I have just learned that August 24, 1456 was the date the first Gutenberg Bible was bound and finished in Mainz, Germany. Contrary to popular belief, Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. Books had been printed in China and Korea on presses, but with wood and bronze type. Gutenberg’s innovation was a system for printing books on movable metal type with oil-based ink, then assembling the pages into a full book, folding the pages into folios and quickly binding them into a finished product. Thus the Gutenberg Bible is remembered as the first complete book printed with modern techniques; from this point on, ordinary people could have access to the world’s knowledge.
Taken from the August 24, 2019 edition of The Writer’s Almanac (https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac?).