Engineers
Johannes Gutenberg
YOH-hah-nes GOOT-en-berg
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Johannes Gutenberg was a German goldsmith and printer who built the press most directly ancestral to the modern one in Mainz around 1440, combining movable metal type with a mechanical press adapted from wine and paper pressing. Movable type printing had been independently invented earlier in China, where Bi Sheng developed ceramic movable type around 1040, but Gutenberg's combination of metal type, oil based ink and a mechanized press was the version that made rapid, high volume book production practical in Europe for the first time.
Facts
Disputed
Birth YearGutenberg's exact birth year is not recorded; 1400 is the conventionally cited estimate based on guild registration records. Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954
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