The printer first had a letter cut in hard metal, this was called the punch; with it he stamped a mould known as the {9} matrix in which he was able to found a large number of exactly identical types of metal, usually of lead.
These, set side by side in a case, for the first time made it possible satisfactorily to print at reasonable cost a large number of copies of the same text, and, when that was done, the types could be taken apart and used for another work.
The earliest surviving specimen of printing--not counting a few undated letters of indulgence--is a fragment on the last judgment completed at Mayence before 1447.

In 1450 Gutenberg made a partnership with the rich goldsmith John Fust, and from their press issued, within the next five years, the famous Bible with 42 lines to a page, and a Donatus (Latin grammar) of 32 lines.

The printer of the Bible with 36 lines to a page, that is the next oldest surviving monument, was apparently a helper of Gutenberg, who set up an independent press in 1454.

Legible, clean-cut, comparatively cheap, these books demonstrated once for all the success of the new art, even though, for illuminated initials, they were still dependent on the hand of the scribe.
[Sidenote: Books and Reading] In those days before patents the new invention spread with wonderful rapidity, reaching Italy in 1465, Paris in 1470, London in 1480, Stockholm in 1482, Constantinople in 1487, Lisbon in 1490, and Madrid in 1499.

Only a few backward countries of Europe remained without a press.