Short History Of... - The Printing Press

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Before Johannes Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention, knowledge was a privilege accessible only to the wealthy, the powerful, or the devout. In this world, ideas travelled slowly, and were constrained by the limits of human hand.  So when, in the mid-15th century, Gutenberg invented the printing press, it became so much more than a machine. Ideas could be replicated by the thousands, making it the first great equaliser of information. But how did this seemingly humble invention fuel the fires of the Renaissance? How did it change Europe’s relationship with the church, and give rise to the Reformation? And how did it help to shape the reputations of historical figures, from Vlad the Impaler, to Joan of Arc? This is a Short History Of The Printing Press. A Noiser Production. Written by Sean Coleman. With thanks to John Man, historian, travel writer, and author of The Gutenberg Revolution, The Story of a Genius and an Invention that Changed the World.   Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thought you'd be dead by now. Get to the theater and experience the movie audiences are calling. An adrenaline rush of a good time. It's a big screen blast. Find a badass. I know, all right. NOVA CANE, NOW PLAYING. It's 1453 in the bustling city of Mainz, Germany, on the banks of the River Rhine.

It's a bright morning and the market is in full swing. in the bustling city of Mainz, Germany, on the banks of the river Rhine. It's a bright morning and the market is in full swing. Salted fish, bread and cheese are all loudly touted by merchants lining the square. Set back from the marketplace is a modest half-timbered house. From the outside it looks much like any other industry, but the secret contained within makes it unique. In the parlour of this family home, now converted into a workshop, is a small gathering of people. One of them, a middle-aged man, stands in front of a large wooden and metal frame, an adapted wine press with a huge wooden screw to raise and

lower a heavy plate over a wide platform below. He looks up agitated as the front door creaks open and one of his assistants rushes in with an armful of bound sheets of paper. Another man hurries over to quickly close the door behind him, returning the room to its usual secretive darkness, lit only by the dim flickering of oil lamps. The heavy shutters have been closed for months. The man at the press can't risk anyone spying his enigmatic invention. Not yet.

Only the handful of people in this room, his trusted assistants and his business partner, know what he's been working on all this time. The assistant dumps his armful of paper on the pile behind the door and nods. That's the lot. He takes his place at the press beside his boss, who now lifts two round black leather cushions about six inches in diameter mounted on small wooden handles. Known as ink balls, they're made of horsehair covered in goose skin.

After rolling them in a dish of sticky black ink, making sure the leather is evenly coated, he places the pads firmly down onto two metal plates laid flat on the wooden frame, leaving a layer of ink. Leaning in, he examines the plates. Each is made up of rows and rows of tiny metal forms, letters in relief, on which the ink now glistens. Satisfied the coverage is even, he now lifts a large sheet of paper, pre-softened to the perfect texture to receive the impression from the letters.

He locks it into a frame, which he then slides carefully over the inked plates and double checks its alignment. A deep breath. He nods to his assistant, who takes hold of a long lever attached to the huge wooden screw and pulls hard towards his chest. With a dull thud, the screw creaks through its turns, pressing the heavy plate down onto the paper. As the assistant releases the handle, the screw rolls back up, lifting the pressing plate again. Nervously, the man removes the paper frame,

unclips the sheet, and holds it up. He smiles and turns it for all to see. Two full pages of crisp printed text. His eyes are shining with pride. The room erupts in quiet celebration. In that moment, this man, Johannes Gutenberg, is vindicated. After years of secret toil, through all the struggles, the near bankruptcy, he has finally succeeded in creating the very first mechanical, movable type printing press. He hopes that this will be the breakthrough he needs to turn his struggling fortunes around.

What he can't know is that his incredible invention will democratize knowledge, spark revolutions, and inspire movements. And in doing so, it will change the world forever. Before Gutenberg's revolutionary invention, knowledge was a privilege accessible only to the wealthy, the powerful, or the devout. Books, painstakingly copied by hand, were rare treasures. The contents of their pages a mystery to the common man. In this world, ideas traveled slowly, constrained by the limits of human hands and time. But in the mid 15th century, a quiet revolution began in Mainz, Germany. Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was more than just a machine.

