Printing En Masse

Johann Gutenberg's Work Is On Display In Kentucky





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A man dressed as Johann Gutenberg works on a replica of the first printing press. (WLKY)


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(CBS) The Louisville Free Public Library in Kentucky is hosting a display of the groundbreaking work of printer Johann Gutenberg. Louisville is a sister city to Mainz, Germany, where Gutenberg was born 600 years ago.

Borrowed from Mainz for this exhibition are some pages actually printed by Gutenberg. The library has also set up a working replica of his printing press.

Gutenberg didn't really invent printing. What Gutenberg did do was perfect a way to mass produce books. People had been reproducing manuscripts from carved wooden blocks for centuries. This method, though, were extremely time consuming and inefficient.

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Thanks to Ken Kurtz, a CBS News Sunday Morning viewer from Lexington, Ky., who told us about the exhibit.
A metal worker by trade, Gutenberg cast individual letters and punctuation marks into steel blocks. The blocks were then arranged to form sentences, dipped in ink and pressed to paper.

Using movable type, his famous Bible was printed in 1455. Gutenberg never saw a profit from his invention, though. He was sued by his chief investor, who then took control of his printing press and all the profits that would come with it.

Gutenberg has been called the man of the millennium, because his advances in printing led to a new information age. In Louisville - and everywhere else - Gutenberg helped make reading more accessible.







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