Incunabula (singular: incunabulum) are books printed in Europe before January 1, 1501 — the products of the first fifty years of the printing press. They sit at the boundary between manuscript culture and the print era, sharing characteristics of both, and they are among the most studied and most carefully preserved objects in the history of Western civilization. What They Are Johannes Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type printing to Europe around 1450 did not immediately produce books that looked like modern printed books.