drawings in some books were hand-colored. In 1485, Erhard Ratdolt published the astronomy textbook "Sphere of the World", where four-color printing was used for the first time in the history of printing. Each paint used its own woodcut form. When printing, they tried to ensure the combination of color images obtained from each of the forms on the prints. The Italian master Ugo da Carpi invented a method of multi-color woodcuts, which he called chiaroscuro, i.e. chiaroscuro. The method imitated drawing with a brush, while using 3-4 boards that conveyed different tones. The chiaroscuro technique was successfully used and developed by other masters who lived in the 16th century.

Multi-color printing from in-depth engraving appeared much later. This is due to purely technical difficulties.

The first Russian printed books. Russian printed books are known, on which neither the date and place of printing, nor the name of the printer are indicated. The study of these publications allowed us to assume that they were created in the fifties of the 16th century. Scientists, analyzing the fonts of publications, their paper, the reader's notes preserved in the margins, concluded that they were printed in Moscow. In total, seven such publications are known. The oldest of them is the Gospel of 1553, a sheet from which is shown in fig. 3.20. Some scientists believe that the printing house that printed these works was of a private-state nature and was located in the house of the priest Sylvester in Moscow. Most of these books were printed in two colors: red was used for the headings and some other elements, the rest was printed in black. Since in those days there was no typographic system of measures, it was very difficult to combine images obtained from two different forms, so the first editions use "single-pass" printing in two colors. First, black paint was applied to the entire form, then it was erased from individual elements, on which red paint was applied with a brush. Thus, a two-color print was obtained in one run. In later editions, two-pass printing from one form was used. In this case, the letters that should have been printed in red were made taller than the rest. It can be assumed that either special stands were placed under them, or they were cast larger. They stuffed these letters with red paint and got an impression. Having printed the entire circulation in red, the “red” letters were replaced with blank material, and printed in black. When stuffed with red paint, it also fell on neighboring "black" letters. Therefore, traces of red ink are observed on black prints. In addition, since the "red" letters had a larger growth, an increased relief is visible on the reverse side of the sheet in the corresponding areas. According to these characteristics recognize two-pass printing from one form. An interesting feature printed publications is also that the font pattern and the nature of its location imitate handwritten text.

Pioneer Ivan Fedorov. The first Russian printing house was established by Ivan Fedorov in Moscow in 1563 at the behest of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. According to legend, Ivan Fedorov was born in a village near Kaluga. The date of his birth is tentative, and it is attributed to 1533. It is most likely that he came from a clergy class. Perhaps he was the son of the Kremlin archpriest Fyodor Barmin. There is no information about where Ivan Fedorov studied, but there is no doubt that his teachers were good. They helped him to master Latin and Greek, to acquire excellent knowledge in the field of theology. In the matrikulny books of the University of Krakow, a record was found that Ivan, the son of Fyodor Moskvitin, studied there. Many scientists believe that this entry testifies to the university education of Ivan Fedorov. Of course, Ivan Fedorov had to master technical skills somewhere, to learn the art of book printing. Perhaps this happened in the printing house mentioned above. By the time the first Russian printed book, The Apostle, was published, Ivan Fedorov had already been a junior clergyman, a deacon, for several years.

In 1564, the first accurately dated Russian book was published, on which the names of the printers Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets are indicated. The book was well printed. It was printed in two colors - red and black, using two passes from the same form, as described above. It should be noted that some of Fedorov's later editions were made in a technique widely used in the West - printing in two runs from two printing plates, each for its own color. The book was illustrated with a longitudinal woodcut (Fig. 3.21). On fig. 3.22 shows the first leaf of the Apostle. It can be seen that the publication is decorated with screensavers, has intricate letters. The activities of Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets are known from the afterwords compiled by Fedorov for his books. On fig. 3.23 shows the beginning of the afterword to the "Apostle", from which it follows that the printing house was created at the behest of Ivan the Terrible. Fedorov's second edition was The Clockworker. This book was meant to teach literacy. Fedorov published it twice, but only five copies have come down to us, located in the book depositories of different countries.

