Okay, you know, here we have had a problem here.

I knew we were at a big, big trouble.

I literally got on my knees, right?

13 minutes to the moon.

He's a two, coming soon.

50 things that made the modern economy, with Tim Hartford.

13 minutes to the moon.

On Christmas Day, 1438, one Andreas Dritzeng, a prosperous citizen of the city of Strasbourg,

died of the plague.

It was not an unusual fate at the time, but Dritzeng's death triggered a court case that

continues to intrigue to this day. Dritzeng had been in a partnership to make, well,

exactly what isn't clear.

And despite his substantial income, the costs of the mysterious project meant that Dritzeng was

up to his ears in debt. After Dritzeng's death, his erasable brothers sued his partners.

The court documents that survive tell of a secret art, and Dritzeng's partners were clearly

concerned that this secret art might be copied.

The court case was settled, and the senior partner continued to spend money in pursuit of his

adventure and art. His name, Johannes Gensfleisch Zuladen-Sum Gutenberg.

Gutenberg, of course, was working on the printing press, or more precisely, on an entire system

that would allow durable metal type to be mass-produced, flexibly rearranged, and used to print out

hundreds of copies of a book in a matter of days. At the centre of Gutenberg's system was a method

of mass-producing the metal type. This was essential. A single page of text would require about

...