ABSTRACT
Our history books are filled with success stories about great innovations, such as agriculture, writing, seafaring, metal working, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the combustion engine, computers and genetic engineering, to name a few. All of these, and many other less- well-known or forgotten ones, may have shaped the history of humanity in ways that go well beyond even what the history book will admit. I would like to recount one of the fabulous tales (largely following the account in He, 1994), the tale of a financially troubled craftsman in the late European middle ages. His name was Johann Gutenberg, the story of his early life remains largely unknown. Historical records of lawsuits, however, establish that he had been working on the printing press with movable letters since at least 1439. It took him another 15 years — always on the edge of bankruptcy and often sued by various people for debts he was unable to repay — to make his invention workable and economically efficient. In the subsequent two decades, the use of this technology spread throughout the continent, the numbers of volumes printed in European countries have risen exponentially ever since (Baten and van Zanden, 2008). It has been suggested that this technology was the true foundation of modern Europe, that it facilitated both the consolidation of European nation states and the modernization of the economic organization during the early modern era ( Anderson, 1991 [1983]). Concurring popular theories hold that modern capitalism was driven by either the protestant ethic that came into being because of the religious reformation in Europe, or by the vast amounts of gold and silver acquired by Europeans in America after Columbus' (re-)discovery of that continent in 1492. The religious reformation relied crucially on the works of reformation leaders being printed and distributed among the literate upper class of the time. Furthermore, Columbus was reportedly inspired to undertake his voyage by reading a printed copy of Marco Polo's travel report. It is beyond doubt that the invention and subsequent widespread use of printing with movable letters in Europe sparked profound social, economic and technological changes, and a variety of further innovations.
