Around today's date, September 30th, in 1492, the world changed forever. Mr. Johannes Gutenberg printed a Bible. And what was so peculiar about this Bible? This Bible was the first book ever published (by today's standard of the word). After inventing his famous movable-type printer, Gutenberg proceeded to print this Bible on it, making it the first major book in history to be printed with movable type over here in the West. Now one of the most valuable books in the world, this Bible was the first step in a world-altering change.
This event, and more broadly the invention of movable type printers, set history on the course it took to reach contemporary times. Movable print allowed books to be put into circulation at rates unparalleled in human history. No longer did the books need to painstaking;y copied by the hand of monks and scholars. This drastically lowered the rarity and price of books, making them available to the common man. This new development led directly to the Renaissance, which pulled the floundering West out of the Dark Ages and into a bright new era of human understanding and arts.
Today, illiteracy is as rare as a hand-printed book. Humanity has prospered and evolved culturally as reading and writing spread more widely than ever before thanks to movable type. Myself an avid reader, I owe countless hours of my filled free time to this groundbreaking achievement. I cannot praise Mr. Gutenberg enough. He changed the world, one printer at a time. This miraculously journey took its first breath 521 years ago, when out popped the first major movable print book ever. And the rest...is history.
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