What If…
How reform could have been stifled and the empowerment of literacy controlled by the elites of Church and State
The world of the 15th century had become a powder keg of ideas, commerce, invention and renaissance in the arts. The old world was being left behind as a new, more hopeful and brighter future dawned. The printing press of Johannes Gutenberg brought with it the ability to print books and pamphlets at a speed and in quantities never seen before. Information and ideas could circulate through Europe, gathering pace as they went. Gutenberg’s inventiveness brought together the right elements, in the right place, at the right time. But if that moment had never happened, the world could have remained trapped in time.
What might have stopped Gutenberg developing his invention?
Johannes Gutenberg’s invention, the printing press with moveable type, was the solution to a well-known problem: how best to exploit a growing market in books? It was a race, and in 1455, with the printing of his Bible, Gutenberg won. But it was a close-run thing.
In the early 15th century, when Gutenberg was young, the production of books had brought Christians ever further and ever faster out of the dark ages that had clouded Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Produced by scribes, books – most of them religious – were easier to read with brightly coloured capitals and chapter divisions. As trade links grew and towns evolved, ordinary people wanted schools and books for their children. The rich built libraries and needed books to fill them. Similar demands came from new universities. Latin was the language of the Church, but increasingly people wanted information in their own language: instruction manuals, verses, histories, legends. Europe was on the verge of the Renaissance.
But scribes were slow and expensive. So, books were also printed in a simple way, with wood blocks engraved in reverse then smeared with ink, and covered with paper, which was pressed firmly to transfer the image.
This sort of printing had been around for some 2,000 years. In ancient Egypt, scribes used wooden blocks to stamp common hieroglyphic symbols. In China, © Getty Images wood-block printing had been common from the 5th century o
