Book Minute

Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, today’s high-speed commercial printing presses can produce up to 15,000 sheets an hour! His invention of metal movable type in 1450 has accurately been called “an invention that changed the world.” And the first major book he printed was the Bible!

It’s estimated there were about 30,000 books in all of Europe before Gutenberg’s press. Less than fifty years later there were as many as twelve million books, and the book that was printed was often the Bible. As people became more interested in studying the Bible, Bibles were printed not only in Latin, but in German, French, and even ancient Greek.

Many believe that without the Gutenberg press, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century might not have been possible.