Notably, Korea was under invasion, which hampered their ability to disseminate their innovation. In addition, Korean writing, then based closely on Chinese, used a large number of different characters, which made creating the metal pieces and assembling them into pages a slow process.
Most importantly, Goryeo rulers intended most of its printing projects for the use of the nobility alone. Nonetheless, it is possible that printing technology spread from East to West. Kublai Khan had access to Korean and Chinese printing technology, and he may have shared this knowledge with another grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulegu, who was then ruling the Persian part of the Mongol empire. This could have moved printing technologies from East Asia westward by thousands of miles.
In the middle of that route lay the homeland of the Uyghur people, a Turkic ethnic group that had been recruited into the Mongol army long before. This is because, in the 13th century, Uyghurs were considered distinguished, learned people—the sort for whom printing might be a welcome innovation. They had also something no one else in printing had had up till then: an alphabet, a simple group of relatively few letters for writing every word one wished to say.
There was no explosion of printing in the Western Mongol empire. Nonetheless, movable-type Uyghur-language prints have been discovered in the area, indicating the technology was used there. Furthermore, the Mongols may have carried the technology not only through Uyghur and Persian territory, but into Europe, including Germany.
The Mongol empire repeatedly invaded Europe from roughly to AD; that period saw the entry of enough Western Asian recruits and captives to bring the loanword horde from their Turkic languages into European ones. That business took decades of his life to bring to fruition, forced him into bankruptcy, and led to court filings by investors who repeatedly sued him to get their money back.
The stories we tell about the man, and how the Bibles came to be, have been cobbled together from a fistful of legal and financial records, and centuries of dogged scholarly fill-in-the-blank. Indeed, the entire history of the printing press is riddled with gaps. Two hundred copies were made, each complete with beautiful illustrations and vibrant colors. Characters and illustrations were later hand-illuminated. Today, only 22 of the original Gutenberg bibles are known to be in existence.
This was the result of a deal made between the two men, necessitated by debts that Gutenberg owed to Fust.
Gutenberg died in approximately in Mainz. It should be noted that others in history claim to have come up with the idea of movable type earlier than Gutenberg did, including a Dutchman and a Chinese inventor.
A system similar to his is said to have also been used in the 12th century in Korea. The printing press and all that it brought to the masses helped to inspire a religious revolution, as families were, for the first time, able to possess a Bible for their own interpretation. Court records are sketchy, but scholars believe that while the trial was going on, Gutenberg was able to print his masterpiece, the "Forty-Two-Line" Bible, now known as the Gutenberg Bible.
Peter Schoeffer, Fust's son-in-law, who had testified against him during the trial, now joined Fust as a partner in the business.
The Psalter is decorated with hundreds of two-color initial letters and delicate scroll borders using an ingenious method based on multiple inking on a single metal block. The Psalter was the first book to display the name of its printers, Fust and Schoffer, but historians believe that neither could have developed such a sophisticated method alone and that Gutenberg must have been working for the pair in the business he once owned.
Gutenberg remained in Mainz, but once again fell into poverty. The Archbishop granted him the title of Hofmann gentleman of the court in , which provided a salary and privileges for services rendered. Still living in Mainz, it is believed that he went blind in the last months of his life. He died on February 3, , and was buried in the church of the Franciscan convent in the nearby town of Eltville, Germany. By , Johannes Gutenberg had made his own version of a metal movable-type printing press with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mold.
He thus introduced movable type printing to Europe , which would have far reaching effects. In the early s, Johannes Gutenberg used his invention to produce around copies of the bible , now famous as the Gutenberg Bible. Due to their remarkable quality, the books were sold quickly with some fetching as much as 30 Florins — about three years wages for a clerk at the time. The Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-produced book in Europe and it has since achieved an iconic status. Out of some original printed copies of the book, 49 still exist of which less than half are complete.
They are mostly held by libraries, museums or universities. To carry out his Bible project, Gutenberg had borrowed money from a wealthy moneylender Johann Fust. In , there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust in which Fust accused Gutenberg of misusing his funds and demanded his money back.
The judgement led to Gutenberg becoming nearly a bankrupt while Fust and Schoffer used his invention to print the Mainz Psalter , a religious book commissioned by the Mainz archbishop in The Mainz Psalter was the first book to display the name of its printers , Fust and Schoffer, but it had no mention of the inventor of the printing process, Johannes Gutenberg. In —62, there was a warlike conflict for the throne of the Archbishop of Mainz. Mainz was sacked by Archbishop Adolph von Nassau and Gutenberg left the city.
He remained in the town of Eltville for a few years before returning to Mainz.
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