Guillaume Fichet
Guillaume Fichet was a French scholar, who cooperated with Johann Heynlin to establish the first printing press in France in 1470.Biography
He was born at Le Petit-Bornand-les-Glières, in Savoy. In 1467, he was elected rector of the Sorbonne, where he and Heynlin installed the first press ever set up in France. They brought from Switzerland three master typographers: Michael Friburger, Ulrich Gering and Martin Crantz. The first book printed was the Epistolae of Gasparinus Pergamensis. Also Fichet's own works followed, such as his Rhetorica. The publisher gained recognition by publishing several speeches made by leading Cardinal Basilios Bessarion. Bessarion's 1471-2 "Orations against the Turks," as the piece came to be called, is known as one of the first pieces of mass-propaganda used in Europe.
