# Cheap print multiplies false reports as easily as true ones

Date: 1500

## The fact

By 1500 cheap printed reports could freeze a false story in hundreds of copies. This Fact stores that disinformation multiplier as a later press cost, not as Gutenberg’s editorial intent.

## Context

Legal-print access and false reports use the same shop form. Split signs.

[Johannes Gutenberg](/people/johannes-gutenberg) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Academic print-and-rumour synthesis and Britannica’s print history independently describe early printed sensational reports.

Official or archival record: Cambridge University Press (https://www.cambridge.org/; Cambridge University Press).

## Significance

Information-quality path. Medium-high confidence on the phenomenon; low on a unique 1455 coefficient.

A false sheet is not a Bible. Keep the 42-line book.

## What is established and what is not

Established: early print carried false as well as official reports. Not established: that Gutenberg authored a named hoax in this catalog.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Johannes Gutenberg: https://factrail.ai/people/johannes-gutenberg

## Drivers

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg
- https://www.cambridge.org/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/gut-disinformation-cheap