Gutenberg printed his famous Bible, then lost the workshop to his lender
In 1455 Johannes Gutenberg finished his 42-line Bible, about 180 copies, most on paper and the rest on vellum. Within months his backer Johann Fust sued him for 2,026 guilders and won control of the press. The first European book to carry a printer's name, issued from that shop two years later, never mentioned Gutenberg.
Money trouble followed him from the start. Around 1439 in Strasbourg he invested in polished metal mirrors to sell to pilgrims heading to Aachen, where people believed such mirrors could catch holy light from Charlemagne's relics. A severe flood pushed the relic show back a year, and the partners could not repay what they had spent. In Strasbourg, too, he reportedly worked on a secret venture he called enterprise and art, possibly early printing trials.
Back in Mainz by 1448, he borrowed from his brother-in-law and then, around 1450, took 800 guilders from the moneylender Fust, followed by another 800 for the Bible project begun in 1452. At 6% interest the debt swelled. Meanwhile the press paid its way by turning out more profitable jobs, including thousands of church indulgences in 1454 and 1455. A Bible like his may have needed as many as 100,000 individual pieces of type, and setting a single page could take half a day. His type metal mixed lead, tin and antimony, melting easily for quick casting yet wearing well, and he printed with oil-based ink on a wooden screw press modelled on farm presses.
The court sided with Fust, and Fust's shop, run with his son-in-law Peter Schöffer, released the Mainz Psalter in August 1457 with its printer's name and date. Gutenberg seems to have carried on, perhaps supplying type for a Bible in Bamberg around 1459, but his books never bore his name, so certainty is impossible.
Even his birth year is a guess, somewhere between 1393 and 1406, with 1400 assigned for convenience. His mother's commoner status barred him from following his father into the Mainz mint. In 1465 the archbishop made him a gentleman of the court, with a yearly outfit plus grain and 2,000 litres of wine free of tax. He died in 1468, and his grave is lost. Time Life later named his press the most important invention of the second millennium.
Source: Johannes Gutenberg
