Stephen Fry - The Machine That Made Us

The Machine That Made Us is a documentary in which Stephen Fry examines the story behind the first media entrepreneur, printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg, to find out why he did it and how, a story which involves both historical inquiry and hands-on craft and technology.
Fry travels across Europe to find out how Gutenberg kept his development work secret, about the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors and why Gutenberg's approach started a cultural revolution. He then sets about building a copy of Gutenberg's press.

I've always been
rather fond of books.

In fact, I think they're just about
the most important things

we've ever created - the building
blocks of our civilisation.

So when someone suggested

a journey in search of the genius
who invented the printing press,

I jumped at the chance.

My Lord, is this it?

This is it.
This was the man who launched
the first media revolution

and opened the door
to the modern age.

But his story is shrouded in
mystery, so to get closer to him

we also decided
to stage an experiment

and build our own medieval
printing press. It's so beautiful.

That meant getting to grips
with the tools and technology
of the 15th century.

Don't do that, Stephen!

And actually making some of the
ingredients with my own bare hands.

This takes me back to the art room,
where I was always a dunderhead.

As it turned out, that was the most
revealing bit of all.

I feel connected to
it somehow, just by doing this.

So, here it is then, the slightly
more-hands-on-than-I-expected story

of Johannes Gutenberg
and his marvellous machine.

Well, if you're as old as me,
you may well remember this.

The John Bull Printing Outfit.
Made in England.

This is where
I got my first experience

of how printing works, really.

And simple as it is,
these little rubber bits here

tell you all you need to know
about printing

with moveable type.
You've got ink... Ooh, there it is.

I'm going to get
my fingers dirty already.
There are lots of different letters,

and you can rearrange them in any
way you want onto one of these,

which I think is called a form.

And then when you print out...

It's exactly the same every time.

You can have hundreds, thousands,

millions
of pages that are identical.

And there we are.

Of course the point about
it being moveable type is

that I can move these
letters into any order,

make another word,
not unlike Scrabble,

so I'm going to mess around.
What am I going to get?

There we are.
So how is it it took mankind so long

to bring together these
simple elements

into one machine
that could make books?

The breakthrough was made by a man

called Johannes Gutenberg,
more than 500 years ago.

His printing machine

was the most revolutionary
advance in technology

since the invention of the wheel.

We're still living with its
consequences today,
as you can see here,

in the basement
of the British Library, where they
hold a copy of every book

published in English.

You know, there are 14 miles
of shelves here.

There are another eight
miles added every year,

as 3 million new books come on
stream in Britain, and above me, all
the readers, demanding their books

have little idea that there's
this labyrinth of shelves here.

It was the invention of the printing
press which started all this,

making mass production
of books possible
for the first time in history.

Within a few years there were
millions of them in circulation.

As they travelled, they carried
their precious cargo of new ideas

or theories, philosophy
or propaganda

to every part of Europe and beyond,

sowing the seeds
for that great cultural blossoming
we call the Renaissance.

The fruit of Gutenberg's
work can be seen all around us,

but it's more important than that,

for everything that our culture
and civilisation depends on

starts with Gutenberg's invention.

And this was his calling card -

one of the first and finest books
created using his new machine.

To the modern eye, the Gutenberg
Bible opens a window onto a vanished
world of monks and monasteries.

But when it first appeared,

in the 1450s, it was viewed
not as a reminder of the past,
but as a signpost to the future,

glittering proof
that a new information age
was dawning in Europe,

fuelled by the power
of the printed word.

I want to find out how and why
Gutenberg invented his machine.

To answer the how question,

I'm planning a unique experiment.

And here's the laboratory
where it's all going to happen.

In you come.

This workshop in the heart of
England may not look very hi-tech -

that's because the job
I have in mind requires

15th century materials
and techniques,

and a man who's spent
a lifetime investigating
the first printing pioneers.

Step forward, Alan May.

So this is where you're
going to attempt to build a
printing press, is that right?

That's the idea, yes.

But not any old press.
I want a fully operational
Gutenberg-style one.

There aren't any surviving machines

from this early period, and no-one's
ever discovered an illustration
of what they looked like.

So Alan has his work cut out.

Well, essentially, this
is uncharted territory.

It's a detective story, if you like.

The earliest illustration
of a printing press
is the Danse Macabre, 1499.

That's about 50 years after
Gutenberg started his printing.

So things evolved pretty quickly...
That's right.

I think that this early period
was actually quite revolutionary.

There were things changing
all the time. It took off rather
like the internet has now.

It really went "whoomph". Yes.

Alan reckons that Gutenberg's
press did share some family traits

with later machines. All printing
presses up to about 1800

have a central part, which
pushes down onto the type.

There's a piston
and platen assembly.

And the other thing that is required
in any press of this sort

is that you have some means
of transporting

the printing surface and
the paper under that platen.

So you've got a slidey bit moving
along here, and then you've got

a platen, you call it... Coming
down there... and that presses down.

'But there's one crucial difference
between Gutenberg's original

'and later so-called
"common presses", such as the one
this model's based on. '

To print on a press, they put two
pages of type on this stone here.
Right..

Very heavy stone,
about a hundredweight. Goodness!

And then the process of
printing was a double process.

You wound in for the first page,
to just there,

and operated the lever,

which makes the platen go down. You
then release it partly and wind it
into the next page and print again.

