Post 1: In the beginning...

An inventor! 

Johannes Gutenberg (c.1400–1468) was a trained goldsmith who arrived in Strasbourg in c.1428 C.E. as a political exile. While there he learned printing and began experimenting with movable type.  By 1448 Gutenberg had returned to his home town, Mainz.  The financial backing he obtained from lawyer, Johannes Fust, allowed Gutenberg to commence a printing business using the movable metal type and typecasting machine he had devised. 
Movable Metal Type
Previously printing type had been made from wood and so Gutenberg's raised metal type, of equal length and thickness, produced a clearer image.  The durable metal letters could be used again and again, and being separate they could be rapidly reassembled so that, suddenly, books could be printed more quickly and at such a reduced cost that reading and knowledge became widely available and were no longer restricted to the rich and powerful. 
Gutenberg Bible 
Gutenberg's famous "42-line Bible", the first full-length book ever printed comprised of 1286 pages in 2 volumes. Completed in 1455-6, it gets its name from the number of lines per column to each double-column page.  The Bible is also known as the 'Gutenberg Bible' and also the 'Mazarin Bible', for a copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin.  Forty-nine copies of the bible still exist of the 180 originally published. 
Blackletter Typeface 
Gutenberg and his colleagues, notably the calligrapher Peter Schöffer, meticulously copied the letters originally drawn by the scribes.  The style of type became known widely as "black letter" or "Gothic" and remained popular in Germany until the mid-1940s.