It was the first great equalizer of information. Suddenly, ideas could be replicated not just by the dozens, but by the thousands. But how did this seemingly humble, practical invention dismantle the barriers of time, distance and privilege to fuel the fires of the Renaissance? How did it change Europe's relationship with the Church and give rise to the Reformation? And how did it help to shape the reputations of such diverse figures as Vlad the Impaler, Christopher Columbus, and Joan of Arc?

I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of the printing press. Ever since the earliest ancient civilizations, molds, forms, or punches have been used to impress symbols into another surface as a way of recording ideas or events. In this way, laws, religious texts, and accounts of great military victories can be preserved for generations to come. Around 3500 BCE, the Sumerians, in what is now Iraq, use a stylus to press wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets to represent sounds, words, or concepts.

Ancient Egyptians carve or paint their hieroglyphs into stone, wood, and papyrus, while later still the Romans etch their marks into marble or bronze. Whilst all of these show a desire to record important information, they are limited by both materials and techniques. Carving symbols into stone or impressing them onto clay requires immense labor and skill, while materials like papyrus or parchment are fragile and expensive. In China, where once the ancients engraved their symbols into bone and tortoise shell, a new form of printing emerges in around the 7th century AD, woodblock printing. By carving an entire page of text or an image into a wooden block, inking it and pressing it onto paper,

the early printers of the Tang dynasty create a slightly more efficient system of text reproduction. The technique grows in popularity even further, until sometime in the middle of the 11th century during the Song dynasty, when a Chinese artist called Bi Sheng improves the woodblock technique to create the first ever form of movable type. For this, he carves Chinese characters into individual blocks of clay, which he hardens through baking. He then arranges these clay types into words, places them on an iron plate coated with resin

or wax to hold them in place, applies his inks, and presses the surface onto paper to create his printed page. John Mann is a historian, travel writer, and author of The Gutenberg Revolution, the story of a genius and an invention that changed the world. There was a whole industry of carving characters in reverse on wood blocks and printing off books by applying paper and ink and peeling off the paper and then binding them together. The problem with Chinese is of course that you have not an alphabet of 26 letters, you have characters, which amount, if you want to do a decent job of over 10,000 characters.

And to make a movable print out of that is just phenomenal. It was done, but it's simply not worthwhile because you have to spend so long choosing your letters that you might as well spend the time carving them in woodblock. It was done, but it's simply not worthwhile because you have to spend so long choosing your letters that you might as well spend the time carving them in woodblock. While revolutionary, Bi Sheng's system of movable type printing has limited impact. Aside from the complexity of the Chinese writing system, it also struggles because baked clay is fragile and prone to breaking easily. And across the world in Europe, the process of recording and disseminating information is still extremely labor-intensive. In the monasteries, cathedrals and other

religious buildings of the European Middle Ages, specialized rooms known as Scriptoria are home to teams of scribes and it is their job to meticulously accurately copy and illustrate manuscripts. It was an extraordinarily demanding process and of course extremely demanding on the scribes themselves who had to copy as exactly as they could what had been copied before. And it was very beautiful, of course, what they produced. Extraordinarily expensive since a scribe could copy maybe a page per month, something like that. It was amazingly tedious work.

Arduous and time-consuming. It takes months or even years for a single book to be produced this way. Often religious texts, but also some works of prophecy, divination and even the odd novel. The resulting, richly decorated manuscripts are works of art. Most often retained inside the monastery's own libraries or sold to the largest patron of book production, the Church.

For private buyers, they are prohibitively expensive, with their sale limited to royalty and elite aristocrats. Even the small handful of universities in need of classical and academic texts have them funded by wealthy patrons or the Church. As a result, knowledge dissemination across Europe is painfully slow. It was still an extraordinarily inefficient way to reproduce anything at all, and the number of books that existed in, for instance, Paris or London or Oxford

would have fitted in the back of a wagon very easily. And there was no such thing as a lending library. If you wanted to read something and of course not everybody was literate, it was a huge problem. While the majority of Europe's population remains illiterate, the Church relies on clerics to share its teachings. And this is where the use of scribes presents another problem, perhaps greater than the lack of speed, the issue of accuracy.