Hence the term "Two-pull press".

Forensic analysis of Gutenberg's
original Bible reveals

that he only printed one page
at a time, in other words,
his was a one-pull press.

That will influence the
size and design of Alan's
experimental machine,

which is already
starting to take shape
in another corner of the workshop.

Right, here we go. I wonder if you'd
pass me the mallet and chisel.

Oh, Lord, yes, here we go.

'Woodwork was never my strongest
subject at school, but no-one
seems to have told Alan that. '

The trick is
to not use the whole width

of the chisel.

Right.

About a third of it,
so that enables you to steer it.

Best to be shallow than too steep.

If it's too shallow you can
just pare it down by hand, OK?

Right, have a go. Oh, my goodness.
You may regret this. I don't
want to ruin it. Ooh, I say.

Right, about a third, like that.

Come on, courage. That's pretty good.

Wow! It's very pleasing.

It's a nice feeling, isn't it?
It is. I get the feeling

you're trying to reveal a fossil
coming out of a rock.

Yes, it is.

Ooh, I hope that wasn't too deep.
No, that's fine.

It's an extraordinary thing that you
create something like a mechanical
part, literally out of your hands.

Well, there you are.
That's jolly good...

If you could just finish that
off for me, about yea big.

When Alan's finished the press,
I want to print a replica page
of the original Gutenberg Bible.

That means I'll also need to
track down some other ingredients,

including moveable type
and 15th-century paper.

But first, I have a journey to make.

I'll be travelling through the
Silicon Valley of medieval Europe,

to explore the places where
Gutenberg and his team

developed the machine which shaped
the modern world.

My first port of call is Mainz,

on the banks of the Rhine
in western Germany.

This was Gutenberg's
birthplace and the city where
he spent his childhood.

But despite first appearances, only
a few traces of the medieval city

that Gutenberg grew up in
still survive. This is the birth
house of Gutenberg.

A chemist shop? Oh, yes.
You can read it?

Here stands Gutenberg's birth house.

And Gutenberg is the
name of his family?

No, actually the name of his family

was Gensfleisch. Which means?

Goose meat. Now, we say,

who wants to run around with the
name of goose meat in his life?!

Just around the corner is the church
where he was probably baptised.

Well, part of it, at least.

Mainz was heavily bombed in the
Second World War, so the medieval
remains of St Christopher's

are now bolstered
by some post-war concrete.

It's been left like this
deliberately as a memorial. Yeah.

Think of a printer,
you think of fonts,

and this must be a 7,000 point font!

But it's terrific to see.
Oh, there's a plaque to him.

Well, it holds Johannes Gutenberg.

Yeah, there's something I wanted
to talk to you about, actually.

The city of Mainz proclaimed in the
year 2000 that
it was his 600th anniversary,

so they think
he was born in the 1400s.

Well, that was decided upon,
publicly, actually in 1900,

when they made already the same
fuss about this centennial
at this time, and then they decided

Gutenberg was born in 1400.
But the exact date

is somewhere between 1397 and 1404.

Well, I have to say I slightly
agree with the city of Mainz.

I think 1400's a good year to
describe his birth, not because

it's a round number but because
it's actually the year that
Geoffrey Chaucer died in England.

Oh.... So it was the end of one age,

if you like, the age of the
medieval writer and the beginning of
the new age, the early Renaissance.

There's very little evidence about
Gutenberg's early years in Mainz.

We know his mother owned some land
and that his father was a merchant,

whose work brought
him into contact with the city's
goldsmiths, expert metal workers,

with skills which Gutenberg

And it's likely that he
studied at university,

so he'd have come into
contact with books, unlike
most of his contemporaries.

But that's about as far as it goes.

It's like catching the occasional
glimpse of a figure in a crowd,

only to watch him melt
away a few moments later.

And even when you finally come
face to face with the great man,

you can't be sure you're looking
at the real Mr Gutenberg.

Whether or not Gutenberg had three
hands, like this one here,

whether or not he looked like David
Tennant as Doctor Who,

or whether or not he had a
beard shaped like a fish stuck
to his face, one thing's certain -

we don't actually know what Johannes
Gutenberg looked like at all,
and that gives us great scope.

Perhaps he looked like you.

Or me.

Unlikely. He would have
been burnt if he looked like me.

No-one knows exactly when the
elusive Gutenberg first dreamed
of building his printing machine.

But this was a revolutionary
idea in the hand-made world

of the 15th century.

We're so used to living with
printed matter every day

of our lives, from cereal packets in
the morning to the book at bedtime,

it might, perhaps, be rather
hard to imagine what the world
was like before printing.

So we have to come here, this
monastery, Kloster Eberbach,

in a village just a few miles from
Mainz, where Gutenberg grew up,

and this is where not the printed
word but the written word was king.

Ah. Dr Schneider.
Hello...

Hi. What a pleasure to meet you.
It's wonderful to be here, in a
monastic setting.

I'm trying to get a picture of what life
was like around the time of Gutenberg,

how the books were produced in the
scriptoria, I think they're called.

Ja.

This is a rather fine room.
This is, in fact, the chapter house,

where they would read the
chapters of the Bible and they'd all
sit round on the benches.

So, a scriptorium, presumably, was
a different kind of room to this?

