Person · 5160–5228 AM · 1400 CE — 1468 CE
Johannes Gutenberg
Invented European printing with movable type
The forty-two-line Bible of about 1455 is the first great printed book of Europe. Hebrew printing followed almost at once: Rome about 1470, Reggio di Calabria 1475—Rashi's commentary on the Torah, the first dated Hebrew book—Soncino from 1484, and by the 1520s Bomberg at Venice is printing the whole Talmud, with the page layout and the foliation by which it is still learned today. That is: the present appearance of a talmudic page is a consequence of Gutenberg's invention.
His birth year is unknown: 1400 is assigned "for convenience", and the estimates run from 1393 to 1406.
Sources
Scholarship
- World History Encyclopedia, “Gutenberg” — birth “c. 1400”, range 1393–1406; the 42-line Bible
Basis: documents and evidence.