History of the Printing Press - Invention of the Printing Press Invention: printing press Function: noun / printï¿½ing press Definition: A machine that transfers lettering or images by contact with various forms of inked surface onto paper or similar material fed into it in various ways The device is used for printing many copies of a text on paper. Inventor: Johannes Gutenberg (aka Johann Gutenberg) Criteria; First practical. Modern prototype. Entrepreneur. Birth: c1400 in Mainz, Germany Death: February 3, 1468 in Mainz, Germany Nationality: German Milestones: 888 The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, was the first dated example of block printing. 1041 Bi Sheng in China invented movable clay type 1423 Europeans use xylography (art of engraving on wood, block printing) to produce books. 1430 Gutenberg moved from his native town of Mainz to Strasburg 1436 Gutenberg begins work on his printing press.

1437 Gutenberg was sued for "breach of promise of marriage" by a young lady of Strasburg 1440 Gutenberg completed his wooden press which used movable metal type. 1440 Laurens Janszoon Koster (Coster) is credited, by some, with inventing movable metal type 1444 Gutenberg returns to Mainz and sets up a printing shop 1446 Gutenberg prints the "Poem of the Last Judgment" 1448 Gutenberg prints the "Calendar for 1448" 1450 Gutenberg' formed a partnership with the wealthy Johann Fust 1450 Gutenberg begins work on a Bible, the first is 40 lines per page. 1452 Gutenberg begins printing the 42-line Bible in two volumes. 1454 Gutenberg prints indulgences (notes sold to Christians by the Pope, pardoning their sins) 1455 First block-printed Bible, the Biblia Pauperum, published in Germany. 1455 Gutenberg completed work on what is estimated to be 200 copies of the Bible 1455 Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt.

Investor Johann Faust gains control of print business 1457 First known color printing, a Psalter (a collection of Psalms for devotional use) by Faust. 1460 Gutenberg reestablished himself in the printing business with the aid of Conrad Humery 1461 Albrecht Pfister printed the first illustrated book Edelstein which featured a number of woodcuts. 1465 Gutenberg is appointed to the court of Archbishop Adolf of Nassau 1476 Two hundred woodcuts were used in a edition of Aesop's Fables 1476 First use of copper engravings instead of woodcuts for illustration 1476 William Caxton sets up his printing press in Westminster, England. 1499 Printing had become established in more than 2500 cities around Europe.

1499 An estimated 15 million books have been press printed, representing thirty thousand book titles CAPs: Johannes Gutenberg, Johann Gutenberg, Bi Sheng, Laurens Janszoon Koster, Johann Faust, Peter Schoffer, Albrecht Pfister, Conrad Humery, Archbishop Adolf of Nassau, William Caxton, Gutenberg Bible, 42-line Bible, Mazarin Bible, Diamond Sutra, Poem of the Last Judgment, Calendar for 1448, Psalter, Aesop's Fables, SIPs: printing press, movable type, xylography, metal type, indulgences, typography, letterpress printing, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story: In the mid-15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented a mechanical way of making books. This was the first example of mass book production. Before the invention of printing, multiple copies of a manuscript had to be made by hand, a laborious task that could take many years. Later books were produced by and for the Church using the process of wood engraving. This required the craftsman to cut away the background, leaving the area to be printed raised.

This process applied to both text and illustrations and was extremely time-consuming. When a page was complete, often comprising a number of blocks joined together, it would be inked and a sheet of paper was then pressed over it for an imprint. The susceptibility of wood to the elements gave such blocks a limited lifespan . In the Far East, movable type and printing presses were known but did not replace printing from individually carved wooden blocks, from movable clay type, processes much more efficient than hand copying. The use of movable type in printing was invented in 1041 AD by Bi Sheng in China. Since there are thousands of Chinese characters, the benefit of the technique is not as obvious as in European languages. In China, there were no texts similar to the Bible which could guarantee a printer return on the high capital investment of a printing press, and so the primary form of printing was wood block printing which was more suited for short runs of texts for which the return was uncertain It is not clear whether Gutenberg knew of these existing techniques or invented them independently, though the former is considered unlikely because of the substantial differences in technique.