Yes. What sort of thing would you
expect to find in a scribe's room?

Scriptoriums were smaller rooms
than this because they needed heat

in these rooms, and because
you need warm fingers to write.

Of course. To hold a feather and to do
all this fine work with your hands.

And they needed light.
They needed windows in the summer,

and in the winter, they needed
candles... Kerzen. Ja, ja, ja.

Do we have any idea of
the character and personality
of some of these scribes?

Very seldom. Sometimes we have,
at the end of such bibles

or other manuscripts, small texts,

where the scribes tell
how hard their work was.

Oh, really? They leave
a little record? Ja, ja, ja.

It was very cold, they had to sit
always in the same position

and they get...
Cramps and stiffness.

Ja, ja. And it was cold and dark
and their eyes were tired.

And they'd write this down?
Yes! Yes, yes, yes.

'Hand-copied bibles were
rare and expensive commodities,

'far beyond the reach
of ordinary mortals.

'And even the best scribes
made mistakes.

'A printing machine would allow
the creation of exact copies,

'and lots of them.

'Whilst some church leaders

'feared anything that might break
their near-monopoly on learning,

'others recognised that
a common and universally accepted
version of the Bible

'might be a powerful weapon in the
battle to preserve Christian unity.

'But the church was just one
potential market for printed books.

'Beyond the cloister,
new universities
were springing up across Europe. '

So it's tempting to assume
that Gutenberg,
aside from his technical interest,

also saw an entrepreneurial...
Ja, ja, ja.

It was a mixture of three things,
I think.

He was an engineer
about the technical things,

he was a merchant,

and he was an intellectual -

he had studied at a university and he
knew that many people needed books.

'With demand for books
growing all the time,

'anyone who could devise
a machine for making them
could hope to make a fortune.

'And growing up in the heartland
of the German wine industry,

'Gutenberg didn't have far to look
for inspiration. '

These are rather noble structures,

and I think if poor old Alan
back in England
is trying to build a press,

he's going to find it
rather useful to see
what these originals were like.

'These contraptions
are wine presses.

'Alan May thinks that
Gutenberg's press evolved
from machines like these. '

Oh, that's very artistic. Very good.

Yes, for Gutenberg, these must
have been a very common sight.

He grew up in one of the biggest
wine-growing areas in the world.

I wonder if there was
an actual moment, though, when
he was sitting next to one of these,

or watching some grapes being
pressed and saw the spindle
sending the thing down,

and thought,
"Ah, that's what I need.

"Just this big frame,
with a spindle. "

'Presses like these may have started
Gutenberg's creative juices running,

'but to turn such a basic piece
of engineering into a precision
machine would be a tall order.

'And that was only
part of the challenge he faced.

'The whole project
would take years of experiment

'and it would cost a fortune. '

'But money didn't grow on trees
in 15th-century Mainz. '

It had been very influential
and very rich in medieval times,

but then, in the 14th century,

it came down a little bit,
the plague was there two times.

The Black Death.
The Black Death, yes.

The city didn't have
the richness any more. But it had
been politically very influential.

The archbishop had been the elector
and was the primus inter parus

as we might say of the electors.

And so it was an important city,
in any case.

In a sense,
what I'm getting from you is that
Mainz was a city of the past,

and what Gutenberg needed was
a city that looked to the future.

Yes, I think so.

'For a budding entrepreneur like Gutenberg,
Mainz was no place to start a business.

'He would have been in his early
30s when he packed his bags
and set sail down the Rhine.

'Two days to the south was the city
where his experiments in printing

'would first begin. '

'At Alan May's workshop in England,
our own printing experiment's
already in full swing.

'Alan's invited his fellow
printing expert Martin Andrews
along to show him work in progress.

'I'm pleased to see
that my holiday snaps turned up.

'Alan's also finished carving this
hefty wooden thread, which generates
the pressure needed to print.

'But the thread needs
a counter-thread to guide it
on its downward journey,

'and it has to be cut by hand
into the head of the press.

'Sounds tricky to me,
but Alan has a plan. '

It's an amazing contraption, Alan!

The idea came from
a guy called Hero of Alexandria,

in something like AD64.

'This ingenious device
uses these wooden pegs

on its journey.

'Meanwhile, a set of cutters at the
other end carve the counter-thread
through this sold wooden block. '

I'm careful to tap this,
not on the sharp edge.

You're using the thread itself
to cut its equivalent part.

That's right.
That's the elegant part of it.

It's pushed loads and loads
of sawdust ahead of it, look.

'It's cutting something, but
there's only one way to find out

'if the thread and counter-thread
are a perfect match. '

Ah, that changes
the whole perspective.

As soon as you take that out,
one can see how it's all working.

My goodness, there she goes!

Excellent.

I think that's
a pretty good job of it.

I've never seen anything quite like
it. I'm convinced, I think it works!

I'm convinced too,
but there's clearly a bit more to do.

'I'm following the Gutenberg trail,
down the Rhine
from Mainz to Strasbourg.

'When Gutenberg arrived here,
in the early 1430s,

'this was a bustling city,
with trading links
across Europe and beyond.

'That made it a far more
promising business base than
the bankrupt city of his birth. '

'And towering above
the commercial centre
was the great cathedral itself. '

Of course, when Gutenberg got here
the cathedral hadn't been finished

and this huge tower and spire
weren't quite completed.

