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Speaker 1: Hey, it's Jacob. As you may know, in addition to

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Speaker 1: hosting What's Your Problem, I also host a show called

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Speaker 1: Business History. And we recently did an episode of Business

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Speaker 1: History about Gutenberg and the printing press. And it is

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Speaker 1: all about people trying to make technological change and how

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Speaker 1: that works as a business and how it changes society.

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Speaker 1: All of which is to say, I thought it would

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Speaker 1: be of interest to people who listen to What's Your Problem.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to play it for you now. And

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Speaker 1: I really hope you like it. The show is business history.

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Speaker 1: Here it is. Crank up the siege engine because we're

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Speaker 1: going back to the Middle Ages. I will wear my

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Speaker 1: leather corset. We're doing a biggie today. We are. Maybe

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Speaker 1: the biggest one we've done yet. The printing press. The

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Speaker 1: printing press. Love it. The printing press. Yes. It is everything,

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Speaker 1: including a business. I'm Jacob Goldstein. I'm Robert Smith. And

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Speaker 1: this is Business History. A show about the history. So

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Speaker 1: why don't we go way back? Of business. Today on

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Speaker 1: the show, the invention of the printing press, which is

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Speaker 1: a surprisingly modern story. There is debt. There is equity.

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Speaker 1: There is a court case, competition, international branch offices, and

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Speaker 1: the Protestant Reformation. Our show today begins with a man

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Speaker 1: named Johannes Gensfleisch Zur Laden. Did not see that coming.

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Speaker 1: I'm probably saying it wrong because I don't speak German.

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Speaker 1: Johannes Gussfleisch of the House of Laden. He was born

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Speaker 1: around 1400 to relatively rich parents in a town called Mainz.

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Speaker 1: It's in what's Germany today. At the time, it was

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Speaker 1: part of the Holy Roman Empire. Which Voltaire said, of course,

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Speaker 1: was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. When Johannes

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Speaker 1: is around 20 years old, his father dies, and his

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Speaker 1: mother comes into possession of a house called the Hof

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Speaker 1: Zum Gutenberg, House of the Good Mountain. And Johannes becomes

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Speaker 1: known as Johannes Zum Gutenberg. I guess last names work

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Speaker 1: differently back then. Sure. There are many Johannes's, and you're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: the Good Mountain one. He's over at the Good Mountain House.

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Speaker 1: So what do we know about Gutenberg? There's a famous

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Speaker 1: engraving of him. If you've seen a picture of Gutenberg,

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Speaker 1: it is from this engraving. He's got this long white beard,

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Speaker 1: comes down to like two points on his chest. Like

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Speaker 1: ZZ Top? Yeah, like ZZ Top style. He's wearing a

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Speaker 1: fur-trimmed hat. Gutenberg didn't look like this. The picture was

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Speaker 1: made like 100 years after he died. There's no pictures

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Speaker 1: of him as far as we know from his lifetime.

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Speaker 1: And I love this, right? And as we'll see, there's

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Speaker 1: all this myth, even as you get into the story,

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Speaker 1: sort of embroidered about him. I mean, we don't know

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Speaker 1: what he thought or felt, you know, as far as

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Speaker 1: we know, there's no diary or trove of letters. But

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Speaker 1: of course, he printed books, and a surprising number of

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Speaker 1: the books still exist. And also, conveniently for our purposes,

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Speaker 1: he wound up in court a few times. And the paperwork,

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Speaker 1: the court records actually still exist. And so a lot

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Speaker 1: of what we know about Gutenberg and the invention of

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Speaker 1: the printing press and how it was used comes from

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Speaker 1: these basically lawsuits over money. Which is great for us.

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Speaker 1: Business history. So here's the story we can put together.

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Speaker 1: At some point, we know Gutenberg became an affiliate of

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Speaker 1: the master goldsmiths. Not an apprentice, but an affiliate. Exactly.

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Speaker 1: So it's different. So- The master goldsmiths are a guild,

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Speaker 1: which is, you know, the medieval version of a union.

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Speaker 1: Guilds were a big deal. Maybe we should do a

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Speaker 1: guild show someday, actually. He was not in the union. He, like,

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Speaker 1: worked with gold is basically what that means in some way.

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Speaker 1: So we know that. He's into metal. And we also

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Speaker 1: know that he was an entrepreneur. And now here I am.

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Speaker 1: This is like an anachronism, right? I'm sort of projecting

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Speaker 1: backwards there. There were not entrepreneurs in the modern sense.

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Speaker 1: The word didn't exist. But yet, I think you'll see

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Speaker 1: as we go through the story, he was a hustler.

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Speaker 1: He was a guy who started businesses. His life is

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Speaker 1: much more that way than I would have thought for

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Speaker 1: someone who's living in, you know, the end of the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages, basically. But then again, like, he is the

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Speaker 1: guy who is going to invent the thing that's going

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Speaker 1: to create the modern world. So maybe it makes sense.

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Speaker 1: So the first kind of hustle, the first business that

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Speaker 1: he starts that we know of is Mirrors. Gutenberg gets

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Speaker 1: into the mirror game and he finds this great, you know,

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Speaker 1: 1400s kind of niche, which is he's going to sell

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Speaker 1: special mirrors to religious pilgrims. What made the mirrors special?

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Speaker 1: They're special. They're like convex mirrors that are specially made

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Speaker 1: for the pilgrims to take on their pilgrimage. And I'll

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Speaker 1: explain why. I'll explain why. So what's going on is

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Speaker 1: in 1439, There's going to be a pilgrimage to this

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Speaker 1: German town to see these relics that are displayed just

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Speaker 1: once every seven years, like a piece of the gown

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Speaker 1: that Mary wore the night Jesus was born, the loincloth

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Speaker 1: that Jesus wore on the cross and is stained with blood,

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Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, this is like woodstock for

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Speaker 1: religious pilgrims. Yes, yes. And so... The idea with these

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Speaker 1: mirrors is, you know, when you get your moment before

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Speaker 1: the holy relics, looking at them, you hold up the

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Speaker 1: mirror and the mirror can somehow capture the holy power

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Speaker 1: that the relics have. And to be clear, he didn't

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Speaker 1: invent this idea. This was a thing that people were doing.

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Speaker 1: Spread by mirror merchants. Perhaps, perhaps. But he's going with it.

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Speaker 1: He's going with it. And he actually gets a couple

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Speaker 1: of investors who have equity in the project, essentially what

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Speaker 1: we would call equity, starts making the mirrors as far

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Speaker 1: as we can tell. And then when your classic pieces

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Speaker 1: of medieval bad news arrives, the plague happens. On the

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Speaker 1: back of a rat. On the back of a flea,

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Speaker 1: on the back of a rat.

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Speaker 2: It's like panics in the stories we tell, the 1800s

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Speaker 2: and 1900s. You know, everything's going fine, and then the

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Speaker 2: plague happens.

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Speaker 1: The plague is the financial panic of the 1300s and 1400s.

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Speaker 1: Very good. Pilgrimage is delayed until 1440.

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Speaker 2: He must have been sad looking out over a hundred

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Speaker 2: convex mirrors all staring back at him.

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Speaker 1: One of Gutenberg's investors dies. Oh, man. Could have been plague.

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Speaker 1: Could have been anything. 1430s. You could die of anything

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Speaker 1: at any time. And the investor's family, the investor's family,

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Speaker 1: the guy who has died, his family sues Gutenberg over whatever,

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Speaker 1: over that guy's stake in the business. Come on, act

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Speaker 1: of God. Yeah, I don't know what the details are.

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Speaker 1: I think Gutenberg wins. But there is this really interesting,

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Speaker 1: just kind of enticing detail, mystery in the lawsuit. And

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Speaker 1: it's just a few words. And what we know from

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Speaker 1: the lawsuit paperwork is that Gutenberg is afraid that his

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Speaker 1: trade secrets are going to get out. Of course, there's

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Speaker 1: no intellectual property as we know it in this era.

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Speaker 1: You try and keep your secret secret. In particular, he

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Speaker 1: says he is worried that visitors to the dead man's

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Speaker 1: house are going to see— and this part is a direct quote,

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Speaker 1: or at least a direct quote translated into English— Four

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Speaker 1: pieces lying in the press. The press. The press. The

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Speaker 1: printing press? We don't know. We don't know. We don't know.

