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Visit to the Gutenberg Museum by Eric Hellman

I tell people that Project Gutenberg “invented the eBook” and pioneered “Open Access” 55 years ago. It’s a simplification of the truth. There were digital books before Michael Hart typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer attached to Arpanet and scholars have been exchanging “preprints” as long as postal services existed. As I learned during my visit to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, the narrative that Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press is also a simplification of the truth.

My excursion to Mainz was enabled by my son’s frequent flyer and hotel points (he’s co-founder of a bus technology company), but if you have the chance, I highly recommend a visit to “The Gutenberg Museum - MOVED” even if you don’t have the free ride. The museum is temporarily housed in the town’s Natural History Museum while a new building is erected on the site of the old museum. The temporary space is beautiful - it once housed a Nunnery and gems of the collection are displayed in an innovative and informative way. You learn right away that no one knows what Gutenberg looked like- all the depictions of him have been based on an image made long after his death, and the beard that is always shown in modern depictions of him is in the style of that later date.

Dominating the first room is the ornate printing press featured in the Project Gutenberg logo. Called the “Columbia Press”, it was made in 1832, almost 400 years after Gutenberg’s original presses, which no longer exist. It is a spectacular work of art, seemingly disconnected from the dirty, noisy business of printing. Past that room are the Bibles. Both volumes of the “Shuckburg Bible” are on display, and the one surviving volume of the “Solms-Laubach Bible” is displayed next to a bible from the same era scribed by monks. One can imagine how people of the fifteenth century felt on seeing the new-fangled machine-produced books, so lacking in soul and the hand of the scribe. Letterpress slop produced with brute muscle instead of skill and finesse!

The highlight of any visit to the Gutenberg Museum is the printing demonstration using the wooden reconstruction of an original press. In this demonstration, the amazing technological advances of Gutenberg were explained. Movable type and printing technologies existed in Korea and China, but the success of the Gutenberg Press flowed out of a combination and refinement of existing technologies - the wooden press used in agriculture, the metal stamping and metallurgy used in coinage, and numerous innovations in ink, mechanical alignment and paper. Even venture capital was needed for the business of printing books to be successful!

Thanks to the Director of the Museum, Zvijezdana Cordier, I got to try my hand at printing a page. It takes a lot of muscle! The Museum Foundation, like Project Gutenberg, relies on a corps of volunteers and has only a few staff and a small operating budget. They rely heavily on their lovely Museum Shop for operating funds.

The printing press and the inexpensive distribution of printed works it enabled is often connected to the Reformation; Martin Luther’s 95 Theses came just 65 years or so after the Gutenberg Bible. I’m no historian, but I’ve lived through an analogous revolution in information distribution and the resulting changes in our society. It’s hard to imagine what changes will come next, and much work remains to be done in the refinement and extension of the work we’ve done following in Johannes Gutenberg’s footsteps.

<https://www.mainz.de/en/microsite/gutenberg-museum/>
<https://www.gutenberg-foundation.com/the-gutenberg-shop>

My photos from the visit:
<https://www.flickr.com/people/201893855@N02/>

Early American printers

Before the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, a different kind of battle was being waged on paper. Early American printers and publishers were not just neutral tradespeople; they were the architects of the social, religious, and political landscape of the Thirteen Colonies.

The story of American printing began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Elizabeth Glover and printer Stephen Daye set up the colonies’ very first press. Initially, the trade was fueled by faith. Bibles and religious tracts were incredibly scarce and in high demand, making spiritual literature the driving force behind the early publishing industry.

Before 1700 there were no colonial newspapers. Communication across hundreds of miles of wilderness was painfully slow, relying on handwritten dispatches carried by private couriers. For the average colonist, news of laws and events was a matter of hearsay—passed along by word of mouth in taverns or read aloud from simple postings in the town square.

By the mid-18th century the print landscape had transformed. Newspapers began sprouting up, particularly in Boston, turning isolated communities into a connected public.

When the British Crown began imposing heavy taxes on the colonies—most notably the Stamp Act of 1765—the printing press became a weapon of protest. Influential printers like Benjamin Franklin, William Goddard, and William Bradford stepped directly into the political fray. Many aligned themselves with the Sons of Liberty, using their papers and pamphlets to loudly denounce taxation without representation and champion a free press. As their criticism grew bolder, royal authorities frequently targeted them with charges of libel and sedition.

Despite their massive influence in steering the colonies toward revolution, the actual impact of these early printers is surprisingly overlooked. Most historical research focuses strictly on the biographies of famous individuals or the mechanics of early printing press technology. The broader story—of how a handful of printers leveraged the power of the written word to unite a divided people and ignite a revolution—remains a largely neglected chapter in the history of early America.

Some references:

Early American publishers and printers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_publishers_and_printers>

Bibliography of early American publishers and printers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_early_American_publishers_and_printers>

The Art & Practice of Typography by Edmund G. Gress
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54476>

Pioneer Imprints from Fifty States by Roger J. Trienens and Library of Congress
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48794>

Women in Translation Month

August is Women in Translation (WIT) Month! WIT Month is an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English.

Some interesting public domain books are listed below in no particular order, ranked by popularity:

The Devil’s Pool by George Sand
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21993>

The Story of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56158>

Barks and Purrs by Colette
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11737>

Nostalgia by Grazia Deledda
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53905>

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46409>

The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67929>

A Christian Woman by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54796>

Antoinette de Mirecourt, ou, Mariage secret et Chagrins cachés by Mrs. Leprohon
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24257>

The scorpion by Anna Elisabet Weirauch
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77582>

The Book of the Duke of True Lovers by de Pisan Christine
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36737>

Brazilian Tales by Albuquerque, Coelho Netto, Dolores, and Machado de Assis
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21040>

Fantasy: A Novel by Matilde Serao
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67143>

The letters of Madame de Sévigné : To her daughter and friends by Sévigné
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78579>

The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/467>

French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France by Marie
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11417>

The romance of my childhood and youth by Juliette Adam
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70563>

Coming Website Changes

Thank you to the many of you who responded to our survey on usage of MOBI filetypes. Based on the response, We are likely to keep producing the legacy MOBI format and replace the “KF8” MOBI format with “AZW3” files for use on modern Kindle devices.

New Releases at Gutenberg.org - July 2026

In the last month PGLAF added another 254 new public domain eBooks to the PG catalog. Of these 122 were added by Distributed Proofreaders. Thank you to all the volunteers who have helped to make these new titles freely available to the world.

The month’s eBooks are listed here (the list was getting too long for the newsletter!):

<https://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/202607.html>

A selection of this month’s notable and interesting titles:

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