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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect push kit stuff. You

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Speaker 1: got it.

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Speaker 2: Frank up the siege engine. Because we're going back to

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Speaker 2: the Middle Ages.

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Speaker 3: I will wear my leather corset.

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Speaker 2: We're doing a biggie today. We are maybe the biggest

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Speaker 2: one we've done yet. The printing press, the printing press.

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Speaker 2: Love the printing press. Yes, it is everything, including a business.

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Speaker 3: I'm Jacob Goldstein, I'm Robert Smith, and this is business

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Speaker 3: show about the history. So why don't we go way back.

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Speaker 2: Of business today on the show the invention of the

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Speaker 2: printing press, which is a surprisingly modern story. There is debt,

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Speaker 2: there is equity, there is a court case, competition, international

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Speaker 2: branch offices, and the Protestant Reformation. Our show today begins

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Speaker 2: with the man named Johannes gen Spleisch zuur Lauden.

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Speaker 3: Did not see that coming.

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Speaker 2: I'm probably saying it wrong because I don't speak German.

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Speaker 2: Johannes Goose Flesh of the House of Laden was born

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Speaker 2: around fourteen hundred to relatively rich parents in a town

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Speaker 2: called Mainz in what's Germany today. At the time it

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Speaker 2: was part of the Holy Roman Empire.

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Speaker 3: Which Fultaire said, of course, was neither holy nor Roman.

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Speaker 3: Nor An Empire.

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Speaker 2: When Johannes is around twenty years old, his father dies

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Speaker 2: and his mother comes into possession of a house called

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Speaker 2: the hoff Zuom Gutenberg House of the Good Mountain, and

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Speaker 2: Johannes becomes known as Johannes Zoom Gutenberg. I guess last

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Speaker 2: names work differently back then.

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Speaker 3: There are many Johannases and you're like, oh, the Good

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Speaker 3: Mountain one.

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Speaker 2: The one he's over at the Good Mountain House. So

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Speaker 2: what do we know about Gutenberg. There's a famous engraving

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Speaker 2: of him. If you've seen a picture of Gutenberg, it

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Speaker 2: is from this engraving. He's got this long white beard,

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Speaker 2: comes down to like two points on his chest like

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Speaker 2: zz top, Yeah, like zezytop style. He's wearing a fur

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Speaker 2: trimmed hat. Gutenberg didn't look like this. The picture was

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Speaker 2: made like one hundred years after he died. There's no

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Speaker 2: pictures of him as far as we know from his lifetime.

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Speaker 2: And I love this right And as we'll see, there's

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Speaker 2: all this myth, even as you get into the story

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Speaker 2: sort of embroidered about him. I mean, we don't know

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Speaker 2: what he thought or felt, you know, as far as

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Speaker 2: we know, there's no diary or trove of letters. But

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Speaker 2: of course he printed books, and a surprising number of

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Speaker 2: the books still exist.

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Speaker 3: And also conveniently for.

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Speaker 2: Our purposes, he wound up in court a few times

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Speaker 2: and the paperwork, the court records, actually still exist. And

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Speaker 2: so a lot of what we know about Goot and

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Speaker 2: the invention of the printing press and how it was

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Speaker 2: used comes from these basically lawsuits over money, which is

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Speaker 2: great for US business history. So here's this story we

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Speaker 2: can put together. At some point, we know Gutenberg became

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Speaker 2: an affiliate of the Master Goldsmith's.

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Speaker 3: Not an apprentice, but an affiliates.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, so it's different. So the Master Goldsmiths are a guild,

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Speaker 2: which is, you know, the medieval version of a union.

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Speaker 2: Guilds were a big deal. Maybe we should do a

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Speaker 2: guild show. Actually he was not in the union. He

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Speaker 2: worked with gold is basically what that means in some way.

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Speaker 2: So we know that he's into metal, and we also

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Speaker 2: know that he was an entrepreneur. And now here, I

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Speaker 2: am this is like an anachronism, right, I'm sort of

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Speaker 2: projecting backwards. There there were not entrepreneurs in the modern sense.

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Speaker 2: The word didn't exist. But yet I think you'll see

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Speaker 2: as we go through the story. He was a hustler,

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Speaker 2: he was a guy who started businesses. His life is

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Speaker 2: much more that way than I would have thought for

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Speaker 2: someone who living in you know, the end of the

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Speaker 2: Middle Ages basically. But then again, like he is the

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Speaker 2: guy who is going to invent the thing that's gonna

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Speaker 2: create the modern world, so maybe it makes sense. So

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Speaker 2: the first kind of hustle, the first business that he

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Speaker 2: starts that we know of, is mirrors. Gutenberg gets into

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Speaker 2: the mirror game and he finds this great, you know,

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Speaker 2: fourteen hundreds kind of niche, which is he's going to

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Speaker 2: sell special mirrors to religious pilgrims.

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Speaker 3: What made the mirror special? They're special. They're like convex

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Speaker 3: mirrors that are specially made for the pilgrims.

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Speaker 2: To take on their pilgrimage. And I'll explain why. I'll

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Speaker 2: explain why. So what's going on is in fourteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 2: there's going to be a pilgrimage to this German town

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Speaker 2: to see these relics that are displayed just once every

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Speaker 2: seven years, like a piece of the gown that Mary

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Speaker 2: wore the night Jesus was born, the loincloth that Jesus wore,

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Speaker 2: on the cross and is stained with blood, that kind

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Speaker 2: of thing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like woodstock for religious pilgrims.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And so the idea with these mirrors is,

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Speaker 2: you know, when you get your moment before the holy

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Speaker 2: relics looking at them, you hold up the mirror, and

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Speaker 2: the mirror can somehow capture the holy power that the

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Speaker 2: relics have. And to be clear, he didn't invent this idea.

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Speaker 3: This was a thing that people were doing, spread by

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Speaker 3: mirror merchants perhaps perhaps, but he's he's going with it.

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Speaker 3: He's going with it, and he actually gets a couple

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Speaker 3: of investors who have equity in the project. Essentially what

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Speaker 3: we would call equity, starts making the mirrors, as far

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Speaker 3: as we can tell. And then when your classic pieces

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Speaker 3: of medieval bad news arrives, the plague on the back

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Speaker 3: of a rat, the back of a flea, on the

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Speaker 3: back of a rat. It's like panics in the stories

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Speaker 3: we tell the nineteennres. You know, everything's going fine, and

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Speaker 3: then the plague.

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Speaker 2: The plague is the financial panic of the thirteen and

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Speaker 2: fourteen hundred.

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Speaker 3: It's very good.

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Speaker 2: Pilgrimage is delayed until fourteen forty.

