7 Things You May Not Know About the Gutenberg Bible

On August 24, 1456, the printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed. An excerpt from the article:

"7 Things You May Not Know About the Gutenberg Bible

Explore seven fascinating facts about one of the rarest and most influential books in world history.

1. It wasn’t the world’s first printed book.

While the Gutenberg Bible helped introduce printing to the West, the process was already well established in other parts of the world. Chinese artisans were pressing ink onto paper as early as the second century A.D., and by the 800s, they had produced full-length books using wooden block printing. Movable type also first surfaced in the Far East. Sometime around the mid-11th century, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng developed a system of individual character types made from a mixture of baked clay and glue. Metal movable type was later used in Korea to create the “Jikji,” a collection of Zen Buddhist teachings. The Jikji was first published in 1377, some 75 years before Johannes Gutenberg began churning out his Bibles in Mainz, Germany."