Christianity, following the great schism of 1054, is firmly divided into two interpretations, with constant disagreements over fundamental doctrine, like the nature of Christ and the Trinity. The Greek-speaking East, centered in Constantinople, has multiple patriarchs leading the church and focuses on philosophical and mystical ideas. Their worship is highly ritualistic and rich in icons, incense, and chanting.

The Latin-speaking West, however, have a single supreme authority, the Pope, in Rome. Their theology is framed in terms of law, sin, and redemption. Worship follows a standardized liturgy with an emphasis on institutional control. For Rome, the need for accurate, identical copies of religious texts is paramount. Each pope and each emperor in Constantinople wanted to assert their own authority, and this was impossible with the scribal pattern of behavior, because the scribes made mistakes when they copied, and there was no uniformity. And politically and culturally, this was what the problem was for both churches, in particular, Rome. Unfortunately, the scribes, as talented as they are, are not always reliable.

Working in dim lighting under austere conditions, mistakes are common, sometimes even willful. A frustrated scribe might alter a passage to correct what they see as an error, simplify difficult phrasing, or even add personal commentary. In some cases, entire sections are subtly changed to reflect theological or political biases. What the church, especially in Rome, needs is a reliable way of reproducing their texts, not only more accurately than the scribes can manage, but more quickly too. And in the 1430s, a German metalworker, inventor and entrepreneur is busy, secretly working on a way of answering Rome's prayers.

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Born into a relatively affluent family, sometime around 1400 in Mainz, not too far from Frankfurt, Gutenberg is the son of a well-to-do merchant, who is also a member of an elite guild overseeing coin-making in Mainz, known as a companion of the mint. Though little is written about his early life, it's likely comfortable enough to afford him access to education and expose him to the world of craftsmanship and business from

an early age. Having left to attend university by 1420, he's back in Mainz and looking for work. And though it's unclear what his activities are at this time, he is surrounded by men occupied in the skilled work of coinmaking. Johannes learns how the coins are cast in dyes, which in turn are designed and shaped using metal punches. These punches, with their raised patterns, are used to imprint the symbols and letters on each coin. Punchmaking in the early 15th century is already an ancient art. It involves tempering steel to exactly the right strength to avoid brittleness,

and then using tiny, graving tools with minute scooped or angled tips to scrape away metal from the head of the punch until a letter or a symbol stands proud. Regardless of whether Johannes Gutenberg ever carries out any of this work alongside his father, the skill and techniques he sees in the mint become an essential part of his later invention. With his thirties approaching, Johannes is unmarried, intelligent, well-educated and ambitious. By now his parents are both dead,

and his brother has transferred a couple of annuities to him to buy him out of the house they inherited. But times are hard in debt-ridden mites, and so Gutenberg now decides to seek out his fortune in another, more stable city. He heads for Strasbourg, two days upriver from his beleaguered hometown. And there he seems to thrive.

With a more reliable income the next ten years in his adopted city, see Johannes come into his own. He has an idea, a dream, which he must keep completely secret for fear that others could bring it to fruition first. For now, he focuses his attention on honing his technical skills and his business acumen to make the dream a reality. But to do that, he needs more money. He decides to apply his skill set laterally on a strange get-rich-quick scheme.

Some 155 miles northwards is the city of Arkan. It's where Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, once decided he would establish his capital. In 1165, about 350 years after his death, Charlemagne was made a saint. His remains were placed in a golden casket in the majestic Arcann Cathedral, drawing pilgrims from around the empire. There they are revered alongside other sacred relics, like the infant Christ's swaddling clothes and the cloth that held John the Baptist's severed head. The relics become so popular that in the mid-14th century, the authorities restrict access by only displaying them every seven years.

By the time the seven-year cycle rolls around to 1432, there are over 10,000 devotees crammed into the cathedral every day for two weeks. Where once pilgrims could touch the relics to imbue themselves with their healing powers, the crush of souls clamoring for a glimpse now makes this impossible. But then word spreads that small, convex mirrors of polished metal, which have recently become so popular among the well-to-do, are actually the perfect tool for capturing the relic's holy light.

