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Polonsy Foundation Publishes Virtual Gutenberg Bible

The Polonsy Foundation Digitization Project, a collaboration between Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican’s Biblioteca Apostolica, has digitized one of the most pristine copies of Johann Gutenberg’s masterwork, the Gutenberg Bible.


Beyond Gutenberg’s bible, the ambitious Polonsy collaborative project aims to digitze 1.5 million biblical manuscript pages for public access online.

Fewer than 50 copies of the Gutenberg Bible survive today and the Oxford Bodleian Library copy is described as one of only seven complete examples in the United Kingdom. Historians believe the Gutenberg Bible was produced in either 1454 or 1455.


The Gutenberg Bible, of course, is renowned as the first seminal work produced on Johann Gutenberg’s printing press. Gutenberg did not independently develop the printing press, but he did invent a highly repeatable process to apply moveable type that would usher in one of mankind’s most important developments in the mass production of print.


View Polonsy’s virtual version of the Gutenberg Bible online.