Johannes Gutenberg Learn English through story level 3
johannes guttenberg
the man who invented the printing press
i invented a machine to print books
the printing press after my invention
books were cheaper
and easier to make books spread ideas
around the world
i started the information age
but during my life no one valued my work
i went to school in mainz germany
when i was young there were very few
books
because it took several weeks to make
just
one copy books were written by hand
usually by priests they wrote
with a quill a pen made from a bird’s
feather
and it wasn’t always easy to read their
handwriting
i asked myself can i invent a machine
to put words on paper
a machine can make more books in less
time my training as a goldsmith
gave me good ideas for a printing press
i started my experiments in strasbourg
in 1436 i had a girlfriend
and we were engaged but i didn’t have
very much money so i couldn’t get
married and do
my experiments as well i had to
choose should i get married or continue
my work
on my printing press it was so
hard to decide that i couldn’t sleep at
night
finally after a lot of thinking i told
my girlfriend
i’m really sorry but i can’t get married
i need the money for my experiments
it was a difficult time in my town
people had a bad opinion of me
my girlfriend was so angry that she took
me to court
because i broke my promise
and i was so poor that i had to borrow
money to buy
materials for my experiments
in 1440 after four years of hard work
i invented a printing press that worked
it was a wooden press with movable type
to make it work i made small metal
letters
and put them in a wooden block i
used the same block to make several
copies of the same
page my system was called
movable type because you could move the
letters
from one place in the block to another
i was very pleased with my invention
but businessmen weren’t interested in it
in 1444 i decided to open my own
workshop
i printed some poems and in 1448
i printed the calendar for the year
i earned some money but i couldn’t pay
off my
debts in 1450
i met johann fust a rich man
who gave me eight thousand gilders
his daughter’s husband peter scherfer
started to work with me in my business
soon my printing press was working again
i did some small jobs for example
i printed some poems
next i wanted to do something big
so i borrowed more money from foost
and printed the gutenberg bible
it was a very beautiful book with 42
lines per page but the cost of making
each bible
was much higher than the money i got for
selling it
soon my money problems were much bigger
than
before my debt was very big now
20 000 gilders
my situation was very bad
but things got worse when in 1455
foost took me to court he said
gutenberg borrowed some money from me to
books and used it to pay for other
things
this was not true but to my surprise
he won the case
in one day i lost everything
my workshop my machine and
all my materials the court gave them all
to foost
he used my printing press to open a new
printing company with sherfa without my
machine
i couldn’t work or pay off my debts
[Music]
after several years i started printing
again
but there was a lot of competition then
there were more than 100 printing
companies in germany
and there were printing companies in
france and spain
too and they all used my idea
the movable type system
my machine changed the world but
no one thought my work was useful during
my life
the printing press was a very important
invention
with books people could read and learn
with books people could share political
ideas
and ideas about technology
my printing press started the
information
age