Soon after the publication of The Clockwork, Fedorov and Mstislavets were accused of heresy, and they had to leave Moscow, taking with them

part of the printing house equipment. First, Fedorov worked in the Lithuanian city of Zabludov, then moved to Ukraine and founded the first Ukrainian printing house there in the city of Lvov. Here in 1574 the first Ukrainian printed book "Apostle" was published. At the same time, the Russian "Azbuka" was published with exercises for reading and writing, examples of declension and conjugation. Seventy-eight pages of this edition were of high quality printing. It was the first textbook in Russia designed to teach children to read and write. The book shows that Fedorov was also a talented teacher who created an original manual for initial education. In the "ABC" the Fedorov alphabet is printed, containing 46 letters (Fig. 3.24). There is no title page in the book, so its exact title is not known. The only copy of the "ABC" is in the United States in the library of Harvard University. Fedorov's further life took place in the city of Ostrog, where the "Ostroh Bible" was printed.

During his life, Ivan Fedorov and his assistants published 13 separate publications. Three editions were published in Moscow, two in Lithuania, and the rest in Ukraine.

Ivan Fedorov died in 1583 in Lvov. On the tombstone, unfortunately not preserved, the inscription was carved: "To Drukar of books never seen before." In 1909, a monument to the book printer Ivan Fedorov was unveiled in Moscow, built with public funds collected mainly from printing workers.

K. N. Berkova

Johannes Gutenberg in his youth was engaged in grinding mirrors and precious stones. Because of the civil strife that broke out in Mainz between the burghers and the nobles, Gutenberg had to flee to Strasbourg. Here previous job hard to find, Gutenberg took up woodcuts to make money.
Woodcut - wood carving - was the first, rather unsuccessful attempt to reproduce manuscripts.

Johannes Gutenberg

A picture or letters were drawn on a wooden board and then all unnecessary parts were cut out with sharp knives. The resulting convex pattern was smeared with paint (a mixture of soot with vegetable oil). A damp sheet of paper was placed on top and pressed against the board with a wooden or leather roller. On paper, an imprint of a drawing or text was obtained. The finished sheet was removed and dried. Then the board was again smeared with paint and new prints were made until the board wore out.
In this way they were first made playing cards and images of saints with explanatory text. Later they switched to embossing small books.
The woodcut was, of course, a great achievement compared to the copying of manuscripts. But this embossing method had many significant drawbacks. The original board, after printing several sheets, was no longer good, it had to be thrown away. Prints were made on only one side of the sheet. And most importantly, the whole mass of time and labor was spent on printing a single text.
Gutenberg was keenly aware of all the inconveniences of woodcut production. Is it really impossible to find a more profitable, more productive way of printing? How to save labor and reduce the price of a book?
It is necessary to come up with such a way that once the cut out letters-letters can serve for typing any new text. How to do it? This thought drilled into Gutenberg's brain. Going to work, he stubbornly thought about one thing. At night, he jumped out of bed and paced the room, knitting his eyebrows, thinking intently ...
At one of those moments, an idea flashed through his mind like lightning: why not cut the board into movable characters?
Country monastery in Strasbourg, on the banks of the quiet river Ila. Gutenberg is alone in his stuffy cell, away from the noise of the city. Hot summer day. Coolness blows from the river. From the refectory (dining room) the appetizing smell of fatty monastic fish soup rushes, the clinking of glasses is heard. But Gutenberg doesn't notice anything. He is completely absorbed in his work.
In front of him on the table are small wooden tiles of the same size - exactly as many as the letters in the alphabet. On each tile, he cuts out a convex letter and drills a hole in the side. Then he puts all the tiles side by side and pulls the thread through the holes so that the letters do not crumble. Gasping with excitement, he covers the letters with paint, puts a sheet of paper on them and presses it from above. Taking off the paper, he sees that the entire alphabet has been printed on it.
Oh, wonderful moment! Away with the fuss with boards, with carvers, with scribes! Now you can immediately cut out the movable letters of the entire alphabet and print as much as you like. You no longer have to reprint the entire text because of an insignificant mistake. It is enough to take out the incorrectly placed letter and insert another one instead.
Printing appeared in Europe. All that remains is to put the new discovery into wide use and to scatter wooden type across the paper field with a generous hand.
But... immediately there was a big obstacle. The fact is that the tree turned out to be an unsuitable material for letters. From paint and water, it swelled, dried up, the letters turned out uneven. It was impossible to cut out the small print needed for printing large books from wood. Each wooden letter had to be cut by hand. All these inconveniences prompted the inventor to make a metal type.
It was the biggest event.

