The first printed books

In this note

Detail

The chapter calls print the greatest revolution of the sixteenth century.
It was a borrowed revolution. Europeans did not invent printing.
Europeans owed printing technology to the Chinese.
They became familiar with it through visits to Mongol courts.
Same route brought three other things: firearms, the compass and the abacus.
Point to remember: a "European" revolution ran on Asian technology.

Johannes Gutenberg (1400–1458) made the first printing press in Europe.
In 1455, 150 copies of the Bible were printed in his workshop. Timeline date given in the chapter: 1454.
Compare the speed: a monk copying by hand would have taken that same time to finish one Bible.
The book is called the "42-line Bible" or "B42" — each of its two columns has 42 lines of type [2].
It was printed at Mainz, Germany, by Gutenberg with his partner Johannes Fust [2].
It was the first large-format typographic book printed in Europe [2].
Its text is the Vulgate — the Latin Bible translated by St Jerome in the fourth century [2].
Only 48 copies survive today: 12 on vellum (treated animal skin) and 36 on paper [2].
One copy is at the Library of Congress, in the Otto Vollbehr Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division [2].

Note: The Library of Congress says the print run was "perhaps as many as 180 copies" [2]. NCERT says 150 copies. Use 150 for the exam.

By 1500, many classical texts, nearly all in Latin, had been printed in Italy.
Three changes followed, all in the chapter:
Students no longer depended on lecture-notes taken down in class.
An individual could buy a book and read it himself.
This created the reading habit — reading alone, at one's own pace.
Books printed before the end of 1500 have a special name: incunabula, meaning "cradle books" [3].
By the end of 1500, presses were working in more than 250 cities across Europe [3].
Venice alone had no fewer than 150 presses by 1500 [3].

Nicolas Jenson perfected the roman typeface in 1470 [3].
Aldus Manutius was the greatest printer-publisher of his time [3].
First dated book: 1495, the Erotemata of the Greek grammarian Constantine Lascaris [3].
He printed the first editions of many Greek and Latin classics [3].
He made small pocket-size books in cheap editions — a book you could carry [3].
He first used the sloping type we now call italic, in 1501 [3].

Italian humanism spread beyond the Alps from the end of the fifteenth century. The chief reason was circulating print.
Earlier intellectual movements stayed regional — stuck in one area — because print did not exist then.
Simple chain to remember:
Hand copying = few books = ideas stay in one city.
Print = many cheap copies = ideas travel to Germany, France, England.

Europeans learnt printing technology from the Chinese; contact came through Mongol courts — which also brought firearms, the compass and the abacus.
Johannes Gutenberg (1400–1458) made the first printing press; 150 copies of the Bible printed in 1455 (timeline entry 1454).
The Gutenberg Bible is called the 42-line Bible / B42 because each column has 42 lines [2].
Its language is Latin — the Vulgate of St Jerome [2].
48 copies survive: 12 on vellum, 36 on paper; one is in the Library of Congress [2].
Books printed before the end of 1500 are called incunabula [3].
By 1500, presses existed in over 250 European cities; Venice had about 150 presses [3].
Nicolas Jenson perfected the roman typeface (1470); Aldus Manutius first used italic type (1501) [3].
By 1500, most printed classical texts in Italy were in Latin.
Print is called the greatest revolution of the sixteenth century in the chapter.

Technology moved from Asia to Europe, not the other way. Printing, firearms, the compass and the abacus all reached Europe through Mongol-court contact. So the Renaissance was not a self-made European miracle; it stood on Asian technology transfer. Useful line against a Europe-centred reading of the period.
Print changed how knowledge was held, not just how fast it spread. Before print, knowledge lived in lecture-notes and monastery copies — controlled by teachers and the Church. After print, a person could own a book and read it alone. This private reading habit is the base for later Reformation pamphlets and for scientific work being checked by other people.
Print explains geography of ideas. Earlier movements stayed regional because copies were few. Italian humanism crossed the Alps after 1490s because printed books circulated. Good comparative point: the same idea can die locally or go continental depending only on the copying technology available.
Standardisation matters for science. Identical printed copies, page for page, let scholars in different cities argue about the same text and the same diagram — a precondition for the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.