f his
glasses; but he passed his days and sleepless nights there, wearing
himself out in the pursuit of his invention. There it was that he
engraved his movable types in wood, and projected casting them in metal,
and studied hard to find the means of inclosing them in _forms_, whether
of wood or of iron, to make the types into words, phrases, and lines,
and to leave spaces on the paper. There it was that he invented colored
mediums, oleaginous and yet drying, to reproduce these characters,
brushes and dabbers to spread the ink on the letters, boards to hold
them, and screws and weights to compress them. Months and years were
spent, as well as his own fortune and the funds of the firm, in these
persevering experiments, with alternate success and disappointment.

At length, having made a model of a press, which seemed to him to
combine all the requirements of printing, according to his ideas at that
time, he concealed it under his cloak, and walking to the town, went to
a skilful turner in wood and metal, named Conrad Saspach, who lived in
the Mercer's Lane, asking him to make the machine of full size. He
requested the workman to keep it secret, merely telling him that it was
a machine by the help of which he proposed to produce some masterpieces
of art and mechanism, of which the marvels should be known in due time.

The turner, taking the model in his hands, and turning it backward and
forward with the smile of contempt that a skilful artist usually puts on
when looking at a rough specimen, said, somewhat scornfully, "But it is
just simply a press that you are asking me for, Master Hans!"

"Yes," replied Gutenberg, with a grave and enthusiastic tone, "it is a
press, certainly, but a press from which shall soon flow in
inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvellous liquor that
has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of man! Through it God will spread
his Word. A spring of pure truth shall flow from it; like a new star, it
shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore
unknown to shine among men." He retired. The turner, who understood not
these words, made the machine, and delivered it at the monastery of
Arbogast.

This was the first printing-press.

As soon as he was in possession of his press, Gutenberg began printing.
Little is known of the first works which he sent out; but the strongly
religious disposition of the inventor leaves no doubt concerning the
nature of the labors to