As you can see, there's still
some work going on to this very day.

It's worth thinking
about the fact that,

at this time, the only investments
that human beings
ever seemed to make

were in their future,
in other words in the afterlife.

By participating in the building
of these enormous structures,

they were assuring
their place in Heaven.

Around about the time of Gutenberg,

we started to see the rise
of a merchant class

who really believed in investing in
the idea of their future on Earth.

Venture capitalists.
And such people were to prove
very useful to Gutenberg.

'The cathedral was more than
the spiritual heart of the city.

'It also became a focal point
for its dealmakers and moneymen,

'prototype capitalists with the cash
Gutenberg needed to fund his work. '

'By the late 1430s, he'd struck up
a partnership with three of them,

'and was ready
to start work in earnest. '

'And if he ever wanted
to remind himself that his big idea
was a good one,

'he only had to take a stroll
through the streets nearby. '

Rue des Freres,
the Street of the Brothers -

that tells us something
about this area.

We're right beside the cathedral,

which is the ecclesiastical heart
of an ecclesiastical city at the
heart of an ecclesiastical empire -

the Holy Roman Empire.

Worth thinking of it in terms of
something like the City of London,

the centre of the entire system
that runs the world at the moment.

For us, it's finance,
for them it was the Church.

It was the Church
that generated all the paperwork,

all the legal documentation,
all the printed services.

Everything, in fact, that Gutenberg
spotted needed reproduction,

needed a new technology.

And so we turn into this, frankly
less than prepossessing street,

but note the title.

Schriwerstubgass.

It was in this street in Strasbourg

that Gutenberg must have
seen the scribes bustling around
self-importantly

with great sheaves of paper
under their arms
and callouses on their inky fingers.

And he must have thought, "You might
believe you've got a job for life,
but I know better.

"Because one day,
you're all going to be replaced,

"replaced by a vulgar machine. "

'He employed
a carpenter called Saspach
to work on his new invention.

'No one knows what it looked like,
so Alan May's pieced together
other clues to design our machine.

'He knows that Gutenberg
printed one page at a time,

'whereas later presses
printed two in quick succession.

'Maybe that's why
this prototype looks
rather unusual to an expert eye. '

Let me have a quick look
and see what's going on
because it is unconventional.

The first thing that surprises me,

is we've got all the weight
in the framework here,

and normally on a two-pull press

you'd have your framework out here,
which is a) making this more rigid,

but also taking the weight
of the stone and the gear.

We don't need that now, look.

Because you only need to
go that far.

When the press is in use,
it never has to go..

Beyond... Beyond the cheeks.
It is unconventional...

'It may be unorthodox but Alan
thinks he's found support for
his design in an unlikely source.

'This illustration of a press
was drawn by Albrecht Durer

'60 years after Gutenberg
first printed. '

It's the only drawing
that I know of

where the feet of the press
come forward from the cheeks.

That's what mine are doing.

This has got a substantial structure
at the front... Which you have.

Which the common press never has,
it just has a little... A little leg.

So I'm wondering whether
this is an obsolete press

that Durer has got hold of,

and we're looking at a product
which is actually 50 years old.

Perfectly prepared
to be broad-minded.

Whether the other authorities in
the world will agree, I don't know!

'If Alan is right,
this is a major discovery.

'Could this be a snapshot
of an early Gutenberg press?'

'Gutenberg's team was growing.
Besides the carpenter Saspach,

'he'd recruited other craftsmen
from the Strasbourg Guilds

'and set them to work
at his new premises. '

'Not in the city itself,
but in a hamlet downstream,

'far away from the prying eyes
of potential competitors. '

Why the secrecy?
Why was it necessary?

There were a number of people
working in this area,
trying to solve this problem.

If only they could come up with
a printed word for the Church,

they would have their fortunes made,

so he had to keep it as a secret,
otherwise everybody else
would be doing it.

'Whilst they worked in secret
on the printing press,

'they needed a second revenue stream
to keep the wolf from the door. '

Lo and behold, fate brought
to Gutenberg a brilliant idea.

This was the creation of mirrors

for pilgrims coming to
the pilgrimage at Aachen.

Why was Aachen important?

Aachen was important
because there was a cathedral there,

and in the cathedral were relics
directly descending from Christ,
supposedly,

and they were on display
every four years,

and pilgrims would come from
all over Europe to see the relics

and receive the rays of healing
that emanated from them.

Eventually there were so many
pilgrims that they couldn't
all get close to the relics,

so the idea came into existence
that there should be some
way of capturing these rays,

and the rays were captured by
a concave metal mirror,

which would be held up
so that it was some sort of a
satellite dish capturing radiation.

Local makers could not
keep up with the demand.

Gutenberg's idea was that
if he could mix his metal right,

he could use the presses
that were in development

to print out mirrors, which could
be sold to the pilgrims at Aachen.

'It looked like a sure-fire winner,
but in 15th-century Europe,

there was one thing which
could usually be relied on

to scupper the best-laid
business plans. '

The Black Death strikes again,
and the pilgrimage is put off.

They would postpone a pilgrimage
for the plague...

It would be a real disaster
if you had 100,000 people

all gathered together when
you've got the plague. Of course.

