Main content

Johannes Gutenberg's printing press changed the course of human history. It created a new way of doing business, drastically reduced the cost and speed of making books, and enabled texts, ideas and arguments to spread further and faster than ever before. So why did he struggle to make money from it?

Available now

10 minutes

Last on

Mon 9 Mar 2020 04:50GMT
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service South Asia

More episodes

Previous

Slot machines

See all episodes from 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Image credit:

A pedestal plate at the Gutenberg memorial in Mainz by Bertel Thorvaldsen (Credit: Werner Otto/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)

Sources

FrΓ©dΓ©ric Barbier Gutenberg's Europe: The Book and the Invention of Western Modernity London: Polity Press 2016

John Man The Gutenberg Revolution London: Bantam 2009 Ch. 2

Tom Scocca, β€˜β€™, Boston Globe, 29 August 2010,

Mary Wellesley β€œβ€ Apollo Magazine 8 September 2018Β  and β€œβ€Β Β 

Jeremiah Dittmar β€œEurope’s Transformation After Gutenberg” Centrepiece: Spring 2019

FrΓ©dΓ©ric Barbier Gutenberg's Europe

Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail, p. 15.

Elizabeth Eisenstein The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe New York: Cambridge University Press 1983

Andrew Marantz Anti-social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation New York: Viking 2019

, The British Library

Tom Scocca, Boston Globe, 29 August 2010

Broadcasts

  • Sat 7 Mar 2020 05:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East & East Asia only
  • Sat 7 Mar 2020 14:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service News Internet
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 14:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 15:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia, UK DAB/Freeview & Online only
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 22:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
  • Mon 9 Mar 2020 04:50GMT
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service South Asia

Podcast