Johannes Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz in the year 1398. His father was Friele zum Gensfleisch and his mom was Elsgen Wyrich. Johannes is said to have adopted the last name “Gutenberg”, which was his birthplace. read more
The books he read while he was young were handwritten and very expensive. Also, handwritten books took a long time to make. Johannes introduced Europe to printing. A new way to print and make books came about when Johannes Gutenberg was growing up. That new way was called block-printing. read more
Gutenberg's printing press spread literature to the masses for the first time in an efficient, durable way, shoving Europe headlong into the original information age – the Renaissance. Perfect machine. Gutenberg often gets credit as the father of printing, but the Chinese had him beat, in fact, by a full thousand years. read more