The first printed edition of The Summa grammaticalis quae vocatur Catholicon, or Catholicon, appears. It is also one of the first books to contain a colophon, a page, or part of a page that describes who printed the book, the location of the printer, and its production date. In the Psalter black, red and blue ink is used. Color, in this case, does not mean full-color images but simply the use of additionals color to highlight some initials, words, or paragraphs. It is printed by Johann Faust and his son-in-law Peter Schöffer. The first known color printing is used in ‘Mainz Psalter’, a book containing a collection of psalms. A quarter of the books are printed on vellum, the others use paper. Customers can have their copy decorated manually. The text is set using a gothic type that mimics handwriting. It is considered the first mass-produced book. Gutenberg finishes printing between 160 and 185 copies of his 42-line bible which is referred to as the Gutenberg Bible. This marks the end of the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Many books from its Imperial Library are burned or carried away and sold. 1453Ĭonstantinople is captured by the Turks. Around 1450 Gutenberg begins printing bibles, initially using 40 lines of text in each of the two columns but later switching to 42 lines to reduce page count. 1448 – Gutenberg sets up a printing shop in MainzĪmong his first publications printed using movable type are the ‘Poem of the Last Judgment’ and the ‘Calendar for 1448’. The one hour video can be viewed on YouTube. Stephen Fry hosted a Timeline episode about the history of the first printing press. Afterward, the bed is moved back to its original position and the paper can be removed. By moving the large handle pressure is applied to make sure the ink is transferred to the paper. Next, the frame is shoved to the right underneath the platen. After inking the type, a sheet of paper is put on top. This type consists of individual letters set in lead. It uses relief printing: at the bottom left a frame holds the columns of text that get printed. The image below shows a replica of a press from that era. It takes Johannes Gutenberg, the German goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher, four years to finish his wooden press which uses movable metal type. 1436 – Gutenberg starts working on a printing press Using UV light historians can often still read the original text, making these books an important source for ancient texts. These reused books are called palimpsests. The old text is scraped off and replaced by a new one. The parchment that books are written on is so expensive that books that are no longer relevant are not thrown away. The University of Cambridge has one of the largest libraries in Europe – constituting just 122 books. 1424īooks are still rare since they need to be laboriously handwritten by scribes. They continue to be produced until around 1480. The first complete block books or xylographica are produced in Germany and Holland around 1430. It was printed in 1423 and then manually colored in. One of the earliest examples of European woodcuts is the image of Saint Christopher shown below.
This printing technique is also called block printing. The ink is made of lampblack (soot from oil lamps) mixed with varnish or boiled linseed oil. The woodblock is then inked and the substrate pressed against the woodblock. The printing parts remain level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with a knife or chisel. Woodcut is a relief printing technique in which text and images are carved into the surface of a block of wood. It is used for printing religious images and playing cards. 1423 – First woodcut printing on paperĮven though woodcut is already used for printing on cloth for over a century, the first European woodcut printing on paper happens in the early 15th century. The most important one is the Frankfurt Book Fair which is first held by local booksellers soon after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. This leads to the establishment of numerous book fairs. One of the main challenges of the industry is distributing all these works. Such presses can produce 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by typographic hand-printing and just a few pages by hand-copying. The books printed between the 1450s and the end of the fifteenth century are called ‘incunabula’. By the end of the century printing presses can be found in more than 250 cities around Europe. It revolutionizes the production of books and pamphlets. The main event from this era is Gutenberg’s invention of a printing press that works with movable type.
This page documents the evolution of printing and publishing during the fifteenth century.