According to some accounts Friele was a goldsmith for the bishop at Mainz, but most likely he was involved in the cloth trade.

A November 1455 legal document records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The Bible sold for 30 florins each, which was roughly three years' wages for an average clerk. He was born to Elyse Wyrich and Gensfleisch. This may perhaps be explained by the prior eminence of Italy in the paper and printing trade.

The Musical!, a musical about two people who wrote a musical about Johann Gutenberg inventing the printing press, began its Off-Broadway run in New York City. The invention of the making of types with punch, matrix and mould has been widely attributed to Gutenberg. The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Although Gutenberg was financially unsuccessful in his lifetime, the printing technologies spread quickly, and news and books began to travel across Europe much faster than before. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, ... for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored.". Gutenberg's early printing process, and what tests he may have made with movable type, are not known in great detail. It fed the growing Renaissance, and since it greatly facilitated scientific publishing, it was a major catalyst for the later scientific revolution. The house of Gänsfleisch was one of the patrician families of the town, tracing its lineage back to the thirteenth century." His father worked with the ecclesiastic mint. In this capacity they doubtless acquired considerable knowledge and technical skill in metal working.

Peter Schöffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Thus Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or re-started) a small printing shop, and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he at least supplied the type. The first securely dated book by Dutch printers is from 1471, and the Coster connection is today regarded as a mere legend. The 19th century printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg might not have been using type cast with a reusable matrix, but possibly wooden types that were carved individually. There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany, including the famous one by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) in Mainz, home to the eponymous Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing.

By 1450, the press was in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. Following his father's death in 1419, he is mentioned in the inheritance proceedings.

An old man by now, he moved to Eltville where he may have initiated and supervised a new printing press belonging to the brothers Bechtermünze. In January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized and he was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court) by von Nassau. This is then placed into a hand-held mould and a piece of type, or "sort", is cast by filling the mould with molten type-metal; this cools almost at once, and the resulting piece of type can be removed from the mould. The sorts can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of "movable type". Was Gutenberg's type produced by punches and copper matrices? However, there is one indirect supporter of the claim that Coster might be the inventor. Legend has it that the idea came to him "like a ray of light". Thus, they feel that "the decisive factor for the birth of typography", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, might have been a more progressive process than was previously thought. Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Hof Humbrecht, a property belonging to a distant relative. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans.

Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. Future pope Pius II in a letter to Cardinal Carvajal, March 1455. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period.