Gutenberg Bibles Online

Richey writes: "The British Library is making the Gutenberg Bible, the first major bible printed in the West available online. (Direct link to the book)." This isn't the first high-res copy of the Gutenberg Bible online; a German university library has already done it with their copy, but it's still cool. Update: 11/23 8:25 AM by michael : For the people that skipped those boring history classes, this was the first book printed in the western world with movable type, a huge leap in printing technology.

Comments

You guys are missing the point!

[Jonathan]

This isn't just some religious thing. The Gutenberg Bible is important because it was the first book printed with moveable type in the West (The Chinese Empire actually had a moveable type several centuries prior, but as with their invention of gunpowder, they failed to use it effectively -- they were sort of the Xerox PARC of civilizations, I guess).

The thing about moveable type is that it made books afffordable. Like the Internet, it suddenly made a lot of information available to people.