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Speaker 3: He must have been sad, looking out over one hundred

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Speaker 3: convex mirrors, all staring back at him. One of Gutenberg's

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Speaker 3: investors dies, oh man, could have been plague, could have

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Speaker 3: been anything.

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Speaker 2: Fourteen thirties, You could die of anything at any time.

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Speaker 2: And the investor's family, the investor's family, the guy who

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Speaker 2: has died, His family sues Gutenberg over whatever, over that

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Speaker 2: guy's stake.

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Speaker 4: In the business.

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Speaker 3: Come on act of God.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what the details are. I think

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Speaker 2: Gutenberg wins. But there is this really interesting, just kind

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Speaker 2: of enticing detail mystery in the lawsuit, and it's just

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Speaker 2: a few words. And what we know from the lawsuit

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Speaker 2: paperwork is that Gutenberg is afraid that his trade secrets

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Speaker 2: are going to get out. Of course, there's you know,

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Speaker 2: no intellectual property as we know it in this era.

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Speaker 2: You try and keep your secret secret. In particular, he

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Speaker 2: says he is worried that visitors to the dead Man's

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Speaker 2: house are going to see And this part is a

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Speaker 2: direct quote, or at least a direct quote translated into English.

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Speaker 3: Four pieces lying in the press, the press, the press,

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Speaker 3: the printing press. We don't know, we don't know, we

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Speaker 3: don't know.

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Speaker 2: But he tells somebody to take these pieces apart so

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Speaker 2: nobody can tell what they are. Historians, of course, have

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Speaker 2: been speculating for hundreds of years about these six words.

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Speaker 2: Was he already working on the printing press?

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Speaker 3: Unclear?

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Speaker 2: We don't actually know what happened with the mirror business

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Speaker 2: for that matter. Next piece of evidence. Next time we

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Speaker 2: have a clear view of what's going on with Gutenberg's

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Speaker 2: actually ten years later, fourteen fifty. So Gutenberg, I will say,

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Speaker 2: as a fifty something man, is fifty ish at this point.

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Speaker 2: He's not a kid. Some might say is washed up,

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Speaker 2: some might say he's at his peak. So it's fourteen fifty.

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Speaker 2: Gutenberg is around fifty years old, and he makes another deal.

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Speaker 2: He enters into another business arrangement. This time it's with

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Speaker 2: a guy named Johann fuoh Ho, and Foust agreed to

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Speaker 2: lend Gutenberg eight hundred guilders at six percent interest, collateralized

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Speaker 2: by the apparatus sparatus. We're getting excited, Oh, apparatus, I

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Speaker 2: like this. Out of that, it's like he has a

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Speaker 2: code name das apparatus. Sorry to all our German speakers.

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Speaker 2: So eight hundred guilders is a lot of money. It's

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Speaker 2: enough to buy one hundred oxen or four houses at

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Speaker 2: These figures, by the way, come from a book called Gutenberg,

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Speaker 2: A Life in Books by Eric Marshall White, which is

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Speaker 2: a good book, a really helpful book. It's relatively recent

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Speaker 2: and it's really careful. It's a really careful biography of Gutenberg.

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Speaker 2: So it was really helpful in kind of untangling the

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Speaker 2: myth from what we know. So okay, so they make

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Speaker 2: this deal. In two years later, Foust makes another investment,

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Speaker 2: agrees to put in three hundred more guilders right away,

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Speaker 2: up to eight hundred more overall. And here we know

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Speaker 2: from the kind of documentary evidence that we'll get to

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Speaker 2: that this is explicitly for the work of the books.

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Speaker 3: This is the work of the books. It's happening, and

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Speaker 3: so there he is.

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Speaker 2: If we zoom out now, like we're right in the documents,

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Speaker 2: really in the in the micro, if we zoom out

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Speaker 2: to the macro for a sec it's interesting to think,

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Speaker 2: why why is why? Why are they bringing a lot

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Speaker 2: of money into this.

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Speaker 3: We don't have the aha moment, the big surprise story

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Speaker 3: where you know he was I don't know, you left

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Speaker 3: some type somewhere and his wife sat on it, and

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Speaker 3: she gets up and he sees the impression there, yes, right,

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Speaker 3: Or he falls in some inc and there happens to

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Speaker 3: be a little coin on top of the inca that

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Speaker 3: gets on his shirts and he thinks, ah.

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Speaker 2: We do know this, we do know this. Demand for

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Speaker 2: books was really high in Europe at this point for

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Speaker 2: some interesting reasons and kind of varied social and economic reasons.

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Speaker 2: So and political actually, so you have governments are becoming

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Speaker 2: more of a thing, right, It's not just kings occasionally

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Speaker 2: going to war. You're having kind of bureaucrats, sort of

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Speaker 2: modern governmental functions emerging. And for that you need people

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Speaker 2: who are literate, who have gone to school and read

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Speaker 2: books to learn how to read.

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Speaker 3: So there is demand for books.

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Speaker 2: You have the Renaissance getting going in Italy by this point,

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Speaker 2: and all the rich guys in Italy want to build

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Speaker 2: their libraries of books from classical antiquity. There's actually this

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Speaker 2: little story that I love of a businessman in Florence,

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Speaker 2: a guy named Vespasiano di Bistici.

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Speaker 3: One more time.

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Speaker 2: I love it, Vespasiano Dibistici, that's the name Babistici. I

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Speaker 2: believe he started out as a paper merchant, but he

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Speaker 2: winds up creating kind of like what to me seems

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Speaker 2: like a book factory in the fourteen forties, no doctor

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Speaker 2: without a printing press. So what happens is Cosimo di Medici,

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Speaker 2: you know, of the Florentine Medici, decides he needs his library,

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Speaker 2: his personal library, and he goes to the Bistichi and

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Speaker 2: Bistici has like fifty five scribes writing for him, like

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Speaker 2: you know, copying out manuscripts for Cosimo. And these fifty

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Speaker 2: five guys create something like two hundred books in two years.

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Speaker 2: So that's basically like if you round it to fifty,

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Speaker 2: you know, it takes a guy six months to write

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Speaker 2: a manuscript, huh. And of course these are beautiful whatever,

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Speaker 2: but like that's a lot of labor.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's a lot of money for each book,

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Speaker 3: and a lot of money for each book.

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Speaker 2: Now, there is something making books cheaper, and that is paper.

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Speaker 3: Paper.