Gutenberg printing press

Another innovation was the printing press. Gutenberg's press was certainly not like the advanced printing presses of today. It was a simple wooden screw press. But for his time he represented brilliant invention. The printing press, speeding up the printing process many times over, solved the problem of mass production of books. Gutenberg was already producing hundreds of printed sheets a day.
The first publications that came out from under Gutenberg's printing press in the city of Strasbourg were a liturgical book (1445) and an astronomical calendar (1448). Both books were printed in metal movable type.
But Gutenberg's first printed experiments exhausted his meager means. Printing books proved to be a very expensive undertaking. Making metal type, paper, paints, hiring premises, paying workers - all this cost a lot of money. And where to get them?
Unable to find funds in Strasbourg, Gutenberg decides to move to his hometown of Mainz. There are rich burghers here, they will help. Take, for example, his namesake, the well-known rich man Johann Fust in the city ...

Gutenberg at work (from an old engraving)

The inventor reluctantly goes to Fust and initiates him into his discovery. With a low bow, he asks to lend him money for a printing house. But the venerable burgher is reluctant to meet him.
- Dear Mr. Fust, you will do a profitable business. Your money will be returned to you with a vengeance.
“Hey, my son, that’s what my grandmother said in two!” Better a bird in the hand than a bird in the sky. How much money do you need?
- In the first case, a thousand guilders, Mr. Fust.
“You are out of your mind, Gutenberg!” Where can I get this amount?
- Dear Mr. Fust, you will receive six percent of your capital.
“And besides, half the profits, Gutenberg. Otherwise, I'm not your partner!
Pressed against the wall, the inventor was forced to agree to all conditions. Fust gave eight hundred guilders for the equipment of the printing house, and promised three hundred guilders annually to run the business.
Gutenberg set about printing an extensive edition - the Bible. Started in 1450, it was completed in 1455. About forty copies of the Gutenberg Bible have come down to us. These editions are also available in the Russian State Library in Moscow and in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg.

Gutenberg Bible (in the Mainz Museum)

The first Bible took five years to print, but today the Bible can be printed and bound in one day.
Typography took away the income of countless copyist monks. The new art undermined not only the "spiritual", but also the material power of the church. And the church resorted to its favorite trick: it declared the printing of books to be the work of the devil. There is evidence that the first copies of the printed Bible were burned in Cologne as a product of Satan.
A sword hung constantly over Gutenberg's head, ready to strike him. He worked under the threat of church persecution, lawsuits, and complete ruin. The whole life of a brilliant inventor is a continuous chain of labors, hardships, struggles. He is constantly forced to look for rich companions and borrow large sums for printing books. He is twice brought to court for debts, his printing supplies and even printed books are taken from him.
Dishonest companions, Fust and his son-in-law Schaeffer, not only ruin Gutenberg, but also challenge him for the honor of a great invention. They try to hide from posterity the very name of the inventor. In the preface to one of the books, Schaeffer muffledly says that "the art of typography was invented by two Johannes" (Johann Fust and Johannes Gutenberg).
Gutenberg died in 1463. He died in poverty and obscurity. Subsequent generations with difficulty managed to unravel the tangle of his life and establish his great services to humanity.

