While it is generally recognized that Johannes Gutenberg printed the monumental 42-line Gutenberg Bible in Mainz, Germany, around 1455, it remains largely unknown outside of East Asia that Jikji, the world’s oldest surviving book printed from moveable metal type, was printed 78 years earlier in Cheongju, South Korea.
The J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah and an international team of researchers have formed the From Jikji to Gutenberg project to research Jikji’s origins, generate awareness of the book’s earlier creation and magnify and underscore the invention of printing as a global phenomenon, rather than a Eurocentric achievement.