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Speaker 2: I presume Cosimo's books would have been on parchment, which

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Speaker 2: is what you know, they had been using in Europe

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Speaker 2: for a long time and it was still the high

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Speaker 2: class thing. And paper is profoundly cheaper than parchment. Parchment,

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Speaker 2: of course, made from animal skins, costs a lot to

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Speaker 2: grow an animal to make the parchment. And paper has

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Speaker 2: been around in Asia for quite a long time by

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Speaker 2: this point, but it has recently come to Europe and

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Speaker 2: has become sort of industrialized, right, And the availability of

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Speaker 2: paper is profound for the book business because when a

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Speaker 2: scribe is writing a book on parchment, the parchment is

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Speaker 2: a huge chunk of the cost, maybe most of the cost,

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Speaker 2: but once you have paper, almost all of the cost

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Speaker 2: of making the book is the cost of the labor,

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Speaker 2: the cost of the scribes time.

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Speaker 3: This is a classic business situation, right. You have a

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Speaker 3: high demand for a product, and the demand is going up.

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Speaker 3: The thing that you use to make the products, the input,

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Speaker 3: the expensive input, is getting cheaper with paper, and so

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Speaker 3: what you are left with is a bottleneck, a low

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Speaker 3: productivity part of the process, and that is the scribes.

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Speaker 3: And so we could talk about, oh, was it an insight?

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Speaker 3: Did Gutenberg see something that no one else saw? Really,

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Speaker 3: there were economic pressures. Somebody was going to do that,

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Speaker 3: because it's obvious when you have a bottleneck, a very

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Speaker 3: expensive bottleneck in the process, you should try to automate that.

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Speaker 3: And there was printing in the world.

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Speaker 2: Woodblock printing had been used for hundreds of years in Asia,

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Speaker 2: and it was it was in use in Europe somewhat.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: Obviously, you carve sort of a single pages worth of

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Speaker 2: typically an image, sometimes some words into a woodblock. But

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Speaker 2: of course it's static, right, you got your block. You

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Speaker 2: can print one page, but that's it.

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Speaker 3: We've all done this with potatoes when we were a kid.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it's that movable type, which is you know, as

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Speaker 2: we know, what he's going to invent is way more dynamic,

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Speaker 2: way better. And by this time, by the mid fourteen hundreds,

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Speaker 2: movable type had been invented also in Asia. In Korea

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Speaker 2: they had even used metal types. But both in China

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Speaker 2: and Korea at the time they used pictograms. Each word

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Speaker 2: was its own character.

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Speaker 3: So you'd need thousands of these little things in order

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Speaker 3: to have a.

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Speaker 2: Book to have a book, right, much less practical than

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Speaker 2: when you have an alphabet, and you can do whatever

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Speaker 2: your upper case in your lower case and dozens. The

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Speaker 2: order of magnitude is dozens, and you can print anything.

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Speaker 2: And so there is this question. Was Gutenberg copying an

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Speaker 2: Asian press? It doesn't seem like it. There's no evidence

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Speaker 2: that he knew that people in Europe knew, you know,

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Speaker 2: in any kind of a real way about these presses

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Speaker 2: in Asia. It seems like when Gutenberg is doing this

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Speaker 2: work around fourteen fifty, he's working from first principles.

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Speaker 3: And we know, you know, he.

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Speaker 2: Had done some kind of work related to goldsmithing. His

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Speaker 2: dad was affiliated with the Mint, so maybe he knew

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Speaker 2: something about the way coins were made. We know he's

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Speaker 2: like a hustler, you know, he's entrepreneurial. And it seems

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Speaker 2: like Gutenberg on his own invented or invented for Europe

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Speaker 2: the movable type printing press, arguably the most important invention

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Speaker 2: ever to come out of Europe. Up there, mean want

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Speaker 2: the croissant, The steam engine.

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Speaker 3: Oh, the steam engine. Of course, internal combustion huge.

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Speaker 2: So there were a few other biggies, but one of

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Speaker 2: the biggies Fondue, but certainly one of the biggies. The

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Speaker 2: earliest image we have of press is not of Gutenberg's

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Speaker 2: press in particular, but it's not that long after. It's

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Speaker 2: from about fifty years later. It's this form of picture

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Speaker 2: that was popular at the time called the dance macabre.

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Speaker 2: You have pictures of people in everyday life and then

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Speaker 2: you have death kind of dancing through I guess to

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Speaker 2: remind you that everybody's going to die. Maybe they're taking

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Speaker 2: away these people, yeah, Memento Moury. And so in this

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Speaker 2: image you can see like a Gutenberg ish press.

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Speaker 3: Are you looking at it?

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Speaker 5: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: There are these kind of skeleton looking dudes. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: what's death? Those are death? Yeah, I got that. And

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Speaker 3: one of them has his hand on the person who's

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Speaker 3: picking out the type, who's putting the type too, right.

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Speaker 2: They call that guy the compositor, right, So for each

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Speaker 2: page he arranges the letters, and the letters are backwards, right,

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Speaker 2: you arrange it all backwards.

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Speaker 3: And there's a guy who's doing the actual press, which

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Speaker 3: looks like one of those things where you pull the

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Speaker 3: lever and it goes down like maybe you'd use to

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Speaker 3: squeeze olive oil or something. Yes, they had used presses

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Speaker 3: like this, and you're up for a long time.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And there's another skeleton dude like touching that man. That's amazing.

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Speaker 3: And that's basically it.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 2: The press is actually simple in its way, right, he's

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Speaker 2: putting together these different things, but it's not that complicated.

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Speaker 2: And that raises this question in my mind, right, which

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Speaker 2: is we've talked before about simultaneous invention. It seems like

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Speaker 2: all the big inventions that we've talked about, it is

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Speaker 2: really not ultimately like one guy figuring it out. You know, well, Edison,

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Speaker 2: we talked about it early on in the Edison and

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Speaker 2: the Movies story. Lots of people were trying to figure

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Speaker 2: out movies. Photography was out there. It was clear somebody

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Speaker 2: who was going to figure out movies or telephone. Famously,

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Speaker 2: like literally people racing to the patent office to get

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Speaker 2: the first patent. I mean even calculus, calculus right, Leibnitz

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Speaker 2: and Newton.

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Speaker 3: And the reason of course for simultaneous invention is what

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Speaker 3: we talked about a little bit earlier. There is the need.

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Speaker 3: You know, technology has come up to a certain point

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Speaker 3: and people are using that as a launching pad for

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Speaker 3: something else. And so it is natural when people are

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Speaker 3: trying to solve the same problem, they know about the

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Speaker 3: same information out there in the world, they're going to

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Speaker 3: come up with a new solution.