Chapter I. Johannes Gutenberg

Origin of Gutenberg. – A brilliant idea is to use movable type for printing. - Gutenberg staff. - Fust gave the necessary capital for the implementation of the invention. Schaeffer improved the technique of typographic art. - The first book printed by Gutenberg. - "Latin Grammar" by E. Donat,1451 year. – Indulgences 1453 of the year. - Gutenberg 42-line Bible. - Failure of Gutenberg. - Catholicon of 1460. - Death of Gutenberg. - Monuments to Gutenberg. - Consequences of the invention of printing

Johannes Gutenberg

Johann Gensfleisch Gutenberg was born in Mainz in 1396. His father and mother were considered among the patricians, who for centuries held the control of the city in their hands. Mother's name was Elizabeth, she was the last of the Gutenberg family. In order not to let the family of their fathers disappear, their younger son She gave the surname Gutenberg to Johann. Johann really made this name known to the entire civilized world. As long as there is at least one printing press, the name of Gutenberg will not be erased from the memory of mankind. It is written in the pages of history.

Nothing is known about Gutenberg's childhood, his life with his parents. But as the son of an old patrician family, he certainly went to school and knew everything that was taught in those days.

The city of Mainz was ruled by the inhabitants themselves. It was ruled either by ancient families (patricians), or by townspeople (burghers), that is, merchants and artisans. Between the patricians and the burghers there were incessant quarrels that turned into fights and massacres, often ending in a general pogrom - the destruction of houses and the robbery of property. At the beginning of the 15th century, the abuses of the patricians caused a general anger against them from the guilds, which finally ousted the local aristocracy from the city and seized power in their own hands.

Johannes Gutenberg was 20 years old when a clash arose between the patricians and the townspeople in the city. The reason for the quarrel was who would be the first to have the honor of meeting the king passing through their city. The patricians were ahead of the townspeople. The townspeople were offended and, seeing off the king, attacked the patricians. There was a fight. The townspeople attacked the houses of the aristocracy and began to ruin them and rob their property. The patricians were not prepared for the defense. The townspeople defeated them. The aristocracy was forced to emigrate from their hometown.

Among the exiles was Johannes Gutenberg. The family settled in the city of Strasbourg and did not return from there for a long time, despite the fact that in 1430 an amnesty was declared for all those who fled during the unrest to a foreign land.

But there is no evil without good. The exile served Gutenberg in some ways. It developed independence in him. Gutenberg spent his youth in extreme poverty, which seemed even more palpable after the wealth and even luxury that his parents had previously enjoyed. The patricians at that time strongly disdained crafts and treated such activities with contempt. Poverty urged Gutenberg to secure his livelihood by some craft or some discovery. He met the Strasbourg jewelers and entered into a company with them; his ancestors had been engaged in this business for a long time, and he believed that he would find a good income for himself in the secret of a new method of polishing precious stones. This company worked on the manufacture of mirrors, which were then valued very highly.

Gutenberg discovered his talent for inventions no earlier than 1435.

At this time, a certain Andrei Dritsen was looking for him, who came to him with a request to introduce him to some of the arts that Gutenberg was engaged in. From archival information we learn that in 1435 Johannes Gutenberg concluded a contract with the aforementioned Dritz, concerning the secret art conceived by Gutenberg. But what kind of secret art it was is unknown.

When fabricating mirrors, the main focus of the company was on embossed metal frames. That the partners were generally engaged in metal work is evident from the purchases they made. The company had some kind of machine at its disposal.

Since the sale of mirrors slowed down due to the fact that the great fair in Aachen from 1438 was postponed to 1440, the Gutenberg partnership took advantage of this time to concentrate on studying the method of printing manuscripts.

According to the indications of one Cologne chronicle, the first experiments of Gutenberg on the invention of printing belong to 1440 - in the city of Strasbourg.

Actually, Gutenberg's task was only to cut the Dutch boards into individual letters ... Printing itself arose from this idea.

Gutenberg came up with the idea of ​​carving letters (an image of a letter) on wooden posts and connecting them into a typographic set. This is his merit.

