Europeans were no strangers to block printing : the Chinese had created primitive forms of moveable type - that is, blocks of words or letters which could be inked, transferred to paper or silk, and inked again - from wood and stone, but the real breakthrough in mass publishing did not come until 200 years later in the 15th century when Johan Gutenberg, aged 56, created a systematic method for using moveable, metal type. His famous Gutenberg Press was used first to print some German Poetry and later for the ground-breaking Gutenberg Bible, completely printed with sets of metal type. The book was printed in two volumes. Each contained two columns with 42 lines per page.