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Speaker 2: And yet that doesn't happen in this case. Right like

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Speaker 2: there is demand for books, there is paper, and nobody

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Speaker 2: else in Europe does this. Like that seems pretty clear,

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Speaker 2: and so I was singing, why is this too much

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Speaker 2: plague always a good answer for this era. I have

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Speaker 2: an idea, and my idea is, you know, if you

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Speaker 2: think about these other periods we've talked about the eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 2: certainly the nineteen hundreds, the even the seventeen hundreds, everybody's

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Speaker 2: reading what everybody else is doing. There are journals and books,

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Speaker 2: and you know, in the eighteen hundreds there's a magazine

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Speaker 2: printing all the new patents that Thomas Edison is reading.

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Speaker 2: To keep up on things, what you need for these things.

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Speaker 3: Is a printing press.

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Speaker 2: Uh, you need a printing press to know what everybody

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Speaker 2: else is working on. And so the reason maybe I'm

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Speaker 2: making this up that Gutenberg is the only one to

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Speaker 2: invent it is it hasn't been invented yet, so not

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Speaker 2: everybody knows everything all the time the way we do.

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Speaker 3: Once you have a printing press, I think, I think

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Speaker 3: that's a great idea because what would it take to

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Speaker 3: spread this. You'd have to write letters to people. But

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Speaker 3: even then not everybody who how to.

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Speaker 2: Write letters do become a thing, right and science letters

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Speaker 2: are a big deal. But the journal, you know, the

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Speaker 2: printed journal is a much more powerful tool than letters.

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Speaker 2: It's a thought in any case. In any case, Gutenberg

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Speaker 2: now has his press. What does he print first?

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Speaker 3: The Bible? Not the Bible? Okay, too expensive maybe, right,

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Speaker 3: it's long. The Bible is long, and it has to

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Speaker 3: start there, right, start. You don't start with the Word

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Speaker 3: of God.

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Speaker 2: You love nightmare also you know, yes and yes and

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Speaker 2: also high stakes.

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Speaker 3: You want to get it right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So he starts with things that are simpler, cheaper, shorter,

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Speaker 2: a German poem, a grammar textbook for last, and then

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Speaker 2: this is my favorite sort of pre Bible printing work

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Speaker 2: that Gutenberg does, comes around fourteen fifty three, so not

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Speaker 2: that long into this project, when there is actually this

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Speaker 2: world historical event that's going to be good news for

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Speaker 2: Gutenberg's printing business, and that is the Sultan Mehmed the

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Speaker 2: Second captures Constantinople. Big news, big news in the religion.

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Speaker 2: Teen emperor is decapitated, and now the Catholic Church needs

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Speaker 2: money to fight the Sultan. How does the church raise

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Speaker 2: money in.

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Speaker 3: Fourteen fifty three indulgences?

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Speaker 2: Indulgences, They sell indulgences and you know you know this

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Speaker 2: from whatever from school. Yeah, if you give money to

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Speaker 2: the church, they will remove the punishment that you owe.

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Speaker 3: For your sins. They would also allow you to get

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Speaker 3: your relatives out of purgatory if they had died. Uh huh,

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Speaker 3: that makes sense. That's the little extra, guess cost extra,

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Speaker 3: but sure.

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Speaker 2: What I didn't realize until I was working on this

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Speaker 2: show is indulgences were physical things. There was an indulgence

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Speaker 2: which was basically like a nice receipt, a nice receipt

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Speaker 2: often written out on vellum of fancy, like a very

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Speaker 2: high grade parchment made from calfskin. And this fact that

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Speaker 2: the receipt part of the indulgence thing becomes important when

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Speaker 2: the Sultan captures Constantinople, because the Church suddenly needs to

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Speaker 2: sell lots of indulgences. But they have a labor problem.

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Speaker 3: It's the problem we were talking about before, right, There's

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Speaker 3: just not enough scribes to write out all the indulgences

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Speaker 3: that you need to sell right now, plus so much sin.

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Speaker 3: The demand was huge, The demand is huge. Who among us?

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Speaker 2: And now here comes Johannes Gutenberg with a solution to

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Speaker 2: your problem. You know, your grace, how many do you need?

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Speaker 2: I'll just crank come out for you.

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Speaker 3: This was also a solution to Gutenberg's problem because he

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Speaker 3: had just enlisted the richest customer on planet Earth, or

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Speaker 3: one of them at least. Yes, Catholic, definitely a good

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Speaker 3: customer to have. And you know, on indulgence, I believe

400
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Speaker 3: it's a single page, right, so you said it once,

401
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Speaker 3: and you know, the printing business, you want to make

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Speaker 3: as many copies and sell as many copies of each

403
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:37,399
Speaker 3: thing as you can, so it's generic. They don't have

404
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Speaker 3: the different ones for the different sins.

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Speaker 2: I guess over time they're different ones. But the basic

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Speaker 2: thing is that there's a blank for the name of

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Speaker 2: the buyer. There's a blank for the name of the buyer,

408
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:51,960
Speaker 2: and so he cranks out all these indulgences white that

409
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Speaker 2: the guy who wrote that book that I mentioned says, they.

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Speaker 3: Go out by the wagon load.

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Speaker 2: The money, I guess was supposed to go to defend

412
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Speaker 2: Cypress Cypress, but apparently none of it, or almost none

413
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Speaker 2: of it ever got to Cyprus got siphoned off along

414
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Speaker 2: the way. But whatever, that's not Gutenberg's problem, truly, he

415
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Speaker 2: got paid.

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Speaker 3: Let's do the Biggie, Let's do the Bible.

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Speaker 4: We'll do it after the break, Robert.

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Speaker 2: We're back from the break, and it is October of

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Speaker 2: fourteen fifty four. We're in Frankfurt at a diet.

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Speaker 3: A religious meeting of some sort of meeting of the cat.

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Speaker 3: Not a conclave, but a diet.

422
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Speaker 2: It's not as big as a conclave, I guess. And

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Speaker 2: we're with an Italian bishop named Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Piccolomini

424
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Speaker 2: sees something that blows his mind. He sees some preliminary

425
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Speaker 2: pages from a printed Bible, from what's going to be

426
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Speaker 2: the Gutenberg Bible. And we know this because he wrote

427
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Speaker 2: a letter to a cardinal about it. He describes a

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Speaker 2: miraculous man who he encountered, who I hope was Gutenberg,

429
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Speaker 2: but it could been somebody who worked with Gutenberg, we

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Speaker 2: don't know. And he describes for the cardinal what the

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Speaker 2: pages of this Bible were like, give it to us.

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Speaker 3: He said. They were exceedingly clean and correct in their

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Speaker 3: script and without error, which your Grace could read effortlessly

434
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:42,400
Speaker 3: even without glasses. I mean something. I know. I appreciate

435
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 3: that large print. I learned from numerous witnesses that one

436
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:48,919
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty eight copies had been completed, although some

437
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 3: others say the number is one hundred and eighty. I

438
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:53,360
Speaker 3: shall try if possible to buy a copy on your

439
00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 3: behalf and have it brought here. But I fear it

440
00:23:55,720 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 3: will not be possible, both because of the distance and

441
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:01,200
Speaker 3: because they say that ready buyers had all been found

442
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:05,160
Speaker 3: even before the volumes had been finished. It's a hit.

