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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?

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10 minutes

Last on

Mon 9 Mar 2020 04:50GMT

Image credit:

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

Sources

Fr茅d茅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, 鈥樷, Boston Globe, 29 August 2010,

Mary Wellesley 鈥溾 Apollo Magazine 8 September 2018聽 and 鈥溾澛犅

Jeremiah Dittmar 鈥淓urope鈥檚 Transformation After Gutenberg鈥 Centrepiece: Spring 2019

Fr茅d茅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
  • Sat 7 Mar 2020 14:50GMT
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 14:50GMT
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 15:50GMT
  • Sun 8 Mar 2020 22:50GMT
  • Mon 9 Mar 2020 04:50GMT

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