Johannes Gutenberg

A goldsmith in Mainz, Gutenberg combined movable metal type, an oil-based ink that would stick to metal, a type-casting hand mould and an adapted wine press into a single production system. He did not invent printing; he invented mass reproduction, and with it the conditions for the Reformation, the scientific revolution and public opinion itself.

• Developed the hand mould for casting interchangeable metal type at scale — the crucial invention
• Printed the 42-line Bible around 1455, roughly 180 copies, still regarded as a technical masterpiece
• Reduced the cost of a book by orders of magnitude within a generation
• By 1500 his method had produced an estimated 20 million volumes across Europe

Mass literacy, standardised spelling, newspapers, copyright law, peer-reviewed journals and the very idea of a reading public are downstream of his press. The internet is routinely analysed through Gutenberg's precedent — the same pattern of collapsed reproduction cost producing both an information explosion and a wave of disinformation, as the pamphlet wars of the 1500s did.

Gutenberg never married and left no known children; he died with his press lost to a lawsuit and a pension from the Archbishop of Mainz.