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THE TYPEFOUNDER, WOODCUT BY JOST AMMANN,
FRANKFURT A.M., 1568
art in the neighboring City of Strassbourg. Habitually in debt,
in the month of August of the same year he borrowed money
from his kinsman Arnold Gelthus, and from Hans Fust, a wealthy
goldsmith in Mainz. Gutenberg was near the realization of his
dream. After his many experiments, as seen in the different
type designs used in his masterpiece he at last had created,
in lead, the characters just as perfect and beautiful as the best
specimens the monastery art of the scribes had produced during
the preceding six centuries.
Gutenberg's Ideal
His great ideal, the first printed Bible, was in the making.
From the hand-caster he removed letter after letter. Finally,
he had accomplished the amazing feat of making single charac-
ters in quantities a possibility which had been discussed in
ancient Greece by the great philosophers, such as Plato and Aris-
totle. They suggested that letters be baked of sugar and given
to the children as aids in memorizing.
Gutenberg's Printing Practically Perfect
So perfect was Gutenberg's invention that during the next four
hundred years his method of type-casting remained almost un-
changed.
In setting the movable type into lines, the old master applied
again the art of the medieval scribes. By comparing several di-
ferent pages of his Bible, it is noticeable that the spacing between
the words is perfectly uniform and even, yet every line comes
out to the full width of the entire column of 42 lines with two
columns on each page. In order to achieve this, about 250 differ-
ent characters and combinations of characters were used. Many
of the lower-case letters were cast in different widths, and special
abbreviation marks were used (simplified spelling a la 1450). Thus,
following the style of the old original manuscripts, Gutenberg
created a masterpiece of typographic beauty and rhythm such as
no man has ever again accomplished.
PAGE FOURTEEN
FACSIMILE OF 42-LINE BIBLE BY GUTENBERG
MAINZ, 14O0-7455
Even though Gutenberg saw the consummation of his life's
work in 1452 he had to ask for a second loan of 800 gulden
from Fust, who consequently became his partner, together with
his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer. In our mind's eye we see these
three men printing the large, beautiful pages—1282 in all—and
compiling them in a book which was tremendous in both its im-
mediate and potential consequences not only for Gutenberg him-
self, but for the whole human race. And even to this day these
pages are as black and perfect in color as the day they were struck
off the old wooden hand press.
That Gutenberg completed his work not later than 1455, can be
gathered from the following inscription made by the rubricator
and binder at the end of the two volumes now kept in the Biblio-
theque Nationale in Paris:
"First Volume. Here endeth the First Part of the Old Testa-
ment of the Holy Bible, which was illuminated, rubricated and
bound by Henry Albech or Cremer, on Saint Bartholomew's Day
(August 24), in the year of our Lord 1456. Thanks be to God
Hallelujah.
"Second Volume. This book was illuminated, bound and per-
fected by Henry Cremer, vicar of the Collegiate Church of Saint
Stephen in Mainz, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin (August 15) in the year of our Lord 1456. Thanks be
to God Hallelujah."
Today records show that 45 copies of this great Bible are
still in existence. Eleven copies are now in the United States.
When Henri Stevens sent the second copy of the Gutenberg
Bible to this country at the time of dispatching the treasured
volumes to the American collector he wrote the following: "Pray,
sir, ponder for a moment and appreciate the rarity and import-
ance of this precious consignment from the Old World to the
New. Not only is it the first Bible, but it is the first book ever
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