Despite all its apparent simplicity, this brilliant idea led to great results. An analysis of human speech shows that our speech consists of words, words of syllables, syllables of sounds. In writing, a special sign, a letter, was invented for each sound. For printing, the great inventor adopted the same system that was practiced in writing, that is, for each individual letter he made the appropriate moving letter. Thanks to this, it was possible to obtain an infinite number of permutations from movable characters, that is, to put them in any order and, depending on the requirement, get any combination. From wooden letters it was possible to form words, from words - sentences, etc. - to type entire pages, then disassemble to compose new pages, etc. In Strasbourg, Gutenberg lived in a country monastery, on the river Ile. This was his work room. Silence all around. Nobody prevented Gutenberg from indulging in his cherished idea.

According to Goethe, genius matures in the silence of an office, and character is formed in the noise of light ...

Gutenberg is alone in his room. He already has small wooden tiles, or columns, cut from wood, as many as there were letters in the alphabet; all tiles are the same size. On each tile, he cut out a convex, embossed letter in reverse, starting with the letter A, then he placed all the columns side by side, one next to the other - so that the letters were at the top and went in one line, and on the side in each column he turned through the hole . He threaded a thread into these holes and with a thread tightly pressed one tile to another: the thread did not allow them to disintegrate.

Then Gutenberg, barely restraining his excitement, covers all the letters with paint, puts a sheet of paper on them and carefully presses it from above; then he takes off the paper and sees, to his great joy, that the entire alphabet has been printed on the paper ... A wonderful moment ... a new invention has been made for the benefit of mankind. Now Gutenberg had achieved what he had dreamed of for so long: the secret of printing books was in his hands! Since then, Dutch boards, carvers, book scribes have gone into oblivion ... Now you just need to cut movable letters - and print any book you like with them ... Now you can easily correct a mistake if it was made when typing: you just need to take out the wrong letter and put it instead which one should.

Typography has been invented, the secret art of book reproduction has been found! We must begin to implement it, put the idea into practice. After success came a little disappointment.

The greatest discoveries and inventions have not been made the mighty of the world this”, not by the rich, not by aristocrats, but mostly by the poor, who earn their livelihood by the sweat of their brow. While the aristocracy of capital sybarites in this world of sorrow and tears, simple people work, work. But in the end, brilliant workers have to bend their backs to rich people. To implement the idea in practice, material resources are needed. It was the same with Gutenberg. The alphabet is easy to type. But printing a book is much more difficult. Wooden letters, both for carving and for printing, were inconvenient: they easily broke, cracked, rubbed off from use, and even came out rough and ugly. To make them durable and elegant, it was necessary to make them from another, more convenient material. And from what? To solve this, it was necessary to try to cut them from one material or another, throw failed letters, prepare new ones, etc. - all this cost a lot of money. And Gutenberg didn't have them. In order to get them, he invited some rich people to enter into partnership with him. Many listened to the dreamer, but were in no hurry to join his company. Now, if we were talking about mirrors ... then it's a completely different matter. Having no credit in Strasbourg, seeing his friends' mistrust of his secret art, suffering from a lack of funds to implement his cherished idea, Gutenberg returned to his hometown of Mainz in 1445 in the hope of getting the necessary money from his relatives for the planned enterprise. Here he settled with Arnold Gelthus, his distant relative.

Until 1450, that is, for five years, nothing is known about Gutenberg's stay in Mainz.

In the year mentioned, fate sent him very valuable help in the person of a wealthy citizen, Ivan Fust, or Faust, as he is called. On August 22, 1450, Gutenberg entered into an agreement with him, by virtue of which Faust lent him 800 guilders at 6 percent. At the same time, it was agreed that if disagreement occurs between the parties, Gutenberg is obliged to return the money borrowed to Faust. It was also agreed that Faust would give Gutenberg 300 guilders a year for renting an apartment, for paying off workers, for parchment, paper, paints and other needs. This shows that the contract was purely financial in nature. Idea, tools and labor belonged to Gutenberg, and capital belonged to Faust.

Thus, the matter was settled. Gutenberg now began to work without hindrance on the improvement of printing. He discovered the secret of casting metal letters, that is, he came up with the mixture of metals from which it is more convenient to cast letters.

Before achieving any significant results, Gutenberg saw that he did not have enough borrowed money. He resorted to borrowing again. In December 1452, Faust again loaned Gutenberg 800 guilders, this time with solid security. Everything was pledged to Faust: both the machine tool and the materials for printing. At the same time, the benefits of printing were divided in half.

