Beard of the Week XXVIII: Gutenberg
This week's beard belongs to Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468), often described as "the inventor of printing". That rather overstates the case, but someone needs to be called the "inventor of printing"; Gutenberg is the "canonical inventor" in the terminology of John H. Lienhard, the author of the excerpt below.*
In fact, printing had existed for several centuries, but Gutenberg made several practical innovations, creating a reusable, movable-type technique, improving machinery and printing inks, and making the whole process an economically practical way to produce books for a nascent mass market.
His beard is the feature largely because I thought this brief biography by Lienhard was great fun: concise but alive with personality.
Johann Gutenberg was born in Mainz probably in the latter 1300s–maybe 1400. His family name was Gensfliesch zur Laden. Gutenberg was the name of his wealthy father's house, derived from the words meaning "Jewish hill," since it had once been part of a large Jewish settlement. Historian John Man tells how it fell into the hands of Johann Gutenberg's great-great-grandfather after a devastating pogrom in 1282. Our inventor's name changed to Gutenberg in 1419, when his prominent family began calling itself Gensfliesch zur Laden zum Gutenberg.
Since his father was an official with the ecclesiastic mint, Gutenberg grew up knowing a great deal about the way coins were minted. One needed first to create a steel punch, then use it to imprint a gold or silver coin–techniques that clearly foreshadowed the casting of type. We can be pretty sure that Gutenberg was educated outside Mainz. And we know that he moved to Strasburg in 1434, the year after his mother died and the family estate was divided.
However, our knowledge of Gutenberg's early life remains frustratingly incomplete. Most of what we know about him is revealed only by his constant presence in courts of law. He was clearly very feisty in his dealings. Court records reveal that Gutenberg returned to Mainz in 1434 long enough to wage a quick and decisive legal battle with the city of Mainz to secure his share of his inheritance. After that, he surfaces again in a 1436 lawsuit. A mother is suing him for an alleged breach of betrothal to her daughter, an upper-class young lady named Ennelin zur Yserin Thüre. Did he lose the case? Did the settle out of court? All we know for certain is that Gutenberg so insulted one of her witnesses that, in 1437, the fellow successfully sued him for 15 guilders (or gulden).
[John H. Lienhard, How Invention Begins : Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 138–139]
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*I wrote awhile back about How Invention Begins, by John Lienhard (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006), a book I very much enjoyed reading. I thought the author had a profound understanding of his subject.
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on Monday, 4 June 2007 at 08.14
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Johann Gutenberg was born in Mainz probably in the latter 1930s–maybe 140.
My parents were born in 1919, and so in their late teens in the latter 1930s — I've got both their birth certificates, forms filled in with fountain pen, and I could swear the form was printed with moveable type…
but then again, 140 wasn't all that long after the death of the apostle John. I'm SO confused.
maybe it's just as well I'm a chemist and not a historian.
thanks for the faaabulous poodle of god coverage, by the way. they are truly timeless.
on Monday, 4 June 2007 at 11.37
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Thanks, Chris, for pointing out my fingers' error in thinking Gutenberg was born in the 1930s! I've gone ahead and corrected the error silently (except for the fun in the comments), possibly to hide my embarrassment, but my official excuse will be to save confusion of those who might trip over the sentence in a Google search and not be able to spot the problem.
Thankfully I'm not an historian either, and I might be too dangerous a physicist, too.'
Speaking of confusing years, I'm thinking of a plan to unite all people of various millennial persuasions by redefining the year 1 BCE as the Year 0. Nothing much would be affected and it would make accounting so much easier.