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Copernicus overthrew superstition and brought in science; Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical scholarship; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what Emerson calls "the last opportunity of Providence for the human race."
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Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects was the invention of printing with movable type. Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the century, and his associates and others credited with the invention not many years afterwards.
One visits also the house from which Luther addressed the multitude in the Dom Platz, or square: nor should another famous residence be forgotten; namely, that in which Goethe was born, in memory of whom a colossal bronze statue stands in the Goethe Platz. There is also a group here of three statues in honor of Gutenberg, Faust, and Schöffer, inventors of printing.
In July 1971, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal of making available for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to the public domain. A project that has long been considered by its critics as impossible on a large scale. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the first information provider on the internet and is the oldest digital library.
In these intestine struggles of Mainz, the young Gutenberg, himself a gentleman, and naturally fighting for the cause most holy in a son's eyes that of his father was defeated by the burgesses, and banished, with all the knights of his family, from the territory of Mainz.
You see, that curious invention of the German, John Gutenberg I mean printing by movable types was not known at that time, and even now, although half a century has passed since the Bible was printed abroad in Latin, no one with means and the power to do it has yet arisen to print an English Bible, but the day is not far distant when that work shall be done, I venture to prophesy, though I make no pretence to be among the prophets!
We merely suggest the hypothesis, novel since some centuries, that old Faustus and Gutenberg were as much inspired by the Evil One as they have been fabled to be, when they carved out of a mountain of ore the instrument yclept type, to completely exhaust the possibilities of which is of late announced as the sum of human destiny.
Until some new Gutenberg or Watt can invent a machine for magnifying the human mind, every fresh apparatus for multiplying its work is a fresh strain on the mind, a new realm for it to order and to rule.
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