That means all the investors
who'd been hoping for the money
that year...

Yes. One of the partners died.
The partnership began to collapse,

leaving Gutenberg not exactly
in the lurch, but struggling.

'This setback would have deterred
a lesser man but by now,

'Gutenberg must have been
completely possessed by his plan,
so the work continued. '

So, Gutenberg Island.

And there's a statue of him
with the fish on his face again.

'No-one knows exactly where
his workshop was, but it must
have been somewhere near here.

'He'd chosen a secluded base
to protect himself from the threat
of industrial espionage.

'But there was another reason for
being close to the water, because
Gutenberg was playing with fire. '

'Do you remember
my John Bull printing set

'and those rubber pieces of type?

'Gutenberg's plan would only succeed

'if he could devise a system for
mass-producing individual letters

'which could be set and reset
in any order.

'He went to the guild of goldsmiths,
and found a man called Hans Dunne.

'Together, they made the crucial
technical breakthrough

'which made Gutenberg's brilliant
idea a practical proposition. '

So, this is a type foundry.

This table is, believe it or not,
a complete foundry.

'I've asked Stan to help me
make a piece of type,

'a single letter E,

'which I can use in our grand
printing experiment.

'For the sake of authenticity,

'I want my letter to match
the dimensions of the original font
used in the Gutenberg Bible.

'First, we have to make a punch,

'a master copy of the letter
we want to reproduce. '

'After we've transferred its outline
onto the tip of this steel bar,

'it has to be carved by hand
using a file - a very sharp file. '

You'd do maybe a punch a day,
two punches a day.

So, in order to do
the full set of type

that Gutenberg needed for his bible,
how much work was that?

At least 270 characters,
perhaps more.

So, given that a lot of holidays,

I would imagine close to
the better part of a year.

A year. So if you were one
of those people who'd invested
in this new technology,

you'd be getting rather impatient.

You'd be saying, "Mr Gutenberg, do
you really need eight different Es?"

And the reason he needed
different ones was obviously

because it was a very elegant
and harmonious look he was after,

he wanted absolutely top quality,

so he wanted
some which were slightly wider,
some that were slightly narrower,

so that he could always have
justified lines... Correct.

.. Without trailing white space
and ugly, bad compositing things.

'This is a smoke proof,
a way of checking that our punch

'is an accurate copy
of the letter we want to replicate.

'It looks spot on.
How clever is that?!'

So here we have it, it's hand-carved

and grooved and shaved and emeried,

rasped and shaped
and hardened and tempered.

And now that is the key
that unlocks the technology
that changes the world.

The punch. Beautiful.

And we made it.

But what's the next stage?

Well, we have to strike a matrix
to that. Strike a matrix?

Yeah. I'm gonna hammer that punch
straight into that piece of copper.

So it will leave an impress
of the letter shape. Absolutely.

'The experts can't agree
about how exactly Gutenberg
cast letters from his moulds,

'but Stan's theory is
the most commonly accepted one.

'He thinks he invented something
like this ingenious device. '

This tool in front of us
is the single unique element
of Gutenberg's invention.

This is the type mould
and it's made of two halves,

and these two halves
meet together to form a cavity

in which the type will be formed.

With the matrix at the bottom.
Right, this pressure matrix.

Yes. And so these two halves
are beautifully fitted.

And because they make
either a narrow or a wide opening,

by placing this matrix
beneath the mould,

which we've carefully formed,

and closing the mould on
the matrix and using the spring
to keep it in place,

that's what this silly thing is,
now there's a hollow
inside of this mould

that's the shape of the letter we're
gonna form. OK. Isn't that neat?

I can't believe this is going
to work. It's a unique part.

There was nothing else like this
before Gutenberg. Right.

So we're going to pour molten metal
here - lead, tin and antimony.

Straight away in there. Yeah.

And it hardens instantly...
It's already hard. Really? Yeah.

So we take the spring out of the way.

We release the matrix
by pressing on it. Yeah.

We pry the mould open.

And there's a piece of type.
Oh, my goodness!

Isn't that marvellous?
So which bit is the type?

There's the face we formed.
And it's an exact duplicate...

There's the E. And if you look
at the punch we have here... Yeah.

You'll see that that punch
is replicated on the face...

Yes, it's identical
cos it's back to its...

It's back to its form. Isn't that
neat? 'It's more than neat -

'it's revolutionary! Because now
we can make as many Es as we want,

'quickly and cheaply.

'I wonder how many it takes
to print a full Bible?'

Look what I did! I made an E!

These hardly seem like
the components of the greatest
revolution in humankind

since the invention of fire, yet
you could argue they certainly are,

and one of the reasons
is that they're identical.

It's an extraordinary thing,
such ingenuity.

Using arts and crafts that have been
known for some hundreds of years,

but adding to it
this unique little device

that just enabled printers all over
Europe to start spreading the word.

'I've heard great reports about
Alan's progress with the press,

'so I've returned to base
to help him put together
the finished article.

'If you've ever had
a traumatic experience
with a self-assembly wardrobe,

'now might be a good time
to make a cup of tea. '

It's like those cereal packets.
Slot A into tab B or whatever it is.

That's right. I'm going to
get to it and pull it up.

I feel like Atlas.
I'll get a wedge...

I can do you a variety.

Bring the whole box over.
Oh, that's much more sensible.

