Every Innovation Has To Go Through

This saying is attributed to Johannes Gutenberg but is apocryphal — no primary source from Gutenberg survives. The three-stage model of innovation resistance (mockery, opposition, acceptance) is a widely circulating modern formulation often attributed to various historical figures without documentary basis. What is historically documented is that Gutenberg's press did face significant resistance: manuscript copyists, established book traders, and some ecclesiastical authorities viewed printing with suspicion, while the technology spread from Mainz across Europe with remarkable speed in the decades after 1450.