Meanwhile Faust and Schoeffer had continued to print the Bible and other works, and had found a prosperous market in France and the German cities. Schoeffer cast a font of Greek type, and used this in printing a copy of Cicero's "De Officiis," which was eagerly bought by the professors and students of the great University of Paris. But as Faust was disposing of the last copies of this book in the French capital he was seized with the plague, and died almost immediately. For thirty-six years Peter Schoeffer continued printing books, making many improvements, and bringing out better and better editions of the Bible.
The capture of Mainz in 1462 by the Elector Adolphus of Nassau gave the secrets of the printing press to the civilized world. Presses were set up in Hamburg, Cologne, Strasburg, and Augsburg, two of Faust's former workmen began printing in Paris, and the Italian cities of Florence and Venice eagerly took up the new work. Between 1470 and 1480 twelve hundred and ninety-seven books were printed in Italy alone, an indication of what men thought of the value of Gutenberg's invention.
William Caxton, an English merchant, learned the new art while he was traveling in Germany, and when he returned home started a press at Westminster with a partner named Wynken de Worde. This was the first English press, but others were quickly set up at Oxford and York, Canterbury, Worcester, and Norwich, and books began to appear in a steady stream.
The art of printing has seen great changes since Gutenberg's day. The type is now made by machinery, inked by machinery, set and distributed again by machinery. The letters, when once set up, are cast in plates of entire pages, so that they can be kept for use whenever they are wanted. Stereotyping and electrotyping have made this possible. The Mergenthaler Linotype machine sets and casts type in the form of solid lines. The great presses of to-day can accomplish more in twelve hours than the presses of 1480 in as many months.
But the great press we have is the direct descendant of the little one that John Gutenberg built in the Zum Jungen at Mainz, and the letters we read on the printed page are after all only another form of those he cut out with so much patient labor on his wooden blocks in Strasburg. Printing is one of the greatest inventions the world has ever seen, but it had its beginning in the simple fact that a young German polisher of gems fell to wondering how a rude playing-card had been made.