1398
Mainz, Germany
February 3, 1468
Mainz, Germany

Inventor, printer

In the 1450s the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg perfected the printing press, which is recognized as one of the most important advances in Western (non-Asian) history. A mechanism by which small metal pieces engraved with single characters (letters) could be arranged to form words and sentences, the first press was used in Germany to print the Bible (the Christian holy book). Soon presses began to spring up all over Europe, and the impact was enormous. Literacy grew rapidly and knowledge spread as literature became readily—and affordably—available to many people for the first time. With the aid of printing, the ideas born in the Italian Renaissance (a revival of ancient Greek and Roman culture) during the late 1300s spread northward to France, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway), and...