Organization
DissolvedGutenberg's workshop
Mainz · c. 1450 – 1455
Johann Fust sued for his loans in 1455 and took the press. Gutenberg died in 1468 without a shop of his own.
Around 1450, in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg borrowed a large sum from Johann Fust and set up a workshop that could do something no European scriptorium could: produce identical copies of a long book without copying them by hand.
The secret was not a single machine. It was a combination. A lead-tin-antimony alloy that cast cleanly. A hand mould that made the sorts reusable. An oil-based ink that stuck to metal. A press adapted from the wine or paper press. None of these, alone, was the business. Together they were.
A shop, not a lone inventor
The 42-line Bible, finished around 1455, required compositors, pressmen, a typefounder, and a corrector. Gutenberg's own training was as a goldsmith, which is why the type looked like jewelry and why the early pages tried to imitate a manuscript. The workshop employed a crew. That crew is the start of the printing trades the museum follows for the next four centuries.
The lawsuit
Fust sued in 1455 for repayment of the loans, won, and took the equipment. Gutenberg did not die poor in the romantic sense, but he died in 1468 without control of the shop that had proved the method. Peter Schöffer, who had worked in the shop, married Fust's daughter and carried the business on. The invention spread by people leaving Mainz, not by a patent Gutenberg was able to keep.
The work it organized
- Compositor
- Pressman
- Typefounder
- Corrector
On the timeline
Related
- Peter Schöffer's pressDissolved