In an age where it seems as if there's too much to read, it's hard to imagine a time when there was nothing to read.
The Gutenberg Bible was the first book to be printed (1499-1455) from movable type, which Johann Gutenberg had only recently invented. Prior to his invention, books were all hand-copied, making them extremely rare: they were opened only by ecclestiastical institutions or the wealthy.
Gutenberg was a goldsmith, who dedicated his adult life to creating and perfecting the printing process. He created letters on indiviual metal blocks that could be arranged into words and sentences and later pulled apart and reused. Using molten metal and molds, he was able to make large amounts of type quickly and cheaply. By adapting a hand-operated wine-press he also invented the first European printing press around 1438, in Mainz.
Original press run for the Gutenberg? Not exactly "best seller" status: 180 copies were printed. Only 48 of these originals are still around today, only 35 are completely intact. There are only five complete, intact copies in the United States -- they are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Library of Congress and Harvard and Yale Universities--the last one of the five is at the University of Texas, in Austin.
It is estimated that thirty copies were printed on parchment, and the rest, like the one at U-T were on paper.
The University of Texas copy is in two volumes of 600 pages each. Genesis through Psalms is the first, Psalms through Revelations in the second. Each Bible was unique because, after they were printed, they were hand-colored and decorated at various ecclesiastical and royal libraries in Europe. Specialists would add the illustrations in red, blue and gold leaf, and the books would be bound by hand. The copy at U-T is in calf-skin, over wooden boards, done about 1600.
The invention of the printing press ushered in an age of literacy and closed the door on the Dark Ages. By 1500, there was such demand for the printed word that hundreds of print shops were established throughout Europe. Since it was cheaper to print books than it had been to copy them by hand, books became more available to the general public. Literacy increased, the world was changed forever.
Notes in the margins of the Gutenberg Bible at U-T provide clues that it was originally owned by a European monastery and used at mealtimes in the refectory and at Church Services. It eventually was bought by friends of the University of Texas for 2.4 million dollars in 1978.
Gutenberg's printing method was used almost unchanged for 350 years until the new machinery of the industrial revolution increased printing speed.
From hand-lettered Bibles to church bulletins assembled on a personal-computer: the publishing industry now belongs to everyone. Charles Dickens expressed his appreciation thus: "Of all of the inventions, of all of the discoveries in science and art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free man."
NOTE: The Gutenberg Bible at U-T can be seen at the Harry Ransom Center weekdays and Saturdays from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., and Sundays from 1-5 P.M.
The Gutenberg Mazarin Bible