Gutenberg machine

The first book printed by an invented secret art is considered to be the Latin Grammar by Aelius Donatus. Several sheets of it have survived to this day and are stored in the National Library in Paris.

On August 12, 1451, Pope Nicholas V announced the absolution of sins to all who donate money to the war against the Turks. The sale of indulgences in Germany was taken over by Peacock Zapp, who lived in Mainz. At first, things were tough. Pious Christians didn't shell out much, preferring to live in sin rather than pay money for it.

But in 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks. This event terrified the whole of Europe. The Pope began to preach crusade against wicked Muslims. The sale of indulgences for the remission of sins found fertile ground for itself.

To make a receipt for future bliss, it turned out to be very handy to adapt the invention of Gutenberg. 23 copies of such indulgences have come down to us. On the prepared forms, a place was left to enter the name of the recipient, and the time ...

Thus, it is clear that the greatest invention was at first applied, among other things, to the printing of the greatest human stupidity ...

The invention of printing - and papal indulgences: light - and darkness! Here we see two historical extremes...

Donat's Grammar and papal indulgences for Gutenberg were nothing more than a break in the press, a preparation for the main undertaking of his life, the printing of the Bible. In the mass of the public, few people know about the preparatory work of Gutenberg, and that he invented printing and printed the Bible is known to everyone. In 1450, he began his capital work, which will forever remain a monument of typographic art.

The printing of the first Bible continued for five years old whereas in our time in England there was such a case that the whole Bible was typed, printed and bound in one day. So timid were the first steps of printing!..

It is known that on August 24, 1455, work on the famous book was completed. This is a two-volume folio, in the first volume having 324 sheets, in the second - 317 sheets, a total of 641 sheets in two columns. Each page contains 42 lines, which is why it is called the forty-two-line Bible, or Gutenberg. There are no printed capital letters; spaces are left for them to be drawn by a skilled calligrapher by hand. There is also no page numbering. This curious book has survived only in 16 copies: 7 on parchment and 9 on paper. By a strange play of chance, not a single copy remained in Mainz. Almost all of them are in England and France. Currently, their price has increased to fabulous proportions. For example, in December 1884, the sale of the famous Sista Library took place in London, where, among other rarities, there was the first Bible. This Bible was sold at auction for £3,900, which is about 39,000 rubles with our money!..

Psalter of 1457

42-line Bible font

The colophon of the "Catholicon" of 1460

The printing of the first Bible had not yet been completed, when a new comrade, Peter Scheffer, joined Gutenberg and Faust. In it, Gutenberg found a very active and useful collaborator.

Schaeffer was born in Gernsheim and initially devoted himself to jurisprudence; then he lived in Paris, where he gained fame as a good colorist and draftsman of capital letters. Having entered the Gutenberg printing house, Schaeffer, as a skilled draftsman, improved the type, making it more beautiful, more elegant. He improved the method of casting letters: he began to make punches from a harder metal (steel), which made it possible for him to drive the latter into copper matrices. He is also credited with improving the alloy for casting letters prepared from lead and antimony.

Faust became related to Schaeffer by marrying his daughter Christina to him.

Having invested his capital in the improvement of the secret art, Faust looked forward to profits from him, that is, half of the income, as indicated by the contract. However, reality did not live up to expectations. The case was new, never seen before. Printing needed to be promoted. Few people knew that new books appeared, printed in a new way.

In addition, the embossing technique itself has not yet been fully developed. Gutenberg and his collaborators had to find new tricks on their own.

Walking the beaten track is much easier than breaking new ground. It was necessary to wait some time for the new invention to bring profits. But Faust, adhering to the proverb that a bird in the hand is better than a crane in the sky, was afraid for his capital. Probably, money bills were the cause of a quarrel between the first printers in Mainz. These are dark days for Gutenberg.

Our grandfather Krylov in one of his fables said not without reason:

And where does it touch on profit?

Not only there geese, and people get it.

