CH. viii. INVENTION OF PRINTING. 55 



territory of Principiato, where Gioja was born, has also a 

 compass for its arms, in memory of his discovery. 



Invention of Printing 1 , 1438. Before we go on to speak 

 of the wonderful voyages which followed the invention of the 

 compass, we must pause a moment to notice another great 

 change which took place about a hundred years after the 

 time of Bacon and Gioja, This was the invention of 

 printing, in the year 1438. In the early part of the fifteenth 

 century some people began to engrave, that is, to cut on 

 wood, pictures and texts of Scripture, and then to rub them 

 over with ink, and take an impression of them on paper. 

 One day it occurred to a man named John Gutenberg, of 

 Strasburg, that if the letters of a text could be made each 

 one separate, they might be used over and over again. He 

 began to try to make such letters, and with the help of John 

 Faust of Mayence, and Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim, both 

 of them working mechanics like himself, he succeeded in 

 making metal letters, or types as they are called. These 

 men finished printing the first Bible in the year 1455. In 

 1465 the first printing-press was started in Italy, and another 

 in Paris in 1469, while Caxton introduced printing into 

 England in 1474. 



It is easy to see what a great step this invention was 

 towards new knowledge. So long as people were obliged to 

 write out copies of every work, new books could only spread 

 very slowly, and old books were very dear and rare ; but as 

 soon as hundreds of copies could be printed off and sold in 

 one year, the works of the Greeks on science were collected 

 and published by clever men, and were much more read 

 than before ; and what was still more important, books 

 about new discoveries passed quickly from one country to 

 another, and those who were studying new truths were a,ble 