Suddenly, the small metal badges that pilgrims traditionally buy as proof of their visit now come with a mirror. Holding these aloft in the presence of these sacred artifacts will allegedly absorb their divine power for the devotees to take home. Demand soars, and the goldsmiths of Aachen, unable to meet the need, agree that for the two weeks of the pilgrimage, outsiders can make and sell their own pilgrim badges and mirrors. Gutenberg sees his opportunity. Badges are not that different from coins after all. He plans to hit the 1439 pilgrimage with 32,000 of them, which he will sell for the equivalent of around 50 pounds each in today's money.

Gutenberg's big idea was that he would print out these curved discs, mirrors, which would sell to the people gathered in Aachen by the tens of thousands and make him a lot of money, and then he would be able to continue his researches. Unfortunately plague struck Aachen and he was unable to go ahead with that and he was left with the problem of getting capital, which he then proceeded to do. He took loans, he had an investor,

and all the time remaining utterly secret about what he and his team were trying to research because he knew perfectly well that there were other people who would seize this secret as an industrial development and go into business on their own account. With all that borrowed money at stake, it's no surprise that he keeps his card so close to his chest. Ultimately, nothing about Gutenberg's actual printing press is new. Paper has existed for centuries.

Block printing the same. Presses are common in Europe for wine and olive oil production. Metal stamps, forms, punches, they're all in fairly common use. It's just that no one has had the insight, the genius, to put it all together to create not just a printing press, but one with movable type, with individual letters that can be quickly and easily arranged into words, lines and pages. He already knows that if you can pull it off, it will revolutionize the speed, accuracy and affordability of book production. But at this stage, with his pilgrim-mirrors venture thwarted by plague and his debts mounting,

Gutenberg needs capital if he's going to succeed. In 1448 he returns to Mainz. His sister has passed away, leaving him the family home and thus a stable base from which to continue his research and development. He borrows more money, takes on some assistants and sets up a print shop in his front room. He's all in at this point. There's no room for failure. With debts up to his eyeballs and a permanent cash flow problem, he needs an actual end

product. By now he has refined his press. He's invented a hand mold which allows him to quickly and cheaply reproduce his metal punches instead of having to hand-carve the letters each time. He's developed an oil-based ink which adheres better to the metal type heads, found a way of softening the paper just enough to take the ink yet retain adequate strength to be bound, and he's created a way of quickly linking the letter punches together

to make words and pages. He's even figured out a way of quickly linking the letter punches together to make words and pages. He's even figured out a way of creating uniform spacing between characters that are different in width, such as I and M. He's ready to do a trial run. What he needs is something easy to replicate, which offers the possibility of a fast return. The answer comes in the form of a book he himself would have studied while at university, the Ars Grammatica by Ilius Donatus. Only 28 pages long, this utterly tedious analysis of Latin is a must-have for every student

and scholar. If he can mass-produce an error-free edition in which every copy is identical, he can prove that his invention is both faster than traditional scribes and more accurate. And the universities will surely bite his hand off. And so he sets to work. And so he sets to work. His first aim was to match anything a scribe could do. That is, you had to match the design, which is in two columns of text, and it had to be positioned in the same place as the… on the page as a scribe used to do. And the one thing that a scribe could not do was guarantee a flush right-hand margin. It's okay, on the left,

of course, you know where you're starting. If you get as a scribe towards the end of a line, you can't tell exactly to the millimeter where it's going to end. So a scribal copy had a ragged right margin, and naturally with text as set by Gutenberg you can make it match up absolutely exactly and in this respect he could both do as well as a scribe and a little bit better as well. The Donatus Gutenberg produces is as exact a copy of the scribes version as possible. Just like their hand copied editions, the words are crammed onto the page, with only a few capital letters to break up the text.

Even the font he creates is similar. It's not pretty, but it is quick and accurate, and it proves his invention works. Unfortunately, if he's going to get the materials to print enough copies to see a decent return, he's going to need more money again. In 1449, he strikes a deal with a new investor, a wealthy financier called Johann Fust. Johann Fust. Fust already deals in manuscripts and blockbooks, regularly traveling to Paris on sales trips. And when he hears about Gutenberg's incredible invention, his interest is immediately piqued. At first the partnership goes well. Fust loans him 800 gulden, around three years' wage for an unskilled worker at the time, for equipment which is to provide the security for the loan.