Right then. You use your mallet.

Yeah? To tap it in.
CLATTER

Don't do that, Stephen!

I'll hold it. You kick it.

Good sound effects, haven't we?
We're getting good creaks.

I suppose really no-one has done
anything like this for 500 years.

That's absolutely right, on this
sort of press. That's it. Good.

Honestly, I would never have
made a Boy Scout. Hopeless.

You see, what I love about this
is that on the one hand

it's desperately simple,
and on the other hand

there are all these
little cunning things

that I would never have thought of
in 100 years. And I love...

When Alan showed me that he was
doing this double thread,

you think, "OK, I'll follow
my finger round here.

"It will go behind and surely
it'll come out here. "

But no, it comes out there.
Because it's a double thread.

And the other one goes that way
and it's quite complicated.

It screws my head, quite literally.

He's not sure that this is
exactly what Gutenberg would
have had, but it looks right.

So often that's the secret of
this kind of engineering.

If it looks right, feels right,
then it is right.

It's a most satisfactory object.

Apart from anything else,
wouldn't it be fun
to have one in one's bedroom?

You could convert it with a little
wash-hand basin or something.

Maybe have a little mirror here
at adjustable height.

I'm going slightly mad now
because I'm so fond of it.

The one thing I of course can't wait
to see is how it actually prints.

'I'm starting to share
the sense of excitement

'Gutenberg must have felt when he
was finally ready to start printing.

'By the late 1440s
he'd moved on from Strasbourg,

'which had recently been terrorised

by a marauding band of French
mercenaries called the Armagnacs

'Perhaps they were the reason that
he decided to head home to Mainz.

'As usual money was tight, so he
borrowed some cash from a relative.

'This house was used
as security for the loan,

'and he struck up a partnership with
a new investor called Johann Fust.

'It was a deal
he would later regret,

'but it did give him
the cash injection he needed
to set his press running. '

'He didn't start with the Bible -
far too ambitious.

'He road-tested the new technology
on modest print jobs
like this Latin grammar book. '

Amabo, amabis, amabit, amabimus,
amabitis, amabunt. I remember that.

'To show the Church
that his invention presented
an opportunity and not a threat,

'he also printed documents
like this papal indulgence. '

Now indulgences were this wonderful
Catholic way of raising money.
Quite so.

It sort of reminds me of today,
if you journey in an aeroplane
or something,

or have a very fuel-inefficient car,

you can offset your carbon,
can't you?

You can pay money to a company
that offsets your carbon.

It forgives you your carbon sins.

And this is a bit like
the same idea.

You offset your sins, don't you?

Must have been marvellous for them
to have Gutenberg's new technology.

Because before that each one would
be handwritten by a scribe.

And it's not just a quick voucher,
it's a lot of lines.

It was a very good way of Gutenberg
showing off his new technology.

Yes, yes. I think it shows also
that the Church really was
very interested in printing.

They did not consider it a black art,
as it is said in German,

they were interested because they saw
all those advantages it brought them.

'With Church support for his
magnum opus, there was just
one more issue to resolve. '

Most high-end books in those days
were written, not on paper,
but on something called vellum.

And what was vellum made out of?

It was made out of those
little fellows. Those pretty,
brown, round-eyed calves.

They yielded their skins, just as
they yielded the rest of themselves

for veal chops
at the tables of the mighty.

Gutenberg, who was determined that
his Bible was to be nothing if
not the highest possible quality,

thought that he would print
every Bible on the finest vellum.

But either he
or his business partners did some
serious mathematical modelling,

as it would now be called, and
they quickly realised that actually
only a few could be done in vellum.

Because a little herd like this,
well, you wouldn't be
out of the Old Testament.

We'll call that fellow there Exodus.

We've got Deuteronomy over there,
Leviticus.

'It would take 140 calves
to provide enough vellum for
just a single copy of the Bible.

'For a print run of 180,
which was what he planned,

'Gutenberg would have needed
a staggering 25,-000
of the poor creatures.

'That's an awful lot of veal chops
in anyone's book. '

There are therefore a few Gutenberg
Bibles extant in the world

which are printed on vellum,
but most are printed on paper.

'Without a system
for mass-producing paper,

'Gutenberg's invention
would have been dead in the water.

'But although the Chinese
had first invented the stuff
1,200 years earlier,

'it was still
a new commodity in the West.

'This mill at Basel in Switzerland
was set up

'at almost exactly the same time
as Gutenberg was working
on his machine,

'and they still make paper here
the old-fashioned way,

'not from wood pulp,
but from cloth rags. '

Ooh. That's rather satisfying.

'First the rags
are mashed to a fine pulp.

'A water wheel provides the power
to drive these hefty hammers.

'Once it's reached
the right consistency,

'the pulp is transferred
to a huge vat,

'which is where the fun
really starts. '

This is going to be our paper.

It seems extraordinary that
these are the bits of cut-up linen
that have been pounded away,

and they've turned into this pulp.
OK, so I'd better keep stirring.

Yes. All right. Extraordinary.

That what you feel is the heating,
the water is a little bit warm.

Because it's organic matter
that's breaking down?

No, because it's a little bit easier
to work it. Oh, I see!

And the warm water goes quicker
down from the...

The sieve? The sieve.