Europeans use xylography (art of engraving on wood, block printing) to produce books and used by European textile makers to print patterns on fabric. Gutenberg began experimenting with metal typography (letterpress printing) after he had moved from his native town of Mainz to Strassburg around 1430. Knowing that wood-block type involved a great deal of time and expense to reproduce, because it had to be hand carved, Gutenberg concluded that metal type could be reproduced much more quickly once a single mold had been fashioned. When Johannes Gutenberg began building his press in 1436, he was unlikely to have realised that he was giving birth to an art form which would take center stage in the social and industrial revolutions which followed. He was German, his press was wooden, and the most important aspect of his invention was that it was the first form of printing to use movable type. His initial efforts enabled him in 1440 to mass-produce indulgences -- printed slips of paper sold by the Catholic Church to remit temporal punishments in purgatory for sins committed in this life, for those wealthy enough to afford indulgences.

Although Laurence Koster (Coster) of Haarlem, Netherlands also laid claim to the invention, scholars have generally accepted Gutenberg as the father of modern printing. Gutenberg left Strasburg, presumably about 1444. He seems to have perfected at enormous expense his invention shortly afterwards, as is shown by the oldest specimens of printing that have come down to us, the "Poem of the Last Judgment", and the "Calendar for 1448"). The fact that Arnolt Gelthuss, a relative of Gutenberg, lent him money in the year 1448 at Mainz points to the same conclusion. Legal documents indicate that Gutenberg probably began printing the Bible around 1450. It was in this year that Gutenberg entered into a partnership with Johann Fust who lent him money to finance the production of a Bible. Gutenberg certainly introduced efficient methods into book production, leading to a boom in the production of texts in Europe -- in large part, owing to the popularity of the Gutenberg Bibles, the first mass-produced work, starting in 1452. Even so, Gutenberg was a poor businessman, and made little money from his printing system.

The earliest dated specimens of printing by Gutenberg are papal indulgences (notes given to Christians by the Pope, pardoning their sins) issued in Mainz in 1454. In 1455, Gutenberg demonstrated the power of the printing press by selling copies of a two-volume Bible for a price that was the equivalent of approximately three years' wages for an average clerk, but it was significantly cheaper than a handwritten Bible that could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe. In 1455, just as the project was nearing completion Johann Fust sued Gutenberg, taking possession of his printing equipment and the almost completed edition of the Bible. Fust subsequently entered into partnership with Peter Schoffer, who had been Gutenberg's assistant, and the project was finally completed in 1456 whereupon Fust undertook the task of marketing the bible. Fust first attempted to sell the Bibles as manuscripts but once potential purchasers observed the uniformity of the volumes, he had to reveal the means by which they were produced.

The mortgage covered the copious stock of type which had evidently been already prepared for the edition of the Psalter, which was printed by Fust and Schoffer in August, 1457. This included new type in two sizes, as well as the world-famous initial letters with their ingenious contrivance for two-color printing. In 1457 Fust and Schoffer published a large Psalter, known as the Mainz Psalter, which featured printed red and blue intitials along with the black text. There is some debate about how these coloured letters were printed. They were either printed from two part metal blocks that were inked separately, re-assembled and then printed with the text, or they were stamped on after the main text was printed. Either way the process was time consuming and expensive so for several years it was more common for such decorative elements to be added by hand. The Mainz Psalter was also the first book to bear a printer's trademark and imprint, a printed date of publication and a colophon.

About 1457 Gutenberg also parted with his earliest-constructed founts of type, which he had made for the 40-line Bible,.Long before this Bible was printed the type had been used in an edition of the "Poem of the Last Judgment", and in the "Calendar for 1448", in editions of Donatus, and various other printed works. Most of this type fell into the possession of Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg.1460 The first person to print illustrated books was Albrecht Pfister. Around 1460 he published a book titled Der Ackermann von Bohmen (The Farmer from Bohmen). The only surviving copy of the first edition contains no illustrations but space has been left for them. A second edition printed in 1463 does include images. In 1461 Pfister printed an edition of Der Edelstein (a series of fables in German) which contained 101 woodcut illustrations. The woodcuts were in simple outline and were probably intended to be hand colored.