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Speaker 1: But he tells somebody to take these pieces apart so

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Speaker 1: nobody can tell what they are. Historians, of course, have

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Speaker 1: been speculating for hundreds of years about these six words.

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Speaker 1: Was he already working on the printing press? Unclear. We

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Speaker 1: don't actually know what happened with the mirror business for

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Speaker 1: that matter. Next piece of evidence. Next time we have

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Speaker 1: a clear view of what's going on with Gutenberg is

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Speaker 1: actually 10 years later. 1450. So Gutenberg, I will say,

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Speaker 1: as a 15-something man, is 50-ish at this point. He's

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Speaker 1: not a kid. Some might say he's washed up. Some

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Speaker 1: might say he's at his peak. So it's 1450. Gutenberg

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Speaker 1: is around 50 years old, and he makes another deal.

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Speaker 1: He enters into another business arrangement. This time, it's with

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Speaker 1: a guy named Johann Fust. And Fust agreed to lend

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Speaker 1: Gutenberg 800 guilders at 6% interest. collateralized by the apparatus.

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Speaker 1: They call it, ooh, the apparatus. We're getting excited. Ooh,

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Speaker 1: an apparatus. I like the sound of that. It's like

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Speaker 1: he has a code name. Das Apparatus. Sorry to all

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Speaker 1: our German speakers. So 800 guilders is a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: It's enough to buy 100 oxen or four houses. These figures,

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Speaker 1: by the way, come from a book called Gutenberg, A

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Speaker 1: Life in Books by Eric Marshall White. which is a

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Speaker 1: good book, a really helpful book. It's relatively recent and

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Speaker 1: it's really careful. It's a really careful biography of Gutenberg.

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Speaker 1: So it was really helpful in kind of untangling the

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Speaker 1: myth from what we know. So, okay, so they make

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Speaker 1: this deal and two years later, Fust makes another investment,

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Speaker 1: agrees to put in 300 more guilders right away, up

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Speaker 1: to 800 more overall. And here we know from the

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Speaker 1: kind of documentary evidence that we'll get to, that this

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Speaker 1: is explicitly for the work of the books. This is it.

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Speaker 1: The work of the books. It's happening. And so there is,

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Speaker 1: if we zoom out now, like we're right in the documents,

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Speaker 1: really in the micro, if we zoom out to the

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Speaker 1: macro for a sec, it's interesting to think why. Why

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Speaker 1: are they putting a lot of money into this? We

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Speaker 1: don't have... The aha moment.

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Speaker 2: The big surprise story where he was, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: he left some type somewhere and his wife sat on

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Speaker 2: it and she gets up and he sees the impression.

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Speaker 1: Yes, right. Or he falls in some ink and there

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Speaker 1: happens to be a little coin on top of the

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Speaker 1: ink and it gets on his shirt and he thinks, ah,

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Speaker 1: we do know this. We do know this. Demand for

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Speaker 1: books was really high in Europe at this point for

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Speaker 1: some interesting reasons and kind of varied reasons. Social and

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Speaker 1: economic reasons. And political, actually. So you have governments are

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Speaker 1: becoming more of a thing, right? It's not just kings

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Speaker 1: occasionally going to war. You're having kind of bureaucrats, sort

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Speaker 1: of modern governmental functions emerging. And for that, you need

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Speaker 1: people who are literate, who have gone to school and

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Speaker 1: read books to learn how to read. So there is

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Speaker 1: demand for books. You have the Renaissance getting going in

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Speaker 1: Italy by this point. And all the rich guys in

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Speaker 1: Italy want to build their libraries of books from classical antiquity.

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Speaker 1: There's actually this little story that I love of a

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Speaker 1: businessman in Florence, a guy named Vespasiano di Bisticci. One

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Speaker 1: more time. I love it. Vespasiano di Bisticci. That's the name.

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Speaker 1: Da Bisticci. I believe he started out as a paper merchant,

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Speaker 1: but he winds up creating kind of like what to

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Speaker 1: me seems like a book factory in the 1440s. What factory?

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Speaker 1: Without a printing press. So what happens is Cosimo de' Medici,

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Speaker 1: you know, of the Florentine Medici, decides he needs his library,

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Speaker 1: his personal library, and he goes to the Bisticci. And

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Speaker 1: Bisticci has like 55 scribes writing for him, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: copying out manuscripts for Cosimo. And these 55 guys create

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Speaker 1: something like 200 books in two years. So that's basically like,

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Speaker 1: if you round it to 50, you know, it takes

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Speaker 1: a guy six months to write a manuscript. And of course,

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Speaker 1: these are beautiful, whatever. But like, that's a lot of labor.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And that's a lot of money for each book. And

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Speaker 1: a lot of money for each book. Now, there is

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Speaker 1: something making books cheaper. And that is paper. Paper. I

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Speaker 1: presume Cosimo's books would have been on parchment, which is what,

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Speaker 1: you know, they had been using in Europe for a

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Speaker 1: long time. It was still the high class thing. And

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Speaker 1: paper is profoundly cheaper than parchment. Parchment, of course, made

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Speaker 1: from animal skins, costs a lot to grow an animal

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Speaker 1: to make the parchment. And paper has been around in

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Speaker 1: Asia for quite a long time by this point. But

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Speaker 1: it has recently come to Europe and has become sort

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Speaker 1: of industrialized, right? And the availability of paper is profound

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Speaker 1: for the book business because when a scribe is writing

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Speaker 1: a book on parchment, the parchment is a huge chunk

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Speaker 1: of the cost, maybe most of the cost. But once

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Speaker 1: you have paper, almost all of the cost of making

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Speaker 1: the book is the cost of the labor, the cost

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Speaker 1: of the scribe's time. This is a classic business situation, right?

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Speaker 1: You have a high demand for a product and the

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Speaker 1: demand is going up. The thing that you use to

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Speaker 1: make the products, the input, the expensive input is getting

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Speaker 1: cheaper with paper. And so what you are left with

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Speaker 1: is a bottleneck, a low productivity part of the process,

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Speaker 1: and that is the scribes. And so we could talk about, oh,

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Speaker 1: was it an insight? Did Gutenberg see something that no

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Speaker 1: one else saw? Really, there were economic pressures. Somebody was

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Speaker 1: going to do this because it's obvious when you have

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Speaker 1: a bottleneck, a very expensive bottleneck in the process, you

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Speaker 1: should try to automate that. And there was printing in

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Speaker 1: the world. Woodblock printing had been used for hundreds of

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Speaker 1: years in Asia. And it was in use in Europe somewhat.

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Speaker 1: You know, obviously you carve sort of a single page's

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Speaker 1: worth of typically an image, sometimes some words into a woodblock.

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Speaker 1: But of course, it's static, right? You got your block,

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Speaker 1: you can print one page, but that's it. We've all

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Speaker 1: done this with potatoes when we were kids. Yes, it's that.

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Speaker 1: Movable type. as we know what he's going to invent,

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Speaker 1: is way more dynamic, way better. And by this time,

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Speaker 1: by the mid-1400s, movable type had been invented also in Asia.

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Speaker 1: In Korea, they had even used metal types. But both

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Speaker 1: in China and Korea at the time, they used pictograms.

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Speaker 1: Each word was its own character. So you'd need thousands

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Speaker 1: of these little things in order to have a book.

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Speaker 1: To have a book, right. Much less practical than when

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Speaker 1: you have an alphabet and you can do whatever, your

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Speaker 1: uppercase and your lowercase and dozens. The order of magnitude

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Speaker 1: is dozens and you can print anything. And so there

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Speaker 1: is this question, was Gutenberg copying an Asian press or

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Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like it. There's no evidence that he

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Speaker 1: knew that people in Europe knew, you know, in any

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Speaker 1: kind of real way about these presses in Asia. It

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Speaker 1: seems like when Gutenberg is doing this work around 1450,

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Speaker 1: he's working from first principles. And we know, you know,

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Speaker 1: he had done some kind of work related to goldsmithing.

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Speaker 1: His dad was affiliated with the mint. So maybe he

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Speaker 1: knew something about the way coins were made. We know

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Speaker 1: he's like a hustler. You know, he's entrepreneurial. And it

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Speaker 1: seems like Gutenberg, on his own, invented or invented for

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Speaker 1: Europe the movable type printing press. arguably the most important

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Speaker 1: invention ever to come out of Europe, up there. You

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Speaker 1: mean what, the croissant? The croissant, the steam engine. Oh,

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Speaker 1: the steam engine, of course, yes. Internal combustion. Yeah, huge, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So there were a few other biggies, but one of

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Speaker 1: the biggies, fondue, but certainly one of the biggies. The

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Speaker 1: earliest image we have of a press is not of

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Speaker 1: Gutenberg's press in particular, but it's not that long after.

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Speaker 1: It's from about 50 years later. It's this form of

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Speaker 1: picture of That was popular at the time called a

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Speaker 1: dance macabre. You have pictures of people in everyday life,

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Speaker 1: and then you have death kind of dancing through, I guess,

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Speaker 1: to remind you that everybody's going to die. Maybe they're

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Speaker 1: taking away these people. Memento mori. Yeah, memento mori. And

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Speaker 1: so in this image, you can see like a Gutenberg-ish press.

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Speaker 1: Are you looking at it? Yeah, they're these kind of

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Speaker 1: skeleton-looking dudes. Yeah, that's death. Those are death. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: got that.

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Speaker 2: And one of them has his hand on the person

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Speaker 2: who's picking out the type, who's putting the type together.

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Speaker 1: Right, they call that guy the compositor, right? So for

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Speaker 1: each page, he arranges the letters, and the letters are backwards, right?

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Speaker 1: You arrange it all backwards.

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Speaker 2: And there's a guy who's doing the actual press, which

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Speaker 2: looks like one of those things where you pull the

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Speaker 2: lever and it goes down. Like maybe you'd use to

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Speaker 2: squeeze olive oil or something. Yes, they had used presses

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Speaker 2: like this in Europe for a long time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's another skeleton dude like touching that man.

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Speaker 1: That's amazing. And that's basically it, right? The press is

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Speaker 1: actually simple in its way, right? He's putting together these

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Speaker 1: different things, but it's not that complicated. Yeah. And that

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Speaker 1: raises this question in my mind, right, which is we've

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Speaker 1: talked before about simultaneous invention. It seems like. All the

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Speaker 1: big inventions that we've talked about, it is really not

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Speaker 1: ultimately like one guy figuring it out. You know, well, Edison.

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Speaker 1: We talked about it early on in the Edison and

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Speaker 1: the movies story. Lots of people were trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out movies. Photography was out there. It was clear somebody

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Speaker 1: was going to figure out movies. The telephone? Famously. Like

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Speaker 1: literally people racing to the patent office to get the

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Speaker 1: first patent. I mean, even calculus. Calculus, right? Leibniz and Newton.

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Speaker 2: And the reason, of course, for simultaneous invention is what

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Speaker 2: we talked about a little bit earlier. There is the need,

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Speaker 2: you know, technology has come up to a certain point

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Speaker 2: and people are using that as a launching pad for

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Speaker 2: something else. And so it is natural when people are

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Speaker 2: trying to solve the same problem, they know about the

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Speaker 2: same information out there in the world.

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Speaker 1: They're going to come up with a new solution. And

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Speaker 1: yet that doesn't happen in this case, right? Like there

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Speaker 1: is demand for books. There is paper. And nobody else

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Speaker 1: in Europe does this. Like that seems pretty clear. And

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Speaker 1: so I was thinking, why is this? Too much plague.

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Speaker 1: Always a good answer for this era. I have an idea.

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Speaker 1: And my idea is, you know, if you think about

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Speaker 1: these other periods we've talked about, the 1800s, certainly the 1900s,

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Speaker 1: even the 1700s, right? everybody's reading what everybody else is doing.

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Speaker 1: There are journals and books. And, you know, in the 1800s,

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Speaker 1: there's a magazine printing all the new patents that Thomas

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Speaker 1: Edison is reading to keep up on things. What you

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Speaker 1: need for these things is a printing press. You need

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Speaker 1: a printing press to know what everybody else is working on.

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Speaker 1: And so the reason, maybe, I'm making this up, that

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Speaker 1: Gutenberg is the only one to invent it is it

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Speaker 1: hasn't been invented yet. So not everybody knows everything all

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Speaker 1: the time the way we do once you have a

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Speaker 1: printing I.

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Speaker 2: Think that's a great idea because what would it take

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Speaker 2: to spread this? You'd have to write letters to people.

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Speaker 2: But even then, not everybody knew how to write.

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Speaker 1: Letters do become a thing, right? And science letters are

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Speaker 1: a big deal. But the journal, you know, the printed

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Speaker 1: journal is a much more powerful tool than letters. It's

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Speaker 1: a thought. In any case, in any case, Gutenberg now

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Speaker 1: has his press. What does he print first? The Bible.

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Speaker 1: Not the Bible. Okay. Too expensive, maybe, right? It's long.

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Speaker 1: The Bible is long. It has to start there, right?

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Speaker 1: You don't start with the Word of God. Cash flow

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Speaker 1: nightmare also, you know? Yes, and also high stakes. You

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Speaker 1: want to get it right. Yeah. So he starts with

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Speaker 1: things that are simpler, cheaper, shorter, a German poem, a

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Speaker 1: grammar textbook for Latin. And then, this is my favorite

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Speaker 1: sort of pre-Bible printing technique. work that Gutenberg does comes

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Speaker 1: around 1453, so not that long into this project, when

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Speaker 1: there is actually this world historical event that's going to

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Speaker 1: be good news for Gutenberg's printing business. And that is

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Speaker 1: the Sultan Mehmed II captures Constantinople. Big news. Big news

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Speaker 1: in the religious world. The Byzantine emperor is decapitated. Oh.

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Speaker 1: And now the Catholic Church needs money to fight the sultan.

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Speaker 1: How does the church raise money in 1453? Indulgences. Indulgences.

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Speaker 1: They sell indulgences. And, you know, you know this from whatever,

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Speaker 1: from school, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you give money

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Speaker 1: to the church, they will remove the punishment that you

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Speaker 1: owe for your sins. They would also allow you to

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Speaker 1: get your relatives out of purgatory if they had died. Uh-huh.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense. That's the punishment, I guess. Maybe a

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Speaker 1: little extra. Cost a little extra, but sure. What I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize until I was working on this show is

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Speaker 1: indulgences were physical things. There was an indulgence, which was

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Speaker 1: basically like a nice receipt. A nice receipt, often written

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Speaker 1: out on vellum, a fancy, like a very high-grade parchment

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Speaker 1: made from calfskin. And this fact, the receipt part of

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Speaker 1: the indulgence thing, becomes important when the sultan captures Constantinople

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Speaker 1: because the church suddenly needs to sell lots of indulgences,

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Speaker 1: but they have a labor problem. It's the problem we

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Speaker 1: were talking about before, right? There's just not enough scribes

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Speaker 1: to write out all the indulgences that you need to

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Speaker 1: sell right now. Plus so much sin. The demand was huge.

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Speaker 1: The demand is huge. Who among us? And now here

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Speaker 1: comes Johannes Gutenberg with a solution to your problem. You know,

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Speaker 1: your grace, how many do you need? I'll just crank

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Speaker 1: them out for you.

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Speaker 2: This was also a solution to Gutenberg's problem because he

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Speaker 2: had just enlisted the richest customer on planet Earth, or

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Speaker 2: one of them at least.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes. The Catholic Church. Definitely a good customer to have.

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Speaker 1: And you know, on indulgence, I believe it's a single page, right?

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Speaker 1: So you said it once. Yes. And, you know, the

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Speaker 1: printing business, you want to make as many copies and

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Speaker 1: sell as many copies of each thing as you can.

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Speaker 1: So it's generic. They don't have the different ones for

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Speaker 1: the different sins. I guess over time, there are different ones.

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Speaker 1: But the basic thing is that there's a blank for

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Speaker 1: the name of the buyer. There's a blank for the

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Speaker 1: name of the buyer. And so. He cranks out all

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Speaker 1: these indulgences. White, the guy who wrote that book that

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Speaker 1: I mentioned, says they go out by the wagon load.

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Speaker 1: The money, I guess, was supposed to go to defend Cyprus,

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Speaker 1: the island of Cyprus. But apparently none of it or

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Speaker 1: almost none of it ever got to Cyprus, got siphoned

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Speaker 1: off along the way. But whatever. That's not Gutenberg's problem.

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Speaker 1: Surely he got paid. Let's do the biggie. Let's do

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Speaker 1: the Bible. We'll do it after the break. Okay. Robert,

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Speaker 1: we're back from the break and it is October of 1454.

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Speaker 1: We're in Frankfurt.

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Speaker 2: Frankfurt.

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Speaker 1: At a diet.

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Speaker 2: A religious meeting of some sort. A meeting of the

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Speaker 2: Catholic Church. Not a conclave, but a diet, yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's not as big as a conclave, I guess. And

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Speaker 1: we're with an Italian bishop named Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Piccolomini

400
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Speaker 1: sees something that blows his mind. He sees some preliminary

401
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Speaker 1: pages from a printed Bible. From what's going to be

402
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Speaker 1: the Gutenberg Bible. And we know this because he wrote

403
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Speaker 1: a letter to a cardinal about it. He describes a

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Speaker 1: miraculous man who he encountered, who I hope was Gutenberg,

405
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Speaker 1: but it could have been somebody who worked with Gutenberg.

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Speaker 1: We don't know. And he describes for the cardinal what

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Speaker 1: the pages of this Bible were like. Give it to us.

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Speaker 1: He said they were exceedingly clean and correct in their

409
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Speaker 1: script and without error, which your grace could read effortlessly

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Speaker 1: even without glasses. That means something. I know. I appreciate that.

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Speaker 1: Large print.

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Speaker 2: I learned from numerous witnesses that 158 copies had been completed,

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Speaker 2: although some others say the number is 180. I shall

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Speaker 2: try if possible to buy a copy on your behalf

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Speaker 2: and have it brought here. But I fear it will

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Speaker 2: not be possible, both because of the distance and because

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Speaker 2: they say that ready buyers had all been found even

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Speaker 2: before the volumes had been finished.

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Speaker 1: It's a hit. It's a hit. That seems promising, right?

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Speaker 1: It is wild to think of a guy seeing what's

421
00:24:19,490 --> 00:24:21,990
Speaker 1: going to be the Gutenberg Bible. Do I remember that

422
00:24:22,010 --> 00:24:23,889
Speaker 1: you went to see to see one at the New

423
00:24:23,930 --> 00:24:24,710
Speaker 1: York Public Library?

424
00:24:24,790 --> 00:24:26,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, for Planet Money, I went to it was on

425
00:24:26,770 --> 00:24:30,260
Speaker 2: display in in they have a special display case for

426
00:24:30,300 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 2: these kind of things. There's also one at the Morgan Library,

427
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:35,660
Speaker 2: I should say. JP Morgan bought one. No big surprise.

428
00:24:36,180 --> 00:24:40,690
Speaker 2: And I recall it was much larger than. than I

429
00:24:40,770 --> 00:24:42,330
Speaker 2: thought it was going to be. It was probably the

430
00:24:42,369 --> 00:24:44,060
Speaker 2: largest Bible I'd ever seen. It looked like one of

431
00:24:44,100 --> 00:24:46,940
Speaker 2: those giant dictionaries that you have to put on a stand.

432
00:24:47,460 --> 00:24:49,680
Speaker 2: And the other thing I remember about it is that

433
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 2: the margins were very wide. It was just, it was

434
00:24:54,619 --> 00:25:00,210
Speaker 2: these columns, these two columns, and the print was that old-fashioned.

435
00:24:59,570 --> 00:25:03,270
Speaker 1: Sort of Gothic print. Yeah, Germany, very German-looking, yeah. It

436
00:25:03,310 --> 00:25:07,550
Speaker 1: was very... orderly, I will say, with these large margins,

437
00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:13,590
Speaker 1: these very straight columns, and this very dense writing. Was

438
00:25:13,609 --> 00:25:15,489
Speaker 1: there color in the part that you looked at?

439
00:25:15,530 --> 00:25:18,909
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were some color that clearly someone had filled

440
00:25:18,990 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 2: in or painted, right? Yeah, they actually left blank where

441
00:25:22,619 --> 00:25:24,679
Speaker 2: there would be a big colored first letter at the

442
00:25:24,700 --> 00:25:27,300
Speaker 2: start of a chapter or a paragraph or something. They

443
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 2: actually didn't print that on the press. They left it

444
00:25:29,940 --> 00:25:34,700
Speaker 2: to be hand inscribed. I wonder if the scribes were

445
00:25:34,740 --> 00:25:38,160
Speaker 2: afraid of the printing press and then saw that, in fact,

446
00:25:38,380 --> 00:25:39,850
Speaker 2: they could do their favorite part.

447
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:41,690
Speaker 1: You know, it's no fun to print every.

448
00:25:41,510 --> 00:25:44,230
Speaker 2: Little letter, but to make the giant G with the

449
00:25:44,330 --> 00:25:46,810
Speaker 2: flowers and the colors, they must have loved that.

450
00:25:46,850 --> 00:25:48,890
Speaker 1: And now they could do 180 of them. Maybe. Maybe

451
00:25:48,930 --> 00:25:51,150
Speaker 1: Gutenberg was like, no, no, I'm not going to automate

452
00:25:51,190 --> 00:25:52,910
Speaker 1: your work out of existence. I'm just going to take

453
00:25:52,950 --> 00:25:55,090
Speaker 1: away the drudgery and leave you to do the creative

454
00:25:55,190 --> 00:25:58,310
Speaker 1: fun part. It's a compliment. Familiar. Yeah. So you've described

455
00:25:58,330 --> 00:26:05,650
Speaker 1: the book very well. It's 21 complete copies still in existence,

456
00:26:05,690 --> 00:26:09,450
Speaker 1: which is a very large percentage given how long ago

457
00:26:09,490 --> 00:26:11,470
Speaker 1: it was and how it just happened in Europe since then.

458
00:26:11,830 --> 00:26:13,629
Speaker 1: It shows you how valuable they were. How valuable they

459
00:26:13,650 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 1: were and how special they must have seemed even then, right?

460
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:20,780
Speaker 1: One fun business detail about the printing of the book itself,

461
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,880
Speaker 1: it's referred to typically as the 42-line Gutenberg Bible because

462
00:26:25,900 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: there are 42 lines per page. And as you say,

463
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:31,939
Speaker 1: it seems quite spacious and like not crammed in. The

464
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:35,159
Speaker 1: first few pages, they were actually doing 40 lines a page.

465
00:26:35,830 --> 00:26:39,929
Speaker 1: And so presumably they must have figured out like, oh,

466
00:26:39,950 --> 00:26:42,870
Speaker 1: we could do two more lines per page. And that

467
00:26:42,910 --> 00:26:44,990
Speaker 1: means less paper, less parchment.

468
00:26:45,150 --> 00:26:46,909
Speaker 2: That's just profit right there. By the time you get

469
00:26:46,950 --> 00:26:49,570
Speaker 2: to Revelations, it's tiny, tiny, tiny writing.

470
00:26:50,869 --> 00:26:54,470
Speaker 1: No, it isn't. So he's cranking them out. Gutenberg is

471
00:26:54,510 --> 00:26:58,070
Speaker 1: making the Gutenberg Bible. And There's this great detail. So

472
00:26:58,150 --> 00:27:00,350
Speaker 1: some of the Bibles were printed on parchment, some on paper.

473
00:27:00,850 --> 00:27:03,629
Speaker 1: And there is a belief, a kind of a theory based,

474
00:27:03,750 --> 00:27:06,650
Speaker 1: I believe, on the different watermarks on the different pieces

475
00:27:06,690 --> 00:27:09,130
Speaker 1: of paper, which I love, like scholarly work like this.

476
00:27:09,580 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: A belief that at some point Gutenberg might have had

477
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 1: six different presses going, just kind of a factory, right?

478
00:27:15,260 --> 00:27:20,300
Speaker 1: He's becoming a publisher, a printer. And then it feels

479
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:23,959
Speaker 1: sudden looking back, but we don't know. Something goes wrong.

480
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:25,959
Speaker 1: There's a big problem that's going to happen right now.

481
00:27:26,020 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: And that is this. Johann Fust, the guy who put

482
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:31,930
Speaker 1: up the money to get the project going. The investor.

483
00:27:32,710 --> 00:27:35,570
Speaker 1: Decides he wants his money back. Hmm. We don't know why.

484
00:27:35,810 --> 00:27:38,090
Speaker 1: There was a fight, maybe. Maybe Fust needs the money

485
00:27:38,130 --> 00:27:42,609
Speaker 1: for something else. But we know that they wound up

486
00:27:42,670 --> 00:27:49,940
Speaker 1: in court on Thursday, November 6th, 1455. I love court documents.

487
00:27:50,060 --> 00:27:52,480
Speaker 1: As a reporter, I've always loved them. I covered cops

488
00:27:52,540 --> 00:27:56,980
Speaker 1: in courts in Bozeman, Montana. Yeah. 20 many years ago

489
00:27:57,060 --> 00:27:57,940
Speaker 1: when I started out.

490
00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:01,510
Speaker 2: It's amazing because we wouldn't know anything about this, really.

491
00:28:01,530 --> 00:28:04,510
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there is this one document that describes this

492
00:28:04,550 --> 00:28:09,870
Speaker 1: whole thing in detail, written by one Ulrich Helmesperger, cleric

493
00:28:09,930 --> 00:28:13,129
Speaker 1: of the Diocese of Bamberg, notary public and lay judge

494
00:28:13,170 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 1: of the Holy Seat at Mainz by imperial authority, who

495
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:21,540
Speaker 1: wrote out this beautiful detailed document that explains a lot

496
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:25,450
Speaker 1: about the first printing press in Europe. The document is

497
00:28:25,470 --> 00:28:31,130
Speaker 1: called the Helmesberger Notarial Instrument. Notarial instrument is one beautiful

498
00:28:31,150 --> 00:28:34,790
Speaker 1: log word in German. And it lays this out kind

499
00:28:34,830 --> 00:28:38,630
Speaker 1: of as a story. And it starts with Fust's version.

500
00:28:39,470 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: It's like a he said, he said. So Fust tells

501
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: a story like this. He says, I loaned Gutenberg 800

502
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:49,190
Speaker 1: guilders at 6% interest. And by the way, I borrowed

503
00:28:49,230 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: that money from somebody else at interest. Oh, good job, Fust. Fust, right?

504
00:28:53,900 --> 00:28:56,620
Speaker 1: He's like a private credit, right? He's like, I don't know,

505
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: Apollo or something in the market today. And then, Fust says,

506
00:29:01,020 --> 00:29:04,350
Speaker 1: Gutenberg came back to me later and said, actually, I

507
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,590
Speaker 1: need another 800 guilders. So I loaned him 800 more. Which, remember,

508
00:29:08,730 --> 00:29:11,220
Speaker 1: is a lot of money at the time. Yes, exactly. Yes.

509
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:16,660
Speaker 1: And now Fust is saying, I want repayment of that

510
00:29:16,660 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: $ 1, 600 plus interest, which comes to over 2,000 guilders. And

511
00:29:20,940 --> 00:29:23,770
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, like 800 guilders was four houses.

512
00:29:23,850 --> 00:29:27,530
Speaker 1: So 2,000 is a lot of houses. We don't know

513
00:29:27,550 --> 00:29:32,650
Speaker 1: why he's demanding the repayment, but it's happening. Gutenberg doesn't

514
00:29:32,670 --> 00:29:35,150
Speaker 1: show up at the hearing, weirdly. Don't know why, but

515
00:29:35,290 --> 00:29:38,050
Speaker 1: he wasn't there. But he sends a statement, which somebody

516
00:29:38,110 --> 00:29:43,010
Speaker 1: reads on his behalf. And Gutenberg disputes a lot of

517
00:29:43,050 --> 00:29:45,650
Speaker 1: what Futh says, unsurprisingly. It's why they're in court, I guess.

518
00:29:46,450 --> 00:29:49,850
Speaker 1: He says, OK, yes, that first 800 guilders, that was

519
00:29:49,910 --> 00:29:55,230
Speaker 1: a loan. But even though the contract might say in

520
00:29:55,260 --> 00:29:57,980
Speaker 1: the fine print that it's 6% interest, we actually agreed

521
00:29:58,620 --> 00:30:01,670
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to pay interest on that. Not

522
00:30:01,710 --> 00:30:05,190
Speaker 1: his strongest argument, not his strongest argument. Get it in writing, Gutenberg.

523
00:30:05,250 --> 00:30:07,570
Speaker 1: Come on. The second part is more interesting. He says

524
00:30:08,340 --> 00:30:09,950
Speaker 1: the part of the money Fuss put up after that,

525
00:30:09,990 --> 00:30:13,620
Speaker 1: the other 800, that wasn't a loan. That was investment

526
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:16,820
Speaker 1: as a partner to share in the profit or loss

527
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: of the business. In other words, Gutenberg is saying in

528
00:30:20,420 --> 00:30:22,140
Speaker 1: our language today, he wouldn't have said it this way,

529
00:30:22,180 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 1: that first 800 was debt, but the second 800 was equity.

530
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:27,980
Speaker 1: That's the, he said, he said. Then, kind of third

531
00:30:28,020 --> 00:30:31,270
Speaker 1: beat of the document, there is a sworn affidavit from Fust.

532
00:30:31,330 --> 00:30:34,010
Speaker 1: Remember who was there in the room. In this part,

533
00:30:34,050 --> 00:30:36,990
Speaker 1: Fust actually seems to back off his original claim a little.

534
00:30:37,030 --> 00:30:38,350
Speaker 1: You know, we don't know what was said in the room,

535
00:30:38,410 --> 00:30:41,209
Speaker 1: but it seems like in the course of the hearing,

536
00:30:41,250 --> 00:30:44,390
Speaker 1: maybe he reduced his claim. Because in this affidavit, he

537
00:30:44,450 --> 00:30:47,860
Speaker 1: basically says, okay, Gutenberg should go back through his accounts,

538
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: figure out how much of the money that I gave

539
00:30:50,860 --> 00:30:54,590
Speaker 1: him actually went into this printing business. And he should

540
00:30:54,730 --> 00:30:57,650
Speaker 1: pay me back with interest for whatever part of the

541
00:30:57,690 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 1: money did not go into the printing business. If he

542
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:02,610
Speaker 1: took my money and spent it on something else, come on,

543
00:31:02,620 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: he's got to pay me back with interest for that. So, Robert, actually,

544
00:31:04,780 --> 00:31:07,150
Speaker 1: we have it in Foose words translated into English. Give

545
00:31:07,170 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: it to us. Oh, nice. On the borrowed money, which he, Gutenberg,

546
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:14,180
Speaker 1: received and did not use for our common undertaking, I

547
00:31:14,260 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 1: demand from him the interest due under the terms of

548
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:20,370
Speaker 1: the verdict. And the court basically seems to agree with this,

549
00:31:20,390 --> 00:31:22,170
Speaker 1: which I have to say seems reasonable, right? It does

550
00:31:22,190 --> 00:31:24,450
Speaker 1: seem like a very common sense thing. And the court

551
00:31:24,550 --> 00:31:28,950
Speaker 1: sends Gutenberg back to produce evidence on what he actually

552
00:31:29,010 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: spent on the project. I guess they're saying, like, show

553
00:31:30,820 --> 00:31:33,930
Speaker 1: us your books. And if, in fact, you took his money.

554
00:31:33,970 --> 00:31:38,310
Speaker 1: Books existed, yeah. The ledgers. Yes. Books existed. The Codex

555
00:31:38,510 --> 00:31:40,210
Speaker 1: is the book. And it is a useful technology, but

556
00:31:40,250 --> 00:31:42,020
Speaker 1: it's been around for a long time at this point. Otherwise,

557
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: you've got to use a scroll. Much less convenient. Let

558
00:31:44,780 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: me tell you from experience. It's a little bar mitzvah joke.

559
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:51,580
Speaker 1: I see. So the court says, Gutenberg, go back, look

560
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:53,740
Speaker 1: at your records, pay him with interest for whatever you

561
00:31:53,770 --> 00:31:57,450
Speaker 1: didn't put into the project. And that's the end of

562
00:31:57,490 --> 00:32:00,670
Speaker 1: what we know from this document. It ends there. Which

563
00:32:00,860 --> 00:32:06,380
Speaker 1: is interesting given the myth that has arisen around this

564
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: part of the story. The myth is basically the evil

565
00:32:09,380 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: financier Fust drove the noble and brilliant inventor Gutenberg into bankruptcy.

566
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:17,820
Speaker 1: Everybody will say they made him go bankrupt. Yeah, just

567
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:22,300
Speaker 1: like people talk about private equity and private credit today. Yeah, fair, fair.

568
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe for similar reasons, right? Like it's a

569
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:29,940
Speaker 1: classic villain. Financiers are classic villains. Now- There is no

570
00:32:30,020 --> 00:32:33,860
Speaker 1: evidence that Gutenberg went bankrupt. And in fact, he kept

571
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: printing things after this. My favorite is he printed a

572
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: wall calendar for doctors. Why do doctors need a wall calendar?

573
00:32:42,900 --> 00:32:45,420
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, in the 14-whatever, I think it was

574
00:32:45,540 --> 00:32:49,830
Speaker 1: 60s or so, mid-1400s, It tells you, based on astrology,

575
00:32:49,950 --> 00:32:52,990
Speaker 1: when is the best time to do your bloodletting for

576
00:32:53,010 --> 00:32:55,210
Speaker 1: the year. There were bad days and good days. There

577
00:32:55,230 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: were bad days and good days to drain the blood

578
00:32:57,220 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: of your patients to help them. I'm doing it to

579
00:32:59,580 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: help them. Of course, he prints some more. indulgences, always

580
00:33:03,580 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: a good business. He may have printed this giant Latin dictionary.

581
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:09,860
Speaker 1: He definitely didn't print anything, as far as we know,

582
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: as beautiful as the Bible. Maybe because he didn't have

583
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,620
Speaker 1: access to capital anymore. But he was still in the game.

584
00:33:17,660 --> 00:33:19,290
Speaker 1: But it is a little sad, right?

585
00:33:19,510 --> 00:33:24,510
Speaker 2: I mean, right away, the man who invents the most

586
00:33:24,570 --> 00:33:28,470
Speaker 2: amazing invention in Europe at the time is reduced to

587
00:33:29,070 --> 00:33:31,890
Speaker 2: you know, basically running a Kikos in Harrisburg, right? He's

588
00:33:31,910 --> 00:33:35,310
Speaker 2: doing calendars, he's doing flyers, this sort of thing. You

589
00:33:35,350 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 2: buy one, get one free. It doesn't seem as miraculous.

590
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,620
Speaker 1: It just seems like a little business he has. Yeah,

591
00:33:42,740 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 1: in a way, as a story, you want him to

592
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: either have wild success or crushing failure. Not personally, not

593
00:33:51,740 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: as a human being, but just for narrative purposes, the

594
00:33:54,960 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: middle is unsatisfying. One thing that is true is is Fust,

595
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 1: the lender, I'm not going to call him a banker,

596
00:34:03,260 --> 00:34:07,190
Speaker 1: but the lender, the financier, seems to have surpassed Gutenberg

597
00:34:07,330 --> 00:34:08,410
Speaker 1: in the printing business.

598
00:34:08,650 --> 00:34:10,569
Speaker 2: Well, he's gotten some of the money back and he's

599
00:34:10,590 --> 00:34:12,190
Speaker 2: going to invest it in something else.

600
00:34:12,290 --> 00:34:15,170
Speaker 1: And furthermore, and we know this again from like really

601
00:34:15,330 --> 00:34:17,129
Speaker 1: careful scholarship, I guess, we know that he got some

602
00:34:17,170 --> 00:34:19,900
Speaker 1: of the types, some of the metal letters that had

603
00:34:19,940 --> 00:34:22,339
Speaker 1: been in Gutenberg's shop. Because I guess, you know, you

604
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:25,180
Speaker 1: can match the books that he printed with what Gutenberg

605
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:25,940
Speaker 1: had printed before.

606
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:29,170
Speaker 2: And some of the letters... are Gutenberg's letters. Because they

607
00:34:29,190 --> 00:34:31,250
Speaker 2: were sort of unique at the time. Yes, because they

608
00:34:31,290 --> 00:34:32,390
Speaker 2: were sort of unique at the time.

609
00:34:32,430 --> 00:34:36,089
Speaker 1: That's right. And, you know, maybe, remember that loan was,

610
00:34:36,630 --> 00:34:39,609
Speaker 1: the original loan was collateralized by the apparatus, right? So

611
00:34:39,739 --> 00:34:42,779
Speaker 1: maybe these letters are him collecting on the debt. We

612
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,580
Speaker 1: don't know. But that seems totally plausible to me. He

613
00:34:45,660 --> 00:34:49,339
Speaker 1: also hires a guy from a Gutenberg shop, this really

614
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,750
Speaker 1: talented guy. I guess no non-competes then, which is good.

615
00:34:52,770 --> 00:34:55,870
Speaker 1: It's good for The proliferation of technology. I suspect the

616
00:34:55,910 --> 00:34:59,730
Speaker 1: employee walked out with a few letters in his pocket. Right, right.

617
00:34:59,790 --> 00:35:02,450
Speaker 1: Is that an exclamation mark in your pocket? Are you

618
00:35:02,469 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: a tiny bit happy to see me? I don't know

619
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,140
Speaker 1: if they had the exclamation mark then, actually. Go with

620
00:35:08,180 --> 00:35:12,259
Speaker 1: the joke. It's a good joke. So this worker's name

621
00:35:12,500 --> 00:35:15,460
Speaker 1: was Peter Schaefer, I believe it was pronounced. And Fust

622
00:35:15,500 --> 00:35:18,029
Speaker 1: and Schaefer did great. And maybe Fust was a better

623
00:35:18,090 --> 00:35:21,430
Speaker 1: businessman than Gutenberg. No idea. Don't know. They started out

624
00:35:21,469 --> 00:35:24,930
Speaker 1: with this beautiful Psalter, a book of Psalms, you know,

625
00:35:25,469 --> 00:35:28,190
Speaker 1: and they actually printed it in multiple colors, which must

626
00:35:28,230 --> 00:35:29,589
Speaker 1: have required, you know, you got to put the same

627
00:35:29,650 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: page through multiple times and get the alignment right, like

628
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: elegant technical work. And as a business move, they do

629
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,460
Speaker 1: a really clever thing that Gutenberg didn't do. They put

630
00:35:40,500 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: their names in the book. just like publishers do today,

631
00:35:44,060 --> 00:35:46,700
Speaker 1: although at greater length. Robert, read to us what they

632
00:35:46,739 --> 00:35:49,260
Speaker 1: put in that book. The present book of the Psalms

633
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:51,980
Speaker 1: has been fashioned by the artful invention of printing by

634
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,900
Speaker 1: means of letter forms made without the driving of the pen.

635
00:35:55,340 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 1: And in praise of God, it has been brought faithfully

636
00:35:57,620 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: and industriously to completion by Johann Fust, citizen of Mainz,

637
00:36:02,620 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 1: and Peter Schaeffer of Gernsheim. In the year of the Lord, 1457.

638
00:36:08,690 --> 00:36:10,830
Speaker 1: It's early branding. They put their name on it. They

639
00:36:10,850 --> 00:36:12,090
Speaker 1: put their name on it. People are like, you know

640
00:36:12,110 --> 00:36:13,910
Speaker 1: what I need? I need a foost. We got to

641
00:36:13,950 --> 00:36:17,170
Speaker 1: get foost to do our next book. These guys do great.

642
00:36:17,290 --> 00:36:19,620
Speaker 1: This book does great. Their business does great. They expand

643
00:36:19,660 --> 00:36:22,779
Speaker 1: to Paris, which is home of a big university, big

644
00:36:22,820 --> 00:36:27,100
Speaker 1: book town. They're printing broadsheets. Of course, they're printing indulgences.

645
00:36:27,700 --> 00:36:31,010
Speaker 1: And they print Bibles. And their Bibles are clearly modeled

646
00:36:31,190 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: on the Gutenberg Bible. because the words are the same.

647
00:36:34,700 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: And you might say, of course, the words are the same.

648
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:39,500
Speaker 1: But in the era of the manuscript, right, something as

649
00:36:39,580 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: long as a Bible, manuscript meaning people are literally writing

650
00:36:43,219 --> 00:36:45,750
Speaker 1: out every book by hand, something as long as a Bible,

651
00:36:46,050 --> 00:36:49,070
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a few little errors, omissions.

652
00:36:49,090 --> 00:36:51,489
Speaker 1: You leave out one word, whatever, change an and to

653
00:36:51,530 --> 00:36:55,270
Speaker 1: a but. And print changes that, right? Print, once you

654
00:36:55,370 --> 00:36:58,790
Speaker 1: set the press, every book that comes out of that

655
00:36:58,850 --> 00:37:02,049
Speaker 1: edition is the same. And that is actually a new

656
00:37:02,110 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 1: thing in the world. I mean, it becomes more like

657
00:37:05,700 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: the unerring word of God. Even though I know Gutenberg

658
00:37:08,940 --> 00:37:11,950
Speaker 1: put it together, it has that feel that this is

659
00:37:12,110 --> 00:37:15,030
Speaker 1: more than the work of man. This is something eternal.

660
00:37:15,590 --> 00:37:18,550
Speaker 1: I like that. I believe that. So Fust and Schaeffer

661
00:37:18,590 --> 00:37:22,569
Speaker 1: are growing and printing itself is growing. People who worked

662
00:37:22,590 --> 00:37:25,310
Speaker 1: with Gutenberg and with Fuss and Schaeffer go to other towns,

663
00:37:25,350 --> 00:37:28,230
Speaker 1: set up their shops, and you just see this rapid

664
00:37:28,330 --> 00:37:32,130
Speaker 1: spread across Europe of printing presses. In other German cities,

665
00:37:32,190 --> 00:37:36,330
Speaker 1: but also in Rome and Venice and Paris and Basel

666
00:37:36,469 --> 00:37:40,750
Speaker 1: and small towns. It's just happening fast. So there is

667
00:37:40,810 --> 00:37:43,830
Speaker 1: the end of the Gutenberg story, of Gutenberg the man.

668
00:37:44,350 --> 00:37:46,739
Speaker 1: We know that in 1465, when he's around 65 years old,

669
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:53,930
Speaker 1: the Archbishop of Mainz, gives him this, basically this high

670
00:37:54,010 --> 00:37:58,140
Speaker 1: status lifetime pension. And we have the formal announcement that

671
00:37:58,460 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 1: proclaimed it. Read us a little of that. From the Archbishop.

672
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,720
Speaker 2: We will clothe him every year, always like our noble men,

673
00:38:04,860 --> 00:38:07,339
Speaker 2: and give him our court dress. Also, we grant him

674
00:38:07,340 --> 00:38:10,580
Speaker 2: 20 bushels of grain and two large barrels of wine

675
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,259
Speaker 2: for the use of his house, free of duty upon

676
00:38:13,300 --> 00:38:16,110
Speaker 2: its arrival in mines, every year as long as he lives,

677
00:38:16,590 --> 00:38:18,469
Speaker 2: on condition that he will not sell it or give

678
00:38:18,510 --> 00:38:21,379
Speaker 2: it away, as has been promised in good faith by

679
00:38:21,420 --> 00:38:22,760
Speaker 2: Johann Gutenberg himself.

680
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:29,700
Speaker 1: Tax-free wine. Tax-free wine. That is the happy ending, I guess,

681
00:38:29,739 --> 00:38:31,279
Speaker 1: that we were looking for in a way, right?

682
00:38:31,300 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 2: Well, that and, you know, schoolchildren don't learn about the

683
00:38:34,780 --> 00:38:38,870
Speaker 2: Fust printing press. Gutenberg's name, even if he didn't put

684
00:38:38,910 --> 00:38:43,310
Speaker 2: it on the book itself, is famous. He is one

685
00:38:43,330 --> 00:38:44,549
Speaker 2: of the greatest inventors of all time.

686
00:38:44,710 --> 00:38:47,669
Speaker 1: We've got one last idea I want to talk about

687
00:38:47,750 --> 00:38:50,670
Speaker 1: before the end of the show, which is really I

688
00:38:50,710 --> 00:38:53,930
Speaker 1: think the first moment when you see the printing press

689
00:38:54,310 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: transform society. We'll talk about that in just a minute. Robert,

690
00:39:19,219 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: this last idea, we're doing this kind of epilogue to

691
00:39:22,500 --> 00:39:27,049
Speaker 1: the show. It's about indulgences. Indulgences, of course, were one

692
00:39:27,070 --> 00:39:29,149
Speaker 1: of the first things Gutenberg printed, one of the first

693
00:39:29,190 --> 00:39:33,680
Speaker 1: things Fust and Schaeffer printed. And it's really remarkable when

694
00:39:33,700 --> 00:39:38,299
Speaker 1: you look at the spread of printing across Europe, you

695
00:39:38,430 --> 00:39:42,870
Speaker 1: see this boom in the indulgence business. Because, like, remember,

696
00:39:43,350 --> 00:39:46,430
Speaker 1: the church was constrained before by the actual labor of

697
00:39:46,489 --> 00:39:50,180
Speaker 1: the scribes to write out each receipt for each indulgence.

698
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:55,720
Speaker 1: But by 1500— You see a bishop in Sicily paying

699
00:39:55,760 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: a publisher to print 130,000 indulgences.

700
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 2: Do we know if sin went up? Did people like

701
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,180
Speaker 2: cheat on their spouses more because there were just like

702
00:40:06,219 --> 00:40:06,980
Speaker 2: piles of indulgences?

703
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 1: I like that. Or if the price went down, right?

704
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,190
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, in a competitive market, the

705
00:40:11,230 --> 00:40:14,029
Speaker 1: price went down, but there was a monopoly. Around the

706
00:40:14,070 --> 00:40:17,489
Speaker 1: same time you see near Barcelona, a monastery commissions more

707
00:40:17,530 --> 00:40:21,130
Speaker 1: than 200,000 indulgences. The line is around the block. I

708
00:40:21,130 --> 00:40:23,710
Speaker 1: actually don't know if there was a monopoly. Maybe different

709
00:40:23,770 --> 00:40:26,830
Speaker 1: like local, you know, archbishops were competing. Good question. Don't know.

710
00:40:27,070 --> 00:40:30,720
Speaker 1: So the printing press itself is enabling this explosion in indulgences.

711
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 1: But a backlash is building. A backlash of people who

712
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:45,330
Speaker 1: want reform. Who want to protest. In 1517... Martin Luther. Yes,

713
00:40:45,430 --> 00:40:48,669
Speaker 1: Martin Luther. That Martin Luther. Professor, priest in the German

714
00:40:48,690 --> 00:40:51,450
Speaker 1: town of Wittenberg. I guess it's Wittenberg in German. He

715
00:40:51,489 --> 00:40:56,290
Speaker 1: decides that the indulgence thing has gone too far. Like

716
00:40:56,330 --> 00:40:58,969
Speaker 1: it is. He sees it everywhere. It's all over the place. Yeah.

717
00:40:59,130 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: It's too much. And he writes this kind of academic

718
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:09,819
Speaker 1: argument in Latin. Basically against indulgences, you know, famously his

719
00:41:09,820 --> 00:41:14,580
Speaker 1: 95 theses, which get posted on the church door. And

720
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:16,460
Speaker 1: just post it. He hammered them to the church door. Well,

721
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:18,420
Speaker 1: that's the myth. Again, that's the myth. Yes. I was

722
00:41:18,460 --> 00:41:20,660
Speaker 1: actually reading about that. I guess like the church door

723
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,180
Speaker 1: was like the bulletin board and everybody posted everything there,

724
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:25,350
Speaker 1: but whatever. It just sounds better. It does. So his

725
00:41:25,350 --> 00:41:30,989
Speaker 1: 95 theses, 95 propositions are largely an argument against indulgences.

726
00:41:31,030 --> 00:41:33,029
Speaker 1: And so I've grabbed a few here for you to read.

727
00:41:33,070 --> 00:41:34,149
Speaker 1: Give me a couple. All right.

728
00:41:34,170 --> 00:41:38,150
Speaker 2: We'll skip over some and go to number 32. Those

729
00:41:38,190 --> 00:41:40,620
Speaker 2: who believe that they can be certain of their salvation

730
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:44,470
Speaker 2: because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned. together

731
00:41:44,489 --> 00:41:45,110
Speaker 2: with their teachers.

732
00:41:45,489 --> 00:41:50,090
Speaker 1: Serious? Okay, let's go to 36. Any truly repentant Christian

733
00:41:50,130 --> 00:41:52,930
Speaker 1: has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt,

734
00:41:53,570 --> 00:41:58,390
Speaker 1: even without indulgence letters. Save your money, bro. He's coming

735
00:41:58,450 --> 00:42:02,020
Speaker 1: right at them. Yeah. So yeah, so this, of course, famously, right,

736
00:42:02,140 --> 00:42:05,820
Speaker 1: is the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. And it's happening,

737
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,460
Speaker 1: like you could argue, it has been argued, it is

738
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:11,299
Speaker 1: happening partly because the invention of the printing press led

739
00:42:11,340 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: to this proliferation of indulgences. And if you didn't know

740
00:42:15,700 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 1: what was going to happen next, you might think this

741
00:42:17,410 --> 00:42:21,230
Speaker 1: would be bad for business for the printers. But no,

742
00:42:22,190 --> 00:42:26,450
Speaker 1: because first of all, the 95 theses are suddenly reprinted everywhere.

743
00:42:26,850 --> 00:42:30,790
Speaker 1: Everybody loves a list. This is a very interesting idea.

744
00:42:30,850 --> 00:42:33,870
Speaker 1: It's very much of the moment. Number 36 will shock you.

745
00:42:35,180 --> 00:42:39,299
Speaker 1: And really interestingly, in the next few years after this,

746
00:42:39,540 --> 00:42:42,100
Speaker 1: Luther starts writing a lot, not just in Latin for

747
00:42:42,140 --> 00:42:45,500
Speaker 1: this kind of academic and and a religious audience or

748
00:42:45,540 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: priestly audience. But he's writing also in German for a

749
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:53,270
Speaker 1: much more popular audience. And in fact, the public goes

750
00:42:53,430 --> 00:42:57,410
Speaker 1: wild for his work. And it becomes almost like news.

751
00:42:57,450 --> 00:42:59,830
Speaker 1: Like he writes these short sermons that are just a

752
00:42:59,870 --> 00:43:01,810
Speaker 1: few pages long and he'll take them to the printer

753
00:43:02,170 --> 00:43:03,990
Speaker 1: and they'll be out on the streets in a few days.

754
00:43:04,030 --> 00:43:08,590
Speaker 1: Like it's very dynamic and it's enabled by the printing press.

755
00:43:09,130 --> 00:43:12,410
Speaker 1: When he's getting going, there's just one printer in Wittenberg.

756
00:43:12,989 --> 00:43:15,370
Speaker 1: It's a small town. And it's amazing the way Luther

757
00:43:15,410 --> 00:43:18,029
Speaker 1: keeps complaining about the printer to his friends. At one

758
00:43:18,070 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: point he writes, you would not believe how I regret

759
00:43:21,410 --> 00:43:25,290
Speaker 1: and how I am disgusted by his work. Writers love

760
00:43:25,310 --> 00:43:28,430
Speaker 1: complaining about their publishers. It's too sloppy. He's not promoting

761
00:43:28,450 --> 00:43:30,310
Speaker 1: my stuff. It's too sloppy. It's too sloppy. He wasn't complaining.

762
00:43:30,330 --> 00:43:33,009
Speaker 1: Nobody's complained about the marketing department yet. So he actually

763
00:43:33,050 --> 00:43:36,020
Speaker 1: invites another printer to come and set up shop in town.

764
00:43:36,540 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: And soon, because Luther is this kind of proto bestselling author,

765
00:43:41,420 --> 00:43:46,299
Speaker 1: there is this little industry of print shops in this

766
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,940
Speaker 1: small town so they can just get Luther's stuff out fast.

767
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:52,860
Speaker 2: This is like the invention of the media. There's a

768
00:43:52,900 --> 00:43:58,020
Speaker 2: whole ecosystem developing. People want the newest stuff now. You know,

769
00:43:58,100 --> 00:44:00,259
Speaker 2: it's a clear line from here all the way to TikTok.

770
00:44:00,300 --> 00:44:03,210
Speaker 1: So there is now this print industry, this media industry,

771
00:44:03,250 --> 00:44:05,290
Speaker 1: you could say, if you want to be a little anachronistic,

772
00:44:05,850 --> 00:44:11,009
Speaker 1: in Wittenberg. And over the course of Luther's lifetime, it

773
00:44:11,070 --> 00:44:14,549
Speaker 1: just proliferates. Like he translates the Bible into German, which is,

774
00:44:14,570 --> 00:44:18,330
Speaker 1: of course, a big deal historically. In his lifetime, these

775
00:44:18,390 --> 00:44:24,100
Speaker 1: local printers print over 100,000 copies of this German translation

776
00:44:24,140 --> 00:44:26,580
Speaker 1: of the Bible. And in his lifetime, you know, more

777
00:44:26,660 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: broadly in the German-speaking world, printing is proliferating. And something

778
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:36,310
Speaker 1: like six or seven million evangelical pamphlets are printed in

779
00:44:36,370 --> 00:44:39,910
Speaker 1: German throughout the region. It's amazing because it's not just German.

780
00:44:40,610 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 1: a product. Gutenberg didn't invent something that just fulfilled one need.

781
00:44:44,980 --> 00:44:49,230
Speaker 1: It created a million needs. The moment the printing press

782
00:44:49,290 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: is there, you don't just want to print one thing,

783
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:54,260
Speaker 1: the Bible. You want to print arguments about the Bible

784
00:44:54,300 --> 00:44:57,910
Speaker 1: and arguments back and competing views of this. And it

785
00:44:58,150 --> 00:45:01,410
Speaker 1: changes the dynamics of like, well, now you can have

786
00:45:01,450 --> 00:45:05,530
Speaker 1: more indulgences. Now one random priest can have an audience

787
00:45:05,570 --> 00:45:09,330
Speaker 1: of millions in a way that is almost unimaginable without

788
00:45:09,370 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: the printing press. And if you didn't know how to read.

789
00:45:11,860 --> 00:45:14,350
Speaker 2: you would have incentive to learn how to read in

790
00:45:14,489 --> 00:45:16,670
Speaker 2: order to read these things, which creates more demand.

791
00:45:16,830 --> 00:45:19,529
Speaker 1: Yes. So maybe one idea to land on is like

792
00:45:19,710 --> 00:45:22,510
Speaker 1: a new technology is a new tool. And what nobody

793
00:45:22,650 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: ever knows is how are people going to use that tool?

794
00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:30,500
Speaker 1: These guys, Gutenberg thought they were just making a cheaper,

795
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: more efficient way to make Bibles. They didn't know what

796
00:45:33,780 --> 00:45:36,180
Speaker 1: else you could print beyond this. And then it goes

797
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:42,469
Speaker 1: beyond religion. It changes politics, war, philosophy, science, everything. I

798
00:45:42,489 --> 00:45:45,790
Speaker 1: want to say, as we roll into the credits today,

799
00:45:45,810 --> 00:45:47,690
Speaker 1: I want to say thank you to the listener who

800
00:45:47,750 --> 00:45:50,569
Speaker 1: wrote to us to say that whenever he tells his

801
00:45:50,670 --> 00:45:53,990
Speaker 1: friends about our show, they say, that doesn't sound like you.

802
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:57,359
Speaker 2: But it is a nice thought to tell your friends

803
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 2: about the show. And we encourage all of our listeners

804
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 2: to at least bring someone along.

805
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:06,489
Speaker 1: Truly, I'm very grateful to anyone involved. who recommends the

806
00:46:06,510 --> 00:46:08,450
Speaker 1: show to a friend. If you write to us and

807
00:46:08,510 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: tell us that you told a friend, I will personally

808
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:12,620
Speaker 1: write back to you and thank you for whatever that's worth.

809
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:18,400
Speaker 1: We're at businesshistoryatpushkin.fm. Our show today was produced by Gabriel

810
00:46:18,420 --> 00:46:23,020
Speaker 1: Hunter Chang, was engineered by Sarah Bruguier. Our video editor

811
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:26,980
Speaker 1: is Matt Nielsen. Our showrunner and editor is Ryan Dilley.

812
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. This is Business History.

813
00:46:30,930 --> 00:46:31,529
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.