So this is what now happens. OK?
Yes. Let's do it. Let's make paper.

We go in like this, turn it.

Come up.

Shake it a little bit.

So the water goes down.

And the fibre rests.

I see. Goodness me.

So we are ready for the next.

Would it be all right if I could
make some paper? Yes, all right.

You'll have to take over my job.

Shall we swap places? Yes.
This is very exciting.

OK, I'd better do that, hadn't I?

I have a horrible feeling...

This takes me back
to the art room at school
where I was always a dunderhead.

Right so just in? Other side.

This way? No, like this.

Oh, I see. Like so?
First of all I've already...

I'll show you. Sorry.

This.
Ah! But there's some on already.

Should we get rid of that?
No, that's all right. OK.

Ready to scoop.
Down, turning, come up.

Oh, oh, oh.

This side a little bit. That way too.

OK? It's got a few white bits in,
but it's not bad.

Stop it. Ooh, stop it.

Some paper for you, Rene.

Amazing.

And is it ready
to take the deck off? Yes.

There it is. It's always
the second that goes bad.

And now...

This is a magical process.

It's rather like panning for gold,
isn't it?

Perhaps that's not a bad analogy.

Paper was like gold in medieval
times. Just unbelievably valuable.

Although it's quite
a time-consuming process,

it's a lot less time-consuming
than making vellum from calfskin.

I must say I rather enjoy this.

I feel connected to Gutenberg
somehow just by doing this.

How do you know when it's ready?
Because the ripples stop?

Yes. Now it's ready.

That's not so good. Hang on.

OK. It's not quite so good, that one.

No. Oh well.

Put it back? Shall we put it back?

Just... Turn it.

Turning it like so?

No.

I thought maybe it would go.
Like so? Yes.

Oh dear. I've ruined the plate.

Oh, I see.

Better.

Screwed up.

'To make paper fit for printing
is a fine art.

'The raw materials need to be
mixed to perfection to produce
the right texture and absorbency.

'For Gutenberg, this was
the final, crucial ingredient

'which made printing the Bible
a viable business proposition. '

Ooh, can I take it? Yes.

So beautiful.

My very own piece of paper.

And first of course it has to be
dried, doesn't it? Yes.

I do hope Alan
will be satisfied with that.

How could he not be?

That's worthy of
the finest printer's art.

The great day's arrived.

It's been five months since Alan
got together his plans
and designed his printing press.

It's now built.

Paper's been made in Basel.
I've cast the type personally.

Nothing can stop us from printing
a page of Gutenberg text.

This must be
how the great man felt himself.

'Before we start printing,
I have a little confession to make.

'It took Stan and me
the best part of a day to make
just one individual letter E.

'To produce all the type needed to
print a full Bible probably took
Gutenberg's team around a year.

'And frankly I don't have his time
or his patience.

'So I cheated.

'This package
has come from the States.

'It's a replica page of type,
set to the exact measurements
of the Gutenberg original.

'And thankfully
nothing's been damaged in transit. '

So this is...
This is perfect, isn't it?
We can print from this? Absolutely.

'Well, almost.

'Surely there's room for
my little E somewhere on the page. '

Oh, it's going to go in.
That's so exciting.

Now what word is that?
Can you read it? Leges. L E G E S.

Yes!

That's great.

You know,
I have to confess I had my doubts

about whether or not Alan
would be able to bring off the
construction of a printing press

in the time we'd given him.

And whether in fact there
was enough known about printing then

to be able to produce something
that could actually work

and come up with
a reasonable facsimile of something
that Gutenberg could have done.

I have to say all my doubts
have been cast aside by the
brilliance of the work he's done.

And all three of the experts through
there are giggling like children

at the excitement of what
they've all created together.

Let's see now
if some real printing can happen.

Right, this is the moment of truth.
Let's see how it fits.

That's not bad, actually. No.
I think we're almost OK.

OK?

Right, here we go.

Oh, my goodness.

Wait for the creak.

Oh, ho ho ho.

Good luck, everybody. Here we go.

There's an impression there, Martin.
There is indeed.

It's bit into the paper. Yes. Wow.

Oh, my word.

That is quite remarkable.

That is extraordinary.

Congratulations, everybody.

The inking is superb, Martin.

The alignment is fantastic.
And there is your E, right there.

And that E in particular
stands out as being far and away...
It's the best one of the lot.

Excellent job. Bravo.

I am very, very pleased with that.

So you should be.

Considering it's the first one,
I think that's startlingly good.

Extraordinary.
Anyway, let's do some more.

That's the proof of a printing
press, being able to do more.

As we print, the normal procedure

You're the puller, OK? OK.

Takes the sheet off,
gives it a cursory glance,

but he's got to get really ready
for the next print. All right?

While the inker,
while he's away from the press,

the inker is going
to be inking up again for him.

So it's a real assembly line?

And when he comes off the inking,
he checks the quality of
the print you've just done.

Right. He's not proof-reading it?
No, he's looking to see
that everything's printing up.

Right. So it's not too faint.
That's right. OK.

Down with my frisket. Yes.

Tin pan down. Tin panned.

It's dead.
Now we all hold on to the press.

Right. And...

That's in.

It's all right, isn't it? Super.

Superb.

There we go. Pretty good. Actually,
that's better than the first one.

It is, isn't it?
We're getting there.