(Most surviving copies have in fact been colored.) Gutenberg next manufactured a new printer's outfit with the assistance he received from Conrad Humery, a distinguished and wealthy doctor of law, leader of the popular party, and chancellor of the council. This outfit comprised a set of small types fashioned after the round cursive handwriting used in books at that time and ornamented with an extraordinary number of ligatures. The type was used in the so-called "Catholicon" (grammar and alphabetic lexicon) in the year 1460, and also in several small books printed in Eltville down to the year 1472 by the brothers Echtermï¿½nze, relatives of Gutenberg. The Elector of Mainz, Archbishop Adolf of Nassau, presented him with a benefice (an ecclesiastical office in 1465) yielding an income and various privileges. Gutenberg's invention spread rapidly after his death in 1468.. It met in general with a ready, and an enthusiastic reception in the centers of culture. The names of more than 1000 printers, mostly of German origin, have come down to us from the fifteenth century.

In Italy we find well over 100 German printers, in France 30, in Spain 26. Many of the earliest printers outside of Germany had learned their art in Mainz, where they were known as "goldsmiths". Among those who were undeniably pupils of Gutenberg, and who probably were also assistants in the Gutenberg-Fust printing house were (besides Schoffer), Numeister, Keffer, and Ruppel; Mentel in Strasburg (before 1460), Pfister in Bamberg (1461), Sweynheim in Subiaco and Rome (1464), and Johann von Speyer in Venice (1469). The blocks used to illustrate early printed books were small and the images were often generic. There is evidence that printers exchanged blocks, with the same images being used in different editions of books. For example, two hundred woodcuts were used in a 1476 edition of Aesop's Fables and appear again in an edition by a different printer in 1480. There are also examples where the same image has been used to represent different subjects.

In early illustrated books the text and illustrations were printed in separate operations, possibly because the type and the wood blocks were of different heights, but later examples were printed in one impression. The first use of copper engravings for illustration occurred in 1476. Early experiments in using engraving for illustrations were not successful because the two different methods of printing not only required two operations; they required different types of equipment. As a result registration problems occurred. The solution was to print the images on separate sheets of paper and bind them into the book or to print on thin paper and cut out and paste the images in place. William Caxton learned the printing trade in Europe and set up his press in Westminster, England. 1476 Many early printing types were calligraphic - they imitated handwriting. Caxton used and was famed for his Black Letter type which imitated the writing of the Haarlem monks. Artistically, he was perhaps the finest printer of his day although, as a man of politics and letters, he was an amateur. The new printing presses had spread like brushfire through Europe. By 1499 print-houses had become established in more than 2500 cities in Europe.

Fifteen million books had been flung into a world where scholars would travel miles to visit a library stocked with twenty hand-written volumes. Scholars argue about the number. It could've been as few as eight million or as many as twenty four. But the output of new books had been staggering by any reasonable estimate. The people had suddenly come into possession of some thirty thousand new book titles. While the Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying, the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of the steam powered rotary press allowed thousands of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace. Gutenberg's invention did not make him rich, but it laid the foundation for the commercial mass production of books. The success of printing meant that books soon became cheaper, and ever wider parts of the population could afford them. More than ever before, it enabled people to follow debates and take part in discussions of matters that concerned them. As a consequence, the printed book also led to more stringent attempts at censorship. This was a sign that it was felt by those in authority to be dangerous and challenging to their position.

Gutenberg's Movable Metal Type In the Far East, movable type and printing presses were known but did not replace printing from individually carved wooden blocks, from movable clay type, processes much more efficient than hand copying. The use of movable type in printing was invented in 1041 AD by Bi Sheng in China. Since there are thousands of Chinese characters, the benefit of the technique is not as obvious as in European languages. It is not clear whether Gutenberg knew of these existing techniques or invented them independently, though the former is considered unlikely because of the substantial differences in technique.The print technology that produced the Gutenberg Bible marks the beginning of a cultural revolution unlike any that followed the development of print culture in Asia. Gutenberg was a goldsmith, a worker in metals, and a lapidary, and his invention both in conception and execution shