Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

Gutenberg appears to have returned to Mainz from Strasbourg in the late 1440s, where he teamed up with Johann Fust, a rich citizen who was his new backer, and Peter Schoeffer, an erstwhile student at the University of Paris who may have been a copyist before he turned printer. All seems to have gone well until 1455, when Fust and Gutenberg fell out and there was another lawsuit. Gutenberg lost, had to repay the interest on his loan, and what remained of the capital, and Fust and Schoeffer went on without him. On 14 October 1457, the first printed book that can be dated came from the new press. This was the so-called Mainz Psalter, the first product of a business that was to flourish for more than a hundred years. Lucien Febvre judges that the Psalter was of such a quality that it cannot have been the first attempt, and it is now more or less agreed among historians that other presses were in operation between 1450 and 1455 producing many books on a commercial scale–grammars, calendars, Missals, the famous 42-line and 36-line three-volume Bibles.115 Gutenberg later got into debt but after that he was ennobled by the archbishop elector of Mainz, for personal services–so perhaps he installed a printing press. There was no uniformity in letter formation and none was agreed until the eighteenth century in the French Enlightenment, when a standard measure, ‘the point’, was adopted. This was the size of the king’s foot and is still in use today.