autumn of 1455, two goldsmiths went to court in the German city of Mainz. Their dispute, which was heard by the city’s ecclesiastical authorities in the dining hall of a Franciscan friary, was about money. The first goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg, had borrowed sixteen hundred guldens—a small fortune—to invest in equipment, labor, and his own time as he built a machine he hoped would change the nature of writing.