443
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 2: It's a hit that seems promising, right. It is wild

444
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:10,679
Speaker 2: to think of a guy seeing what's going to be

445
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 2: the Gutenberg Bible. Do I remember that you went to

446
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 2: see to see one at the New York Public Library?

447
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, for Planet Money. I went to It was on

448
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 3: display in they have a special display case for these

449
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 3: kind of things. There's also one at the Morgan Library,

450
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 3: I should say JP. Morgan bought one, no big surprise,

451
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 3: and I recall it was much larger than I thought

452
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 3: it was going to be. It was probably the largest

453
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 3: Bible I'd ever seen. It looked like one of those

454
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:37,679
Speaker 3: giant dictionaries that you have to put on a stand.

455
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:40,200
Speaker 3: And the other thing I remember about it is that

456
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 3: the margins were very Why it was just it was

457
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 3: these these columns, these two columns, and the print was

458
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 3: that old fashioned sort of Gothic Germany, very German looking.

459
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 3: It was very orderly. I will say, these large margins

460
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 3: these very straight columns and this very dense writing. Did

461
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 3: was there color in the part that you looked at, Yeah,

462
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 3: there's there were some color that clearly someone had filled

463
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:12,479
Speaker 3: in or painted right right. Yeah, they actually left blank

464
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 3: like the where there would be a big colored first

465
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 3: letter at the start of a chapter or a paragraph

466
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 3: or something. They actually didn't print that on the press.

467
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 3: They left it to be hand inscribed.

468
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 4: One off.

469
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 3: The scribes were afraid of the printing press, and then

470
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 3: saw that in fact they could do their favorite part.

471
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:32,920
Speaker 3: You know, it's no fun to print every little letter,

472
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 3: but to make the giant g with the flowers and

473
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:37,959
Speaker 3: the colors. They must have loved that, and now they

474
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 3: could do one hundred and eighty.

475
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:41,200
Speaker 2: Maybe Gutenberg was like, no, no, I'm not going to

476
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 2: automate your work out of existence. I'm just going to

477
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 2: take away the drudgery. I'll leave you to do the

478
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 2: creative fun part.

479
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 3: It's a compliment familiar.

480
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've described the book very well. It's remarkable

481
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:54,919
Speaker 2: how many still exist there. I believe twenty one complete

482
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 2: copies still in existence, which is a very large percentage

483
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 2: given how long ago it was and how it just

484
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 2: happened In Europe since then.

485
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 3: It shows you how valuable, how.

486
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:06,159
Speaker 2: Valuable they were, and how special they must have seemed

487
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 2: even then. Right, One fun business detail about the printing

488
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,479
Speaker 2: of the book itself. It's referred to typically as the

489
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 2: forty two line Gutenberg Bible because they are forty two

490
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 2: lines per page, and as you say, it seems quite

491
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 2: spacious and like not crammed. In the first few pages.

492
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 2: They were actually doing forty lines of page, and so

493
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 2: presumably they must have figured out like, oh, we could

494
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 2: do two more lines per page, and that means less paper,

495
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 2: less parchment.

496
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 3: That's just profit right there. By the time you get

497
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:42,120
Speaker 3: to Revelations, it's tiny, tiny, tiny writing. No it isn't.

498
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 2: So he's cranking them out. He's Gutenberg is making the

499
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 2: Gutenberg Bible. And there's this great detail. So some of

500
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:51,719
Speaker 2: the Bibles were printed on parchment, some on paper. And

501
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 2: there's a belief, a kind of a theory based I

502
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:57,879
Speaker 2: believe on the different watermarks on the different pieces of paper,

503
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 2: which I love, like scholarly work like this, a belief

504
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 2: that at some point Gutenberg might have had six different

505
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,719
Speaker 2: presses going just kind of a factory. Right, he's becoming

506
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 2: a publisher a printer and then it feels sudden looking back,

507
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 2: but we don't know. Something goes wrong.

508
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:15,879
Speaker 3: There's a big problem.

509
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:17,440
Speaker 2: It's going to happen right now, and that is this

510
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 2: Johann Fust, the guy who put up the money to

511
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 2: get the project going investor decides he wants.

512
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 4: His money back.

513
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:27,200
Speaker 3: We don't know why there was fight.

514
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe Fust needs the money for something else, but

515
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:35,879
Speaker 2: we know that they wound up in court on Thursday,

516
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 2: November sixth, fourteen fifty five. I love court documents as

517
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 2: a reporter. I've always loved them. I covered cops and

518
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 2: courts and Bozeman, Montana twenty many years ago when I

519
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 2: started out.

520
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 3: It's amazing because we wouldn't know anything about this really.

521
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is this one document that describes this

522
00:27:55,359 --> 00:28:00,120
Speaker 2: whole thing in detail, written by one Ulrich Helmus Perger,

523
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: cleric of the Diocese of Bamberg, notary public and laid

524
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 2: judge of the Holy Seed at Mainz by Imperial authority,

525
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 2: who wrote out this beautiful, detailed document that explains a

526
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 2: lot about the first printing press in Europe. The document

527
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 2: is called the Helmusperger Notarial Instrument. No tarial instrument is

528
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 2: one beautiful logword in German. And it lays this out

529
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,400
Speaker 2: kind of as a story, and it starts with Feust's version.

530
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 2: It's like he said, he said, So Foust tells a

531
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 2: story like this. He says, I loaned Gutenberg eight hundred

532
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 2: guilders at six percent interest. And by the way, I

533
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 2: borrowed that money from somebody else at interest.

534
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 3: Oh, good job, Foust, FoST.

535
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 2: He's like a private credit, right. He's like, I don't know,

536
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 2: Apollo or something in the market today. And then Fuss says,

537
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 2: Gutenberg came back to me later and said, actually I

538
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 2: need another eight hundred guilders, so I loaned him eight

539
00:28:57,800 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 2: hundred more.

540
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 3: Which remember is a lot of money at the time.

541
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And now Foost is saying, I want repayment

542
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 2: of that sixteen hundred plus interest, which comes to over

543
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 2: two thousand guilders. And as you it out, like eight

544
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 2: hundred guilders was four houses, so two thousand there's a

545
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 2: lot of houses. We don't know why he's demanding the repayment,

546
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 2: but it's happening. Gutenberg doesn't show up at the hearing weirdly,

547
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 2: don't know why, but he wasn't there, but he sends

548
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 2: a statement which somebody reads on his behalf, and Gutenberg disputes.