But the interest on the loan is high, and having ploughed his money into the press itself, Gutenberg quickly finds himself struggling to make the repayments. He needs to find a bigger, more secure market to sell to than students and universities. And he needs to print more books. Once he'd solved the problem of bringing all the various elements that existed, that is the paper, the ink, the head of the punches that could be assembled into forms, as soon as all that had been brought together, there was the market to be exploited, which was Christendom itself. And there were other books which were absolutely crucial to

the Christian message, which were prayer books and missals and calendars, and at this particular moment, statements of antipathy towards the Turks, who were known to be advancing in the Far East, and there were crusades in the offing, and it was important to have statements summoning the faithful to crusades. But though printing missiles, devotional pamphlets, and calendars helped to refine the mechanics of the press. They're just not paying the bills. By now, he is three years into his deal with Fust, and he's yet to pay a penny in interest.

He's just about covering his expenses. But Gutenberg has his eye on a bigger prize. He wanted to make money and he had a terrific market in terms of a whole of Christendom, basically, that would open up if only he could solve this problem. He had encouragement from somebody who was raised in the same area called Nicholas of Cusa. And Nicholas became extremely eminent and became a pope later on and would have pretty

undoubtedly met Gutenberg and given him a sense that the Pope would be open to anything that he could come up with in terms of creating text that would build unity for Christianity. So he knew he had a market. It's by no means a commission, but what Nicholas of Cusa wants is for the monastic libraries to own a well-translated and edited Bible. A uniform text for all to read from. Handy then that Gutenberg has the very device upon which to produce just that. But to print something on the scale of the Bible, he'll need a second workshop and a

lot more money. Gutenberg turns back to Fust, who naturally is suspicious. All he has as collateral for his loan are the machines and tools in the workshop and the press itself. Still, somehow, the penniless printer persuades his investor to stump up again. Another 800 gulden, another interest agreement. It's make or break. And this time, they are going to print a Bible.

When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back to tell us we'll be okay, to remind us of our ability to believe. Because their belief in us transfers to self-belief and reminds us of all that we're capable of. We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag, you got this. We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag, you got this. The Gutenberg Bible, as it will become known, is a 42-line per page, two-volume book printed in Latin,

with around 3 million characters needing to be set. It is a monumental undertaking. monumental undertaking. Compositors spend their days arranging the tiny metal forms on the typeset pages, while the printers apply the ink with those soft leather ink balls and position the vellum or paper before winding the press just enough to apply the perfect pressure to the sheets. And it's all done under the careful orchestration of Gutenberg himself. Meanwhile, Fust is out in the world, showing off samples of what's to come to potential bias.

In Frankfurt, in sort of equivalent to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1454, where he showed off some bits of the Bible that he'd printed already to a senior cleric called Piccolomini, who was going to be a future pope. So this was a huge step forward, and Piccolomini recorded the fact that he'd met this wonderful man, as he called him, who produced parts of the Bible. And clearly there was a market out there, if only he could produce more of the same and bind it all together into a complete Bible. Perhaps realizing that the market is ripe, or possibly fearing that Gutenberg will simply not deliver in time to take advantage of it, Fust now does something extraordinary.

Around the middle of 1455, when most of the first run of Gutenberg's Bible is already printed, and, more importantly, pre-sold, he withdraws his support. He sues Gutenberg for the outstanding loans, which of course he can't pay, as Fust well knows. Everything Gutenberg has is bound up in his workshops, including the treasured printing presses, which Fust claims are technically his. A legal case follows, but Gutenberg doesn't really have a leg to stand on. The court rules in Fust's favor, granting him both the business and the machines. Not only that, Fust has already headhunted the genius inventor's staff so that work

on the Bible can continue as planned. And so it does, just like that. Gutenberg is out of the game. When they are finally released, the 180 copies of the Bible immediately make more than enough to pay off Fust's loans, had he been patient or kind. Sadly, he is neither, and Gutenberg is almost edited out of his own incredible story. Fortunately, and though others may have tried to make the claim for themselves, he is at least recognized in his lifetime as the inventor of the movable type printing press. Not that he reaps any of the rewards.

