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The opening of the Book of Genesis from the Gutenberg bible, 1455

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Gutenberg printed around 180 Bibles, on which forty-eight substantially complete copies still survive. Two of them are now in the British Library. Kristian Jenses, a historian of the early printed book, and the British Library’s Head of Collections, described what reveals it to be a printed book, not a manuscript copied down by an unusually consistent scribe:

“The Gutenberg bible is what a user around 1455 would expect a book to look like. If you want to sell something, you need to make something that your customer will recognize and understand. So Gutenberg produced something that looked just like a traditional book. One of the ways you can tell that it is printed is by looking closely at the ink, which has a very shiny surface. When you write a book by hand, you sue a water-based ink. You put your pen into it and the ink runs off. That does not work if you are printing, because the ink will also run off the press and spoil the page. So one of Gutenberg’s inventions was a ink which was not ink. What we call printer’s ink is actually a varnish, which means that the sticks to its surface and does not run, and that means that it looks different. ~ Page 286

3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

3 years ago.

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