The partnership collapsed. Things got to the point that Faust sued Gutenberg. He demanded the return of capital in the amount of 1,800 gold guilders, and in addition 10 per cent, and even complex, for the entire period of use of the capital, that is, a total of 2026 gold guilders.

Gutenberg had a hard time, especially since the process was started just before the book was published. The court, due to the insolvency of the defendant, ordered Gutenberg to return all the material and tools to Faust, and left the printing house itself to him.

With Gutenberg eliminated, Faust and Schaeffer continued to publish books. The first book they printed was a psalter. Two years after the publication of this book, they published Bishop Durand's Rationale.

Faust might have succeeded in depriving Gutenberg of the immortality he deserved in the eyes of posterity and appropriated the fame of the invention of printing, if the young Schaeffer had not made the following inscription on a book printed in Mainz in 1505 and dedicated to Emperor Maximilian: “In 1450 in Mainz, the talented Gutenberg invented an amazing typographic art, which was subsequently improved and disseminated in posterity by the works of Faust and Schaeffer.

Work at the mine. From Kalbe's Bergbächlein. Augsburg, ca. 1505

Meanwhile, Gutenberg did not lose heart. How much love for the cause was necessary in order to endure all the hardships that fell to his lot! What it was necessary to have a firm character!

Another in his place, after such troubles, after legal red tape, would have abandoned his secret art, having achieved nothing. But Gutenberg did just the opposite: the more obstacles he had, the harder he worked to reach his goal.

So heavy mlat

Crushing glass, forging damask steel.

Light is not without good people. And besides, the printing business already promised obvious benefits and did not seem like an empty dream; as a result, a new money partner was soon found. It was Konrad Gumeri, according to some sources - a physician, according to others - a lawyer. Gutenberg is back at work. He made completely new types and, having printed two small pamphlets with them, in 1460 he produced a new gigantic work, consisting of 373 pages in folio, each in two columns. This is a work by John de Janois called "Catholicon", a Latin grammar with an etymological dictionary.

Fearing the persecution of creditors, Gutenberg could not call himself the owner of his new printing house, could not put his name on printed books ... Fate played an evil trick on Gutenberg: the one who invented printing had to renounce his activity, from printing books. Gutenberg saw how others appropriated the fruits of his years of labor. And he was forced to abandon his offspring: "for the sake of the Jews," he was afraid to put his name on printed books ...

At first, the art of printing was kept in the greatest secret. Faust made his workers swear on the Gospel that they would not blather about the new production of books. Moreover, he locked the workers in workshops set up in dark basements. He sold printed books in Paris and soon became rich. It is remarkable that the appearance in France of the first printed Bible led to persecution and sorcery trials. The monks did not want to believe that it was possible to extract so many copies from one manuscript without the participation of Satan. Faust, who brought the Bible to Paris, was imprisoned. The monks, perhaps, would have burned him if, fortunately, he had not died in prison in 1465. After his death, the printing house passed into the hands of Schaeffer, who died during the capture of Mainz by storm by enemy troops led by Adolf of Nassau.

The compositors, or, as they were then called, the “Children of Gutenberg”, seizing the type in themselves, fled in all directions and spread their art everywhere.

Gutenberg's printing press was spared.

At the conclusion of peace, on January 18, 1465, Elector Adolf of Nassau accepted Gutenberg into his eternal service "as his kind and faithful servant, who rendered him many services."

Gutenberg was appointed chamberlain of the elector for life. In this position, he received annually court clothes of a nobleman, 20 quarters of flour and two barrels of wine. From the next duty at the palace, he was released. Happiness smiled at Gutenberg, albeit at the end of his days. From that moment on, the great inventor did not suffer from a material shortage and could calmly continue his favorite business. He was happy that he finally saw the full success of printing. But human life is short. At the end of January 1468, Gutenberg died. The great worker rested from his deeds. He is buried in Mainz, in the cemetery of the Dominican monastery. To the shame of contemporaries, his grave is unknown ...

