Gutenberg Movable Type Printing

Timeline

1. c. 1450–1455Mainz · RhinelandJohannes Gutenberg combined type-casting alloy, oil-based printing ink, and a screw press into a practical printing system in Mainz; around 1455 he completed the printing of about 180 copies of the famous Forty-Two-Line Bible (Gutenberg Bible), with a per-copy cost of only about one third that of a manuscript, inaugurating a new era of mechanically reproduced books.
2. 1455–1500Major printing centers across Europe · EuropeGutenberg's technology spread rapidly in the second half of the 15th century: the 1462 conflict in Mainz forced printers to scatter throughout the German lands; it reached Italy in 1464, France in 1470, and England in 1476. By 1500, printing shops had been established in about 250 European cities, with over 27 million printed items produced cumulatively; book prices fell sharply and the landscape of knowledge transmission was fundamentally transformed.
3. 1517–1520Wittenberg and printing centers throughout Germany · GermanyWithin weeks of the publication of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, Wittenberg printing shops translated them into German and printed thousands of copies; in 1518 alone, more than thirty works by Luther were printed. It is estimated that between 1517 and 1520, over 400,000 Reformation-related printed items circulated in the German lands, making printing the decisive technological medium through which reform ideas broke through the papacy's control of information and reached the broad populace.