The Gutenberg Bible February 17, 2010

The first substantial printed book in the West is the royal-folio two-volume Bible on display, comprising nearly 1,300 pages and printed in Mainz on the central Rhine by Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1390s-1468) in the 1450s. Probably completed between March and November 1455, when Gutenberg's bankruptcy deprived him of his printing establishment, the Bible epitomizes Gutenberg's triumph, arguably the greatest achievement of the second millennium. Over possibly twenty or more years, at Mainz and perhaps at Strasbourg, he succeeded in developing printing from movable type in the West. The Lenox copy on display, printed on paper, is the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the United States, in 1847.