Record of the death of Johannes Gutenberg. “MCDLXVIII uff sant blasius tag starp der ersam mainster Henne Ginssfleiss dem got gnade”, which means “In 1468, on the day of St. Blasius, the venerable master Henne Ginsfleis died by the grace of God”

Generally speaking, great events and great historical figures are rarely appreciated by contemporaries.

To get a good look at the colossal figure, one must stand at a respectful distance from it. In the same way, great discoveries and inventions never give all their fruits at once. Walking in the forest, you noticed that a simple acorn is lying on the ground. A whole century will pass until a mighty oak grows and develops from it. Gutenberg's contemporaries could not have foreseen that the invention of the printing press would constitute the era from which a new history would begin.

Grateful descendants erected a monument to Gutenberg, and not one, but several: in the cities of Mainz, Strasbourg and Frankfurt am Main. Already four times, four centuries - in 1540, 1640, 1740 and 1840 - the memory of Gutenberg was celebrated.

The monument in Frankfurt am Main was erected to Gutenberg on his four hundredth anniversary, precisely in 1840. Gutenberg with his collaborators, Faust and Schaeffer, is depicted in full growth, in his left hand he has a letter cast for printing. In the medallions, at the foot of the monument, are portraits of famous best printers up to our century, inclusive, and coats of arms of four cities where book printing flourished first of all: Strasbourg, Mainz, Frankfurt and Venice. The four allegorical figures of women depict theology, natural science, art and industry.

At the corners of the monument, water beats - from the mouths of four animals, between which the bull marks Europe, the elephant - Asia, the lion - Africa and the llama - America.

The consequences of the invention of printing are incalculable. Handwritten books were replaced by printed ones. The prices of the books immediately fell four-fifths of their former market value. The first printers who worked around the printing presses were the pioneers of civilization - they all served great service education and acquired the right to eternal gratitude for the services rendered by them to the enlightenment of mankind. Cheap books printed, as it was then called, manu stannea (tin hand), generated a mass of readers. With the invention of the printing press, the author was able to spread his ideas and speak to the educated class with complete freedom, unrestricted by time and place. The printed book saves the author from oblivion, because it is printed in several hundreds and thousands of copies, while the manuscript, no matter how valuable in its internal qualities, can easily be lost. Of course, in comparison with eternity, everything is nothing, but a manuscript is more likely to sink into Oblivion than a book. The clergy at first realized that printing was favorable for the dissemination of the doctrine, and the French king Louis XII, in his decree of 1513, hastened to declare that this was a divine rather than a human invention. Now anyone could start a printing house. No one obligated its owner to print only spiritual books. Thanks to the printing press, the classical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans began to spread rapidly.

Printing press from 1520.

Printing press on the publishing stamp of Josta Badia Acension

Printing mill. Engraving from the book of V. Tsog, 1507

In the age of the invention of printing, European science did not move forward, it seemed to be petrified, frozen; it was dominated by scholastics, who later became an inexhaustible subject for satire. Even Petrarch laughed at the scholastics; he considered medieval science below the common sense of simple rowers and farmers. The Scholastics gave way to the so-called humanists, who transplanted the ideas of the ancient world onto European soil.

The revival of classicism led to the Reformation, but it should be remembered that the success of the revival of classicism itself was due to the invention of printing. This invention in all fairness separates the old world from the new. Printing opened new horizons for humanity. It seemed that there were no limits to the flight of the liberated human spirit.

That was the true rebirth of mankind to a new life.

Before the invention of printing, the acquisition of knowledge was possible from professorial chairs; the clergy taught morality from church pulpits. Information passed from mouth to mouth, not eye to eye. Typography gave birth to the reading class. Oral conversations have been replaced by reading. The method of acquiring knowledge by reading has a great advantage over oral conversations. Although the seal is mute, it often breathes powerful eloquence that makes the heart tremble or cause a blush of shame.

There is another important condition that gives reading a great advantage over oral conversations, over listening.

What a huge difference it makes whether we do something ourselves or someone else does it for us! In the first case, the interest is incomparably greater, the research is more precise, and the acquaintance with the subject is more complete. Listening is a passive state of mind, reading is an active state. And the latter is incomparably nobler and more beneficial in its results.