Johannes Gutenberg Credit: invent.org

Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg was born in Mainz, Germany in 1397.
He had two brothers, and his parents were wealthy and offered him many learning oppurtunities. In contradiction to most of the people that time, Gutenberg learned to read. He studied metallurgy in Strasbourg. Gutenberg became a goldsmith in his hometown, Mainz. It was then he got the idea of making a printing press. That time, books were written by monks. It took a very long time to create one book, so books were also very expensive.
He created metal letters, all of the same size, so he could fit them on a frame.
Then he could easily press the letters against a piece of parchment.
This process could be repeated as much as desired, quickly producing multiple exact copies of a page. In 1452, Gutenberg borrowed some money which he used to print the bible. There were 200 copies printed of the Gutenberg Bible. Those bibles were very expensive, but also very beautiful.

Johannes Gutenberg Credit: invent.org

A few years later, in 1455, Gutenberg had to sell his printing press to his investor, Johann Fust, because of financial problems. Johannes Gutenberg died in 1468.

Gutenberg never got any appreciation for his work in his time, though his invention spread across Europe, and it became one of the most important mains of spreading new ideas quickly across Europe. The Renaissance was quickly transmitted across Europe, with the help of the printing press. The importance of the printing press is also illustrated with the following fact: the main ideas of protestantism were conceived long before Martin Luther (not Martin Luther King) published his ideas. But protestantism never survived before the invention of the printing press. But the ideas of Martin Luther quickly spread across Europe, thanks to the printing press. If the printing press hadn't been invented, protestantism probably wouldn't have had such a success as it had in the 16th century.