'Gutenberg's first edition
of the Bible ran to 180 copies,
each containing

'more than 1,200 pages,
which had to be set, inked
and printed. ' Very nice.

And that was just the
black-and-white work.

After they'd left the press,
each page was hand-decorated
by an illuminator,

before the whole thing was bound
together to make a finished book.

This is the miracle.
They're identical.

Each one of these wonderful pages.

And that had never been seen
before in the history of the world.

Our experiment's nearly finished,
but for Gutenberg,

this was just the beginning
of a monumental two-year print run.

But what a beginning it was.

The first copies of
Gutenberg's Bible were displayed

at the Frankfurt Trade Fair in 1454,

and they caused a sensation.

Today,
fewer than 50 of those original
books are still in existence.

One of the finest is held here
at Gottingen in Germany.

You know what, I'm genuinely
tingling with excitement about

coming close to a Gutenberg Bible,

having only seen one through glass.

Having examined so much about its
means of production, discovered
just how important it was,

and what a symbol it is of
all the modern age stands for,

for me, the idea of actually
touching one, albeit through
cotton gloves, is giving me...

goose flesh.

I cannot believe this.

You know, I've looked at
them through glass and
I've read about them.

To be so close
is an extraordinary feeling.

You want to have a look?

Please.

This is actually a remark by Jacob
Grimm. Of the famous Brothers Grimm?

Yes, when he was
a librarian in Gottingen.

"Eine Guttenbergische bibel. "

A Gutenberg Bible. And he says...

"Of the highest rarity". Yes.

STEPHEN GASPS
And this is the first page
of the first volume. Heavens.

Do you know what's interesting?

Although the illumination
and decoration...

You call that a rubrication? Right.

The red letters, literally.

Although they're very beautiful,
it is the typeface that really
draws the eye, isn't it?

Yes. People have said that it's even
at the start of this new technology

that it is also
an example of perfection. Yes.

The general view is that it's so
much more beautiful than it need
to have been. That is very true.

Simply he was clearly
a very driven perfectionist. Yes.

He uses what scribes in the monastery
also used, he used abbreviations.

That was the only way to create this
right margin as clean as it is.

There's a little hole. What's
going on? Somebody must have...

A vandal!.. plundered this.
I don't know when this happened.

You see, the illumination went up
the page and somebody needed a model

for an illumination.

So they cut it out and
put it next to his manuscript

and painted it off this model.

Which is unfortunate.

Naturally I feel very privileged
to be able to leaf through

this unbelievably
rare and important object.

A Gutenberg Bible in my hands. I'm
wearing white gloves, I'm terrified

of breathing water vapour on it,
and yet, you know, the odd thing is

that it doesn't feel like something
that is going to crumble to dust

if I turn the pages too fast.
It feels very solid and robust.

After all, it was made to be used

more than once a day. If it
was bought by a monastery,

I guess it would have been used
for all the offices of the day.

And it was a solid object.

A Bible was a thing that people

expected to turn to all the time.

And it isn't a fragile...

little thing, like an ornament,
it's a useful object.

And the extraordinary thing about
this is that although there were
only 100 or so of these made,

only 12 of these in existence
on vellum,

you know that aside
from the illuminations,

every page is the same.

And that was really the most
remarkable breakthrough, wasn't it?

That somebody in a monastery in
Germany, somebody in a palace
in Florence,

somebody in a private house in
Amsterdam, could turn to the same
page number.

The same word would begin at the top
and the end.

They were looking at
mass production for the first time.

Although they were very rich,
those who could afford it,

they were nothing like as rich as
those who could afford ones that had
been made by scribes, handwritten.

I can't believe I'm
here looking at it.

I'd like to report a happy ending

for the man who created this
extraordinary book, but it
didn't turn out quite like that.

Do you remember Mr Fust,
the dragon who bankrolled
the printing of the Bible?

Soon after the presses started
running, he asked Gutenberg
to repay the money he'd borrowed.

Gutenberg didn't have the cash,

so he was forced to hand over all
his printing equipment instead.

It had taken him almost
a lifetime to build his machine.

Now, so soon after it had been
completed, it was snatched

from Gutenberg's grasp.

My journey ends
here in the village of Eltville,
a few miles outside Mainz.

Gutenberg had family roots here,

and his friends helped him get back
on his feet and even to set
up a new printing workshop.

But he never enjoyed the riches
which his invention earned for
his former business partner Fust.

Well, Gutenberg finally got
the recognition he deserved.

Up in the castle there,
the elector called him a knight
and gave him a pension,

and when he died,
the world knew that he'd founded
the modern art of printing.

But it's not that really
that has brought me here.

It's the thought of what went on
after Gutenberg's death.

The replication of printing
across Europe at such a speed,

an unimaginable speed for that time,

from zero books to 20 million
in just 50 years.

Gutenberg's technology spread
across Europe like a benign virus.

It gave new ideas a ticket to ride
and kick-started the Renaissance.

For the next 500 years,

his method of printing was
used to make books everywhere.

His was the machine that made us.

And that art, the art of
moveable type printing, defines us.

It's our civilisation more than
anything else. I can imagine
a modern world without cars.

I can imagine one without
telephones or computers. But I
cannot begin to imagine a society

anything like the one we have
that doesn't have the printed word.

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