Who was the European inventor of printing?

Who was the European inventor of printing?

Yet, despite this evidence, the invention of printing with movable type is regarded as a European discovery of the 15th century, and ascribed to Johannes Gutenberg, a printer of Mainz, Germany.

There is still some mystery connected with this invention. Four names are mentioned whenever the discovery of printing is discussed. They are Johannes Gutenberg, Laurens Costar, Peter Schaffer and Johannes Fusty. Historians did not agree for a long time on all the facts and theories, but in an effort to settle the dispute they decided to call Johannes Gutenberg the inventor of movable type, since his life was the best documented.

Gutenberg, born around 1400 in Mainz, was a printer who worked very diligently at his task of cutting letters into wooden blocks. At some time during the 1400’s, he conceived the idea of casting each letter as a small block of metal. No one knows whether he had heard of the Chinese and Korean systems, or if he took the idea from the Dutch printer, Lourens Coster, who may or may not have thought of the same method earlier. Johannes Fust, and his son-in-law, Peter Schoffer, who were also printers and metal casters, financed Gutenberg. Because of this close association, experts advanced the name of all the three men as the actual inventors of movable type printing.