Gutenberg, chemistry and the advancement of knowledge
Chris Browne
A *
A Faculty of Medicine, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia.
Emeritus Professor Chris Browne is a medical researcher and academic who studied at York and Oxford, followed by 5 years at McGill in the 1970s before spending most of his working life in the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University. He spent 10 years developing HPLC methods for biomedical applications. He has been a book collector for more than 50 years and has put together during that time a personal library of nearly 15 000 books. His main interests are 19th and early 20th century English literature. He is currently the Program Director of Melbourne Rare Book Week. |
Australian Journal of Chemistry 76(8) 372-378 https://doi.org/10.1071/CH22253
Submitted: 30 November 2022 Accepted: 11 May 2023 Published: 30 June 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
This article is a brief review of the history of printing, centred around the life and inventions of Johannes Gutenberg, who is widely regarded as the father of printing. Starting with what we know of the earliest developments in printing in China, the article will present the little knowledge we have about Gutenberg’s life and a summary of his contribution to the invention and development of the printing press and its associated technologies. This will be illuminated by an examination of how his most famous publication, the 42-line Gutenberg Bible, came to be created. Gutenberg’s improvements to the chemistry of metal type and printing ink are outlined. The crucial importance of printing on the development of European society in the critical periods of the Reformation and the Renaissance and in the development and culture of science is obvious, but the lasting impact of the language of printing in today’s world is surprising.
Keywords: Gutenberg, history of science, ink chemistry, knowledge, lead alloys, printing, publishing, typography.
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