The British Library wants to ensure the bibles last another 500 years

"If we can give access to them while preventing that, it will ensure they'll be with us 500 years from now.

"Of course, if you really need to look at the originals, you will get permission to do that, but a lot of the images are of such good quality that you'll be better off looking at them on the internet.

"We've been able to magnify them to such an extent that you can see details that it's very difficult to see with the naked eye."

Spy satellite technology

Ten researchers and technical experts from Tokyo's Keio University and from Japanese telecoms company NTT spent two weeks in the British Library to digitise the pages. They used technology originally designed for spy satellites.

Benedictine monks welcome wider access to the Gutenberg Bible

Keio University also has part of the bible available on its website.

Dom Cuthbert Brogan, prior of St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire - a Benedictine monastery - said it was fitting that the book should now join the internet revolution.

"The great thing about the Gutenberg Bible coming together with the internet is that there's a great turning point in technology there," he said.

Digital library

"With printing, we had the increase in literacy and the possibility of lots of people having a copy of the Bible, not just people who had the money to commission printed volumes.

"Now we have the internet doing the same thing again. We have the possibility of information not being kept to a few, but spread across the world by the web.

"It's wonderful that the British Library should choose the Gutenberg Bible to mark that transition.

The project is one of many digitisation projects underway at the library to aid conservation and widen access. The library recently announced a £25m deal with Digital Library Systems and IBM to "build" a national digital library.