Having lost his business and his printing press to Fust, Gutenberg's final years are spent in relative obscurity, living off a small pension and never seeing the riches he dreamed of. He dies in 1468, afraid that his legacy will fade as he has done. But his invention is just about to hit its stride. Fust is ruthless in his marketing of the books that can be printed and quickly creates a demand for this new style of printing press. Now, with no such thing as a patent to worry about, anyone with the skills, money and resources

can replicate Gutenberg's revolutionary press and set up their own printworks. The printing press spread extremely rapidly. By the end of the century, there's something like 250 printing works all around Europe, and of course, Bibles were being printed, but any text could now be reproduced almost instantly by comparison with scribal copies. And the spread of books was extremely rapid. Printers in Venice, Paris, Cologne all joined the party. By 1500, approximately 20 million books have been produced across those 250 European printworks.

Among the Bibles, missals and prayer books, scholars can now find republished classical texts by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero. Books to inspire art, humanism, freedom of thought. As the market floods with these new, relatively cheaply produced prints, books are finally affordable, and they're no longer only printed in Latin. The first major impact of Gutenberg's press was it allowed ordinary people to read things in their own language. And so ordinary people, for the first time, were able to

skip past the authority of priests and, as it were, speak commune directly with God in their own language. What started as an idea for unifying Christendom quickly becomes a catalyst for the democratization of knowledge, enabling the spread of new ideas. It is the 31st of October, 1517. A cold autumn evening in Wittenberg, Germany. Everything is quiet,

save for the rustling of dry autumn leaves and the church bells ringing the evening hour. The Wittenberg Castle Church looms large on the edge of the town. Shadows move on its stone walls as a lone monk passes by, holding a single lantern. His plain, dark robe, cinched at the waist with a simple cord, flows behind him as he strides across the town square. He's strong, broad-shouldered, and, this evening, resolute. In his hand, he clutches an important but potentially dangerous document. It represents his full criticism of the corruption

within the Catholic Church, namely the sale of so-called indulgences. These are payments made to the Church in exchange for a reduced punishment for sins committed. They had originally been intended as a form of penance, but now they've become exploited as a fundraising tool. And recently their sale for profit has spiraled out of control, with preachers aggressively selling salvation for a price.

It's gone too far, and this corruption must be challenged, spiritually and academically. Hence, the document in his hand, his 95 theses or criticisms of the practices of the Church, and he intends to deliver them himself this evening. Arriving at the heavy wooden church doors, he collects himself and takes a breath. This simple act of rebellion could have dramatic consequences. He wants to spark debate and stop the exploitation of ordinary believers. But as his 95 theses directly attack the authority of the Pope, he could face charges of heresy.

He could be arrested, excommunicated, even executed. And yet his conscience compels him. He pauses for a moment, looking at the huge wooden entrance to the church. It is on these doors that university staff often pin up messages or notices of dispute. Today, this monk and theologian, Martin Luther, is about to post his most controversial notice yet. With a deep breath, he removes a couple of nails and a short hammer from the pouch at his waist. Unfurling the paper, he nails his 95 theses to the door.

Even if the notice is torn down before anyone reads it, he has sent a copy of the same objections to the Archbishop of Mainz by letter today too. His act of protest is complete. Now for the reaction. The tale of Luther nailing his complaints to the door of the church may well be apocryphal, but he certainly delivers them to the Archbishop in 1517, and they definitely have a dramatic impact. Martin Luther's 95 theses spread quickly, helped in no small part by the printing press. Though his own copies are handwritten, his supporters rush to reproduce his complaints in print.

Soon reproductions are flying off the presses and his objections are widely distributed in German and Latin. The fact is that the 95 theses of Luther's anti-Roman diatribe were reproduced across Germany, to start off with, then across Europe, extremely rapidly. In fact, Luther himself became a star figure and of all the books published in Germany in the early 16th century, one third of them were by Luther. So that was one of the most successful pieces of

writing ever. Luther can rightly claim the title of being the very first bestseller. His act of rebellion is the catalyst for the Reformation, the split of the church into Catholic and Protestant divisions. And the movement spreads like wildfire, thanks to the speed with which the printing press allows ideas like Martin Luther's to be reproduced and distributed

en masse. It's no wonder, then, that Luther is quoted as saying that printing is the ultimate gift of God, though the church no longer sees it that way. This was a revolution which spread of course not only to Europe but was very influential in Henry Gade's break with Rome. The publication of the first English translation by Tyndale,

which was printed in Europe by the, as it were, the grandchildren from Gutenberg. Peter Schoeffer's was his pupil and Peter Schoeffer's pupils printed the Tyndale version of the Bible. And that spread into England and became part of the whole Reformation in England. Not a simple process, but that was the end result. As the first English translation of the Bible, Tyndale's version draws on the Hebrew and Greek texts rather than using the Latin Vulgate that has been the standard in Western Christianity for centuries.

