| JOAN OF ARC BOUND TO THE STAKE |
A statue of her now stands on the spot where she suffered.
Among all the men of her time none did nobler work than Joan. And hence it is that we put the story of her life among the stories of the lives of the great men of the Middle Ages, although she was only a simple peasant girl.
GUTENBERG
LIVED FROM 1400-1468
I
While Joan of Arc was busy rescuing France from the English, another wonderful worker was busy in Germany. This was John Gutenberg, who was born in Mainz.
The Germans—and most other people—think that he was the inventor of the art of printing with movable types. And so in the cities of Dresden and Mainz his countrymen have put up statues in his memory.
Gutenberg's father was a man of good family. Very likely the boy was taught to read. But the books from which he learned were not like ours; they were written by hand. A better name for them than books is "manuscripts," which means hand-writings.
While Gutenberg was growing up a new way of making books came into use, which was a great deal better than copying by hand. It was what is called block-printing. The printer first cut a block of hard wood the size of the page that he was going to print. Then he cut out every word of the written page upon the smooth face of his block. This had to be very carefully done. When it was finished the printer had to cut away the wood from the sides of every letter. This left the letters raised, as the letters are in books now printed for the blind.