549
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 3: A lot of what Fus says.

550
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 2: Unsurprisingly so at court, I guess he says, Okay, yes,

551
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:44,000
Speaker 2: that first eight hundred guilders that was alone. But even

552
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 2: though the contract might say and the fine print that

553
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 2: at six percent interest, we actually agreed that I wasn't.

554
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 3: Going to pay interest on that.

555
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,080
Speaker 2: Not his strongest argument, not his strongest argument. Get it

556
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 2: in writing, Gutenberg, come on. The second part is more interesting.

557
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 2: He says, the part of the money Foots put up

558
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 2: after that, the other eight hundred that wasn't alone. That

559
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 2: was investment as a partner, to share in the profit

560
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 2: or loss of the business. In other words, Gutenberg is saying,

561
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 2: in our language today, he wouldn't have said it this way,

562
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 2: that first eight hundred was debt, but the second eight

563
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 2: hundred was equity.

564
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 3: That's the he said.

565
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 4: He said.

566
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 2: Then kind of third beat of the document, there is

567
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 2: a sworn affidavit from Fust.

568
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 3: Remember who was there in the room.

569
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 2: In this part, Fust actually seems to back off his

570
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 2: original claim a little. You know, we don't know what

571
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 2: was said in the room, but it seems like in

572
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 2: the course of the hearing, maybe he reduced his claim

573
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 2: because in this affidavit he basically says, Okay, Gutenberg should

574
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 2: go back through his accounts, figure out how much of

575
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 2: the money that I gave him actually went into this

576
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 2: printing business, and he should pay me back with interest

577
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 2: for whatever part of the money did not go into

578
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 2: the printing business. If he took my money and spent

579
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 2: on something else, come on, he's got to pay me

580
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 2: back with interest for that. So Robert, actually we have

581
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 2: it in Fousse words translated into English.

582
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 3: Give it to a nice on the borrowed money which

583
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 3: he Gutenberg received and did not use for our common undertaking.

584
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 3: I demand from him the interest due under the terms

585
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 3: of the verdict.

586
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 2: And the court basically seems to agree with this, which

587
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 2: I have to say, seems reasonable, right. It does seem

588
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 2: like a very common sense thing. And the court sends

589
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 2: Gutenberg back to produce evidence on what he actually spent

590
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 2: on the project. I guess they're saying, like, show.

591
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 3: Us your books and if in fact you took his

592
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 3: mond existed, Ye, the.

593
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 2: Ledgers, Yes, books existed. The Codex is the book, and

594
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: it is a useful technology. But it's been around for

595
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 2: a long time at this point. Otherwise you got to

596
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:35,920
Speaker 2: use a scroll much less convenient. Let me tell you

597
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 2: from experience, So a little burnt'szod joke.

598
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 4: I see.

599
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 2: So the court says, Gutenberg, go back, look at your records,

600
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 2: pay him with interest for whatever you didn't put into

601
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 2: the project. And that's the end of what we know

602
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 2: from this document. It ends there, which is interesting given

603
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 2: the myth that has arisen around this part of the story.

604
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 2: The myth is basically, the evil financier Foost drove the

605
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 2: noble and brilliant inventor Gutenberg into bankruptcy. Everybody will say

606
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 2: they made him go bankrupt. Ye, just like people talk

607
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 2: about private equity and private credit today. Yeah, fair, fair,

608
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 2: and yeah maybe for similar reasons, right, Like it's a

609
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:20,719
Speaker 2: classic villain. Financiers are classic villains. Now, there is no

610
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 2: evidence that Gutenberg went bankrupt, and in fact, he kept

611
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:28,920
Speaker 2: printing things after this. My favorite is he printed a

612
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 2: wall calendar for doctors. Why do doctors need a wall calendar?

613
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:36,120
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. In the fourteen whatever I think it

614
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 2: was sixties or so, mid fourteen hundreds, it tells you,

615
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 2: based on astrology, when is the best time to do

616
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 2: your bloodletting for the year. There were bad days and

617
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: good days. There's a goodness to drain the blood of

618
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 2: your patients to help them.

619
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 3: I'm doing it to them.

620
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 2: Of course, he prints some more indulgences, always a good business.

621
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 2: He may have printed this giant Latin dictionary. He definitely

622
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 2: didn't print anything as far as we know, as beautiful

623
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 2: as the Bible. Maybe because he didn't have access to

624
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 2: capital anymore.

625
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 3: But he was he was, you know, he was so negad.

626
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 3: But it is a little sad, right, I mean away,

627
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 3: the man who invents the most amazing invention in Europe

628
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 3: at the time is reduced to, you know, basically running

629
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 3: a Kinko's in Harrisburg. Right. He's doing calendars, he's doing flyers,

630
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 3: this sort of thing, buy one, get one free. It

631
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 3: doesn't seem as miraculous. It just seems like a little

632
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 3: business he has.

633
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a way, as a story, you want him

634
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 2: to either have wild success or crushing failure. Not personally,

635
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 2: not as human being, but just for narrative purposes. The

636
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 2: middle is unsatisfying. One thing that is true is Foost

637
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 2: the lender. I'm not gonna call him a banker, but

638
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 2: the lender, the financier seems to have surpassed Gutenberg in

639
00:33:58,200 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 2: the printing business.

640
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 3: Well, he's gotten some of the money back and he's

641
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 3: gonna invest it in something else.

642
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 2: Well, and furthermore, and we know this again from like

643
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 2: really careful scholarship, I guess we know that he got

644
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:10,439
Speaker 2: some of the types, some of the metal letters that

645
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 2: had been in Gutenberg's shop, because I guess, you know,

646
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,439
Speaker 2: you can match the books that he printed with what

647
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 2: Gutenberg had printed before, and some.

648
00:34:17,359 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 3: Of the letters are Gutenberg's letters. They were sort of

649
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 3: unique at the time.

650
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 2: Yes, because they were sort of unique at the time,

651
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 2: that's right. And you know, maybe remember that loan was

652
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 2: the original loan was collateralized by the apparatus, right, So

653
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 2: maybe these letters are him collecting on the debt. We

654
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,359
Speaker 2: don't know, but that seems totally plausible to me. He

655
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 2: also hires a guy from a Gutenberg shop, this really

656
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 2: talented guy.

657
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 3: I guess no non competes then.

658
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:43,439
Speaker 4: Which is good.

659
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 3: It's good for the proliferation of technology. I suspect the

660
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:50,399
Speaker 3: employee walked out with a few letters in his pocket.

661
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 2: Right, right, Is that an exclamation mark in your pocket?