As a direct challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church, its publication is crucial in the spread of Reformation thought in England. Though Tyndale is tried and executed for heresy, he lays the groundwork for later English Bibles, like the King James Version, the most widely read Bible in English Protestantism. And the Reformation is not the only movement influenced by the invention of the printing press. Though the Renaissance has been bubbling away across Europe for nearly a century already, the arrival of the printing press fuels an explosion of art, science, and philosophy that reshapes Western thinking.

Before the printing press, a laboriously hand-copied book could cost as much to buy as a house. By the early 16th century, a printed edition costs little more than a month's salary for an average school teacher. As books become cheaper and more abundant, literary rates increase and suddenly knowledge and the creativity it inspires is widely available to ordinary people. And this sparks a revolution in education and intellectual exchange, amplifying the works of Renaissance humanists like Machiavelli and Thomas More. Printing even inspires new forms of writing.

even inspires new forms of writing. Gone are the days when the written word is just a record of addresses by rulers, lawyers, or messengers of God. Now it's possible for anyone to be a writer and for them to address everyone in their own language and style. In 1554, somewhere in Spain, an unknown writer publishes the first true novel of the new medium, the life of Lazario de Tormes. Its character-driven, picaresque style will go on to inspire Cervantes, Defoe, and Henry

Fielding. And though slightly slower to get started, the printing press also helps a scientific revolution to take hold. Mathematicians and philosophers, previously restricted by geography, language, or the glacial pace of handwritten publications, now benefit from being able to widely distribute their ideas and findings at great speed. Well, I suppose the scientific revolution is basically a different dimension of the spread of printing, because Copernicus was able to print his theory of the heliocentric system of the solar system, and this was picked up later on by Newton and others, and had there been no printing, that particular theory might have been lost,

and picked up famously by Galileo, and then it spread from there. You know that feeling when you find the perfect song? Imagine that, but for your next meal at Tim's. Whether you're craving something meaty, cheesy, or just straight up satisfying, make a meal of meal at Tim's. Whether you're craving something meaty, cheesy, or just straight up satisfying, make a meal of it with Tim's new three meat hat trick flatbread pizza loaded with pepperoni, bacon, and sausage crumble.

Pair it with our new garlic bread and a refreshing peach lemonade quencher for a meal that just hits. Order on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. So influential is the printing press that in 1620 Francis Bacon, the English philosopher credited with developing the scientific method,

defines it as one of three inventions to change the world. The other two being gunpowder and the nautical compass. I mean, it was the beginning of a whole new culture and the flow of information. One example, for instance, is that Marco Polo went all the way across Asia and worked for Kublai Khan for 17 years, came back and told his remarkable adventures, stories,

and in Venice they joked about it. But when he found himself under house arrest, he was in Genoa with a hack writer who appreciated what Marco Polo had gone through and took down Marco Polo's memories and turned it into a book. And those travels, which once printed, went throughout Europe,

was one of the most popular books ever printed. And one of the people who had a copy was Columbus. And Columbus was drawn to head westwards as opposed to around Africa when he was heading for the east because of Marco Perla's description of the wealth of Kublai Khan's China. If that had never been published, never been printed, then Columbus wouldn't have had that possibility. So possibly one could say that printing actually was instrumental in the discovery of America. Indeed, few advancements in human endeavor cannot in some way be attributed to the impact of the printing press.

And many of the great figures of history would not have been anywhere near as well known had their stories not been widely printed and retold. Without print, Vlad the Impaler would not have benefited from the terrifying PR campaign that sealed his reputation, nor would the accounts of Joan of Arc's exploits have been so well preserved. Arguably, Columbus might even have been so well preserved. Arguably, Columbus might even have just gone south instead. Over the next few centuries, moving parts are refined and processes streamlined. Metal screw presses replace less durable wooden ones.

