“All that has been written to me about that marvelous man seen at Frankfurt is true,” wrote future Pope Pius II in a letter to a cardinal. “The script was very neat and legible … your grace would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses.” The marvelous man was Johannes Gutenberg, who allowed the Christians, as much the People of the Book as the Jews, to have a simple and efficient way of reproducing the bibles. Although Johannes never was able to profit off his invention, he revolutionized not only the spiritual realm, but also the entire Western culture.

On this day, August 24, in 1456, the first Gutenberg bible came out — from Heinrich Cremer of St. Stephens at Mainz. Gutenberg was never able to repay the sizable loans he took out to finance his book, and the machines, along with his methods, were repossessed.

The printing press was invented and refined by Gutenberg. He took existing press technology in use for making foodstuffs like oil, and adapted them to mass-producing books. He was the among the first to realize the idea of developing metal-engraved letters dipped in ink and pressed on to pages. Gutenberg’s bible came out to have exactly 42 lines on each page, which greatly influenced bibles generations afterward. Soon after, printing presses were in use all over Europe, producing not only bibles, but books, pamphlets, and everything in between.