662
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 2: Or are you a tiny bit happy to see me.

663
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 2: I don't know if they had the exclamation mark then,

664
00:34:57,680 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 2: actually with.

665
00:34:59,000 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 3: The joke, it's a good joke.

666
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 2: So this this worker's name was Peter Schaeffer, I believe

667
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,040
Speaker 2: is pronounced and Fust, and Schaeffer did great and maybe

668
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:10,399
Speaker 2: Feust was a better businessman than Gutenberg, no idea.

669
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:10,799
Speaker 3: Don't know.

670
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 2: They start out with this beautiful psalter a book of Psalms,

671
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 2: you know, and they actually printed it in multiple colors,

672
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 2: which must have required, you know, you got to put

673
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 2: the same page through multiple times and get the alignment right,

674
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 2: like elegant technical work. And as a business move they

675
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 2: do a really clever thing that Gutenberg didn't do. They

676
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 2: put their names in the book, just like publishers do today,

677
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 2: although although at greater length, Robert read to us what

678
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 2: they put in that book.

679
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 3: The present Book of the Psalms has been fashioned by

680
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 3: the artful invention of printing, by means of letter forms

681
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 3: made without the driving of the pen, and in praise

682
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 3: of God, it has been brought faithfully and industriously to

683
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 3: completion by Johann Fust, citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schaeffer

684
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 3: of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord fourteen fifty seven.

685
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 3: It's early branding. They put their name on it. They

686
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 3: put their name on it. People are like, you know

687
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 3: what I need. I need a feust. We got to

688
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 3: get fous to do our next book. These guys do great.

689
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 3: This book does great. Their business does great.

690
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 2: They expand to Paris, which is home of a big university,

691
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 2: big book town. They're printing broadsheets. Of course, they're printing indulgences,

692
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 2: and they print Bibles. And their Bibles are clearly modeled

693
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,439
Speaker 2: on the Gutenberg Bible because the words are the same.

694
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 2: And you might say, of course the words are the same.

695
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 2: But in the era of the manuscript, right, something as

696
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 2: long as a Bible manuscript, meaning people are literally writing

697
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 2: out every book by hand. Something as long as a Bible,

698
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 2: there's always going to be a few little errors, omissions,

699
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 2: you leave out one word, whatever, change an end to

700
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 2: a butt, and print changes that right print. Once you

701
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 2: set the press, every book that comes out of that

702
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 2: edition is the same.

703
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 3: And that is.

704
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: Actually a new thing in the world.

705
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:58,280
Speaker 3: I mean, it becomes more like the unerring word of God.

706
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 3: Even though I know Gutenberg put it together, it has

707
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 3: that feel that this is more than the work of man.

708
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:05,840
Speaker 3: This is something eternal.

709
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:06,879
Speaker 4: I like that.

710
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 2: I believe that so fust and Schaeffer are growing, and

711
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 2: printing itself is grown. People who worked with Gutenberg and

712
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 2: with Fusen Schaeffer go to other towns, set up their shops,

713
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 2: and you just see this rapid spread across Europe of

714
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 2: printing presses in other German cities, but also in Rome

715
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 2: and Venice and Paris and Basel and small towns. It's

716
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 2: just happening fast. So there is the end of the

717
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 2: Gutenberg story. Of Gutenberg the man. We know that in

718
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 2: fourteen sixty five, when he's around sixty five years old,

719
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:44,760
Speaker 2: the Archbishop of Mainz gives him this basically this high

720
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:48,840
Speaker 2: status lifetime pension, and we have the formal announcement that

721
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 2: proclaimed it.

722
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 4: It read us a little of that.

723
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 3: From the Archbishop. We will clothe him every year always

724
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 3: like our noble men, and give him our court dress.

725
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 3: Also we grant him twenty bushels of grain and two

726
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 3: large barrels of wine for the use of his house,

727
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 3: free of duty, upon its arrival in Mainz every year

728
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,479
Speaker 3: as long as he lives, on condition that he will

729
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 3: not sell it or give it away as has been

730
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 3: promised in good faith by Johann Gutenberg himself.

731
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 2: Tax free wine has free wine. That is the happy ending,

732
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 2: I guess that we were looking for in.

733
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:24,320
Speaker 3: A way right. Well, that and you know, school children

734
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 3: don't learn about the Foost printing press. Gutenberg's name, even

735
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 3: if he didn't put it on the book itself, is famous.

736
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:35,359
Speaker 3: He is one of the greatest inventors of all time.

737
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:38,439
Speaker 2: We've got one last idea I want to talk about

738
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 2: before the end of the show, which is really I

739
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 2: think the first moment when you see the printing press

740
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 2: transform society.

741
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that.

742
00:38:47,960 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 5: In just a minute, Robert.

743
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 2: This last idea, we're doing this kind of epilogue to

744
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 2: the show. It's about indulgences. Indulgences, of course, were one

745
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 2: of the first things Gutenberg printed, one of the first

746
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 2: things Fustin Schaeffer printed. And it's really remarkable when you

747
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 2: look at the spread of printing across Europe, you see

748
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 2: this boom in the indulgence business because like remember, the

749
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 2: church was constrained before by the actual labor of the

750
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 2: scribes to write out each receipt for each indulgence. But

751
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:46,479
Speaker 2: by fifteen hundred you see a bishop in Sicily paying

752
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 2: a publisher to print one hundred and thirty thousand indulgences.

753
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 3: Do we know if sin went up to people like

754
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 3: set on their spouses more because there were just like

755
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 3: piles of indigence.

756
00:39:58,000 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 2: Like that, or if the price went down, right, I

757
00:39:59,960 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 2: don't know, in a competitive market. The price went down,

758
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 2: but there was a monopoly around the same time. You

759
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 2: see near Barcelona a monastery commissions more than two hundred

760
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 2: thousand indulgences.

761
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:11,919
Speaker 3: The line is around the plank.

762
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 2: Actually, don't know if there was a monopoly maybe different

763
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 2: like local you know, archbishops were competing, good question, don't know.

764
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 2: So the printing press itself is enabling this explosion in indulgences,

765
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 2: but a backlash is building.

766
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:29,280
Speaker 3: A backlash of people who want reform, who.

767
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 4: Want to protest.

768
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 2: In fifteen seventeen, Martin Luther, yes, Martin Luther, that Martin Luther,

769
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 2: professor priest in the German town of Wittenberg, because it's

770
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 2: Wittenberg in German. He decides that the indulgence thing has

771
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 2: gone too far.

772
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 3: Like it is, he sees it everywhere, It's all over

773
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 3: the place.

