The books existed 600 years before the Gutenberg Bible

The eBook is the latest in technology books. You carry it anywhere, read with comfort, weighs little, there a lot. Before there were texts by computer with its huge font or fonts. And all this before printed books, true revolution in the world of culture and science, a definite change for humanity. The printing press, is an invention of Gutenberg? No, a Chinese invention .

Writing is the greatest invention of mankind. It began in Sumer 5000 years ago as a technology of accounting: how should this, how much I owe to him. Possible to overcome the barriers of space and time in the transmission of knowledge. It also allowed the accumulation of knowledge surpassing the capacity of a single brain. The handwritten books were invaluable as there were few, very few. He had years to write one and almost as long to copy. Then came the printing press, usually Chinese invention attributed to Johannes Gutenberg.

The earliest dated printed book known is the Diamond Sutra, a copy of which is in the British Library . Is dated and this is of 868 AD. Other books may not have a date older. The Diamond Sutra is made of seven pieces of a single block, and though written in Chinese, is a Buddhist text. He hid in a cave in 1000 and stayed with another 40,000 books to its discovery in 1900.

The problem of texts such as the Diamond Sutra is that they were made ​​of large pieces of a single block. This came to solve Bi Sheng around 1000. Text is not retained him, but the descriptions of his colleagues. The solution was to build movable type in which each character or letter is manufactured separately and then constructs a text with several of them. The characters were porcelain and were glued on a base. The glue was allowed to unstick a class and regroup in a new text. Bi Sheng built more than 3000 types.

In 1377 a monk named Baegun Korean invented movable metal type and printed a book called Jikiji. The types of metal were more durable than wood and can be reused many times. However, printing in China was facing a huge problem. His writing has thousands of characters and the press was impractical.

At issue is whether Gutenberg knew and copied Eastern techniques and developed the printing press itself. The fact is that popularized the invention. His story is very interesting. Gutenberg made the bet that he would be able to copy the Bible in half the time that any copyist. To develop his invention, borrowed money from Johann Fust and began to prepare his material. This consisted of several movable types for letters, repeated to compose long texts and punctuation. The guys were metal and used a wine press to print the paper.

However, Gutenberg wanted to impress not only the Bible but do beautiful work. The fact is that he miscalculated the time and Johann Fust, seeing that their investment will not produce anything, he asked for money back. They agreed to form a society in which enter also the nephew of Fust. Gurtenberg again exceed the investor time and finally took the business and given that his nephew knew the mechanism of printing, soon took the 150 copies of the Bible. Are the famous Gutenberg Bible or Bibles of 42 lines of the very few that remain.

The Sumerian cuneiform, Chinese movable type, the Gutenberg press, the font of your computer or eBook are the steps from the fascinating path taken by the greatest invention of mankind.