I am Johannes Gutenberg

1. I am Johannes Gutenberg

2. Question 1 • I was born probably around 1400. Since my exact date of birth is not registered anywhere, my Foundation decided that I was born 1400 so in the year 1900 the foundation celebrated my 500th birthday and by 2000 even my 600th birthday.

3. Question 2 • I was born in the German city of Mainz. Since my precise date of birth is not known, it is believed that I was born on the private property called “Hof Zum Gutenberg” which later gave me my last name. At that time, this was common practice for patrician families.

4. Question 3 • I died on 3 February 1468 on the “ Hof Zum Gutenberg” outside Mainz. I was buried in the Franciscan Church at Mainz. This church was later on destroyed so • today one can not see any graveyards.

5. Question 4 • It is believed that I was educated at a Latin school called “Stift St. Viktor” in Mainz and in the year of 1418 I studied at the university of Erfurt. All this is not precisely known because only a few documents show some evidence.

6. Question 5 • I was born as the youngest son of an upper-class merchant family. My family is believed to be involved in a kind of goldsmithing and metal work. My parents belonged to the so called patrician families. The patricians were considered, at that time, as aristocrats and often named after their houses. You remember what Itold you how I got my last name?

7. Question 6 • I lived between 1434 and 1444 in Strasbourg. In the beginning I was still tradingand crafting gold. Around 1437 I offered my knowledge as goldsmith to Andreas Dritzehn. Shortly after that, I founded a company who produced brochures and other printed goods for the church. During this time, I was thinking of producing letters from metal. This was probably the beginning of my printing career.

8. Question 7 • My printing was based on individual letters which I could arrange into words, sentences and pages. I clamped these pages together in a frame. I had a wood case in which I had all different letters from A-Z sorted in small boxes. If I wanted to write a word, I would put the different letters together. When a page was ready I could print it on a piece of paper by rolling ink on the letters, putting paper on top and • setting it into the printing press which I turned down by a large screw. Later on, I would take this page apart and sort back the letters into the wood boxes so that they • could by re-arranged. This was unique that I could use the letters over and over again. My method was much more efficient than the widely spread woodblock printing.

9. Question 8 • I made moveable letters from metal which allowed me to have exact the same letters over and over again. These letters were made in the same way and the matrices looked each time exactly the same. By using the same type and format of letters made it possible for me to print books in a remarkable quality. With this method I could print hundreds and hundreds of the same page in the same quality.

10. Question 9 • For the woodblock printing the colour was very thin. For my new type of printing, I had to invent a thicker colour which would stick better to the letters from lead. I added line oil and ashes to the common paint and it became much thicker and dried much faster. Later on, this paint even allowed me to print on the front and on the backside of each page.

11. Question 10 • In 1945 I was back in Mainz where I added more and more details into my newly developed printing technique. By 1450 I added a new printing press which allowed me to enhance the quality once again. My master piece of printing was my 42- line Bible later on commonly known as the “Gutenberg Bible”. I printed 180 copies of which today 48 still exist. The cost for this Bible was roughly 30 Florins which was much cheaper than a hand written bible. At that time 30 Florins was a 3 year wages of an average clerk. This bible brought me great attention all around the world and people started to look into my technique.

12. Question 11 • In the years after my death, I received several honours as being the inventor of the printing technology. The most honour of prestige I received was from the American journalist in 1998 when they gave me the title “Man of the millennium” which made me the most important person in the second year thousand. Also my home city Mainz is celebrating my significant birthdays.

13. Question 12 • After my new technique got known and respected, this new way of printing spread quickly throughout Europe and books became cheaper and began to travel faster through Europe. Especially for renaissance scientific publishing it became of main importance.

14. Question 13 • My invention, even questioned by a lot of scientists in the later years, is honoured to be the starting point of the third media revolution after languages and writing. My invention is linked to the humanism and the reformation as well. Further on, the moveable letters made printings less expensive and today printing products are part of your daily life at a low cost.

15. Question 14 • As mentioned, my printing technology is known as the key factor to the European. Renaissance mainly because of the new enhanced possibility to copy facts andscientifically studies in a large quantity and this also in a short time frame.

16. Why me, as the Parangon winner? • I shouldbe the paragon winner because, I invented the socalled printing maschinewhichstill influences today.

17. Bibliography • "Gutenberg Johannes." “Lingen Lexikon.” Band 8, Berlin F.A. Brockhaus, 1998 Page 125. • Grant, Neil. The Renaissance. London and New York. Franklin Watts Ltd. 1971. Print. • Langley, Andrew. Leonardo. London, New York , Sydney and Moscow. Dorling Kindersley. 1999. Print. • Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press, September 1980, Paperback, 832 pages, ISBN 0-521-29955-1. • Stephan Füssel: Johannes Gutenberg. 3. Auflage. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2003, ISBN 3-499-50610-6.