774
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's too much, And he writes this kind of

775
00:40:54,120 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 2: academic argument in Latin, basically against indulgences, you know, famously

776
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 2: his ninety five theces which get posted on the church

777
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 2: door and just posted he hammered them. Well that's the

778
00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 2: myth again, that's the yes, I was, I was actually

779
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 2: reading about that. I guess like the church store was

780
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 2: like the bulletin board, and everybody.

781
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 3: Pust it everything down. But whatever, it just sounds better,

782
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 3: it does.

783
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 2: So his ninety five theses ninety five propositions are largely

784
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 2: an argument against indulgences, and so I've grabbed a few

785
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 2: here for.

786
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:23,839
Speaker 1: You to read.

787
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 3: Give me a couple, all right, Well we'll skip over

788
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 3: some and go to number thirty two. Those who believe

789
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 3: that they can be certain of their salvation because they

790
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:37,360
Speaker 3: have indulgence letters will be eternally damned together with their teachers. Serious. Okay,

791
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 3: let's go to thirty six. Any truly repentant Christian has

792
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 3: a right to full remission of penalty and guilt even

793
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:49,919
Speaker 3: without indulgence letters. Save your money, Bro's coming right at them.

794
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 2: Yeah so yeah, So this, of course, famously right is

795
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:56,920
Speaker 2: the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, and it's happening like

796
00:41:57,280 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 2: you could argue, it has been argued it is happening

797
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,239
Speaker 2: partly because the invention of the printing press led to

798
00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 2: this proliferation of indulgences. And if you didn't know what

799
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:08,439
Speaker 2: was going to happen next, you might think this would

800
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 2: be bad for business for the printers. But no, because

801
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 2: first of all, the ninety five theses are suddenly reprinted everywhere.

802
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 2: Everybody loves list. It's a very interesting idea. It's very

803
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 2: much of the moment.

804
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 3: Number thirty six will shock you.

805
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 2: And really interestingly, in the next few years after this,

806
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,839
Speaker 2: Luther starts writing a lot, not just in Latin for

807
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:37,240
Speaker 2: this kind of academic and religious audience or priestly audience,

808
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,960
Speaker 2: but he's writing also in German for a much more

809
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:44,879
Speaker 2: popular audience. And in fact, the public goes wild for

810
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,480
Speaker 2: his work and it becomes almost like news. Like he

811
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 2: writes these short sermons that are just a few pages long,

812
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 2: and he'll take them to the printer and they'll be

813
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 2: out on the streets in a few days. Like it's

814
00:42:55,280 --> 00:43:00,040
Speaker 2: very dynamic, and it's enabled by the printing press. When

815
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 2: he's getting going, there's just one printer in Wittenberg. It's

816
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,479
Speaker 2: a small town and It's amazing the way Luther keeps

817
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 2: complaining about the printer to his friends.

818
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:09,879
Speaker 3: At one point he writes.

819
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 2: You would not believe how I regret and how I

820
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 2: am disgusted by his work. Writers love complaining about their publishers.

821
00:43:17,440 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 2: To Sloppy, He's not promoting.

822
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 3: He wasn't complaining.

823
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,760
Speaker 2: Nobody's complained about the marketing department yet. So he actually

824
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:26,400
Speaker 2: invites another printer to come and set up shop in

825
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,880
Speaker 2: town and soon, because Luther is this kind of proto

826
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 2: best selling author, there is this little industry of print

827
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,919
Speaker 2: shops in this small town, so they can just get

828
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:40,760
Speaker 2: Luther's stuff out fast.

829
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 3: This is like the invention of the media. There's a

830
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 3: whole ecosystem developing. People want the newest stuff now, you know,

831
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 3: it's a clear line from here all the way to TikTok.

832
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 2: So there is now this print industry, this media industry,

833
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 2: you could say, if you want to be a little anachronistic.

834
00:43:56,239 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 2: In Wittenberg, and over the course of Luther's lifetime, it

835
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,319
Speaker 2: just proliferates. Like he translates the Bible into German, so

836
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:09,120
Speaker 2: of course a big deal. Historically in his lifetime, these

837
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:13,759
Speaker 2: local printers print over one hundred thousand copies of this

838
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:15,360
Speaker 2: German translation.

839
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 3: Of the Bible. And in his lifetime, you know, more broadly,

840
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:21,800
Speaker 3: in the German speaking world, printing is proliferating, and something

841
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 3: like six or seven million evangelical pamphlets are printed in

842
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 3: German throughout the region. It's amazing because it's not just

843
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 3: a product. Gutenberg didn't invent something that just fulfilled one need.

844
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 3: It created a million needs. The moment the printing press

845
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 3: is there, you don't just want to print one thing

846
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 3: the Bible. You want to print arguments about the Bible

847
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 3: and arguments back and competing views.

848
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 2: Of this well, and it changes the dynamics of like, well,

849
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:54,720
Speaker 2: now you can have more intelligences. Now one random priest

850
00:44:55,160 --> 00:44:57,799
Speaker 2: can have an audience of millions in a way that

851
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 2: is almost unimaginable without the printing press.

852
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:02,919
Speaker 3: And if you didn't know how to read, you would

853
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 3: have incentive to learn how to read in order to

854
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 3: read these things, which creates more demand.

855
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 2: Yes, so maybe one idea to land on is like

856
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 2: new technology is a new tool, and what nobody ever

857
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 2: knows is how are people going to use that tool.

858
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:21,240
Speaker 3: These guys Gutenberg thought they were just making a cheaper,

859
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 3: more efficient way to make bibles. They didn't know what

860
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 3: else you could print beyond this, And then it goes

861
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 3: beyond religion. It changes politics, war, philosophy, science, everything I

862
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 3: want to.

863
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:37,000
Speaker 2: Say as we roll into the credits today, I want

864
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 2: to say thank you to the listener who wrote to

865
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 2: us to say that whenever he tells his friends about

866
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 2: our show, they say that doesn't sound like you, but

867
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:48,439
Speaker 2: it is a nice thought to tell your friends about

868
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 2: the show, and we encourage all of our listeners to

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Speaker 2: at least bring someone along. Truly, I am very grateful

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Speaker 2: to anyone who recommends the show to a friend. If

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Speaker 2: you write to us and tell us that you told

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Speaker 2: a friend, I will personally write back to you and

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Speaker 2: thank you for whatever that's worth. We're at Business History

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Speaker 2: at Pushkin FM. Our show today was produced by Gabriel

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Speaker 2: Hunter Chang was engineered by Sarah Bruguier. Our video editor

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00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 2: is Matt Nielsen. Our showrunner and editor is Ryan Dilly.

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Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and.

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Speaker 3: I'm Robert Smith. This is Business History. Thanks for listening.