And the introduction of roller presses allows for fast, more consistent pressure. These incremental improvements are steps on the path to yet another transformative leap. In the early 19th century, the advent of steam power looks set to revolutionize the printing industry once more. It's late November, 1814 in London. In a dimly lit workshop, heady with the smell of a coal fire, oil lamps, ink and damp paper, inventor Frederick Koenig nervously surveys his masterpiece. An industrial cylinder press. This hulking machine with its intricate gears, levers and long cylindrical rollers represents

years of innovation. In the next room, connected by pipes, is the beating heart of the machine. A steam engine which is currently building a good head. The steam power is the first of two fundamental design concepts which set this press apart from anything that's come before. The other is the specialized rotary cylinders. Held in place horizontally over the press by the metal framework, these are effectively large rollers which will carry the paper through the press at incredible speed.

Now Koenig double checks everything is loaded correctly. The slightest misalignment could ruin today's demonstration. Satisfied, he steps back just in time to greet his very important guests. His partner, the watchmaker and fellow German Andreas Bauer, leads a small group of men in fine suits into the workshop. These skeptical-looking gentlemen are from one of London's most popular and influential newspapers, The Times. And today, the two German inventors

are hoping to convince them to be their first customers for this new revolutionary machine. Formal introduction's over, and in a clatter of machinery, Koenig fires up his steam-powered press. As it roars to life, intricate gears, levers and rollers whir, thud and clunk. Koenig smiles at his partner as the first crisp pages fly from the press. The men from the times stare, mouths agape as the prints roll out before them at a pace they've never seen before. As the demonstration ends, the room falls silent. The metallic creaks and groans are replaced by the fading chuff of steam. For a moment there is silence, before the group of stunned onlookers erupt in exclamations of wonder. The men from the times are sold.

This will change everything. The next sea change in the printing revolution, Konig and Bauer's steam-powered press, can print 1,100 sheets per hour, more than four times faster than its hand-powered cousin. Impressed, the Times uses it for the first time to print its November 29th, 1814 edition. They do so in secret, to avoid worrying their existing operatives, or pressmen, who are already threatening to destroy any machines which might take their jobs. But the march is unstoppable, and soon newspapers are flying off the new, steam-powered presses like hotcakes.

The pressmen, after brief resistance, retrain to operate these machines and live to print another day. And the refinements continue apace. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries lithography and offset printing emerge, using chemical processes to transfer ink onto paper. Lithography relies on oil-based ink repelling water to create an image on a printing plate, while offset printing uses rubber to transfer the ink, allowing for faster and more precise reproduction. The 20th century sees the advent of digital printing, eliminating the need for physical plates altogether.

And the internet, which once again changes the way information is shared, makes instant global communication possible. The 21st century adds e-books to the mix. And who knows what will come next? In the end, Gutenberg's gift is that he opened the dam on a river of knowledge into which every human can tap. Adding, editing, improving, as it flows through our hands. Gutenberg worried that his books wouldn't last long enough for his legacy to be remembered. Little did he know that long after the last press falls silent and paper has become entirely

obsolete, the vast store of knowledge he helped to create will remain. Even as a digitized version, the very first 42-line-per-page Bible will be there to remind us that this was the book that started a revolution, that changed everything forever. A revolution started by Johannes Gutenberg. It was so technical that one just has amazing admiration that anyone would come up with it. Gutenberg was doing his research and experiments for 10 years or so in Strasbourg and trying to keep it secret all the time until he came up with a solution.

So I think the admiration is for Gutenberg himself, for his insights and for his determination and for his perseverance until he found the right process. Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of Christopher Columbus. Columbus was a pretty dodgy guy. He's pretty ruthless. He's pretty conniving. He has to lie a lot. And he's willing to do that. He is willing to cut people's tongues out if they try to say things that don't match his scheme. He was weirdly admirable in its own way

because he kept it going when others would have just turned back. But it took a roguish, scheming guy to hold this group together and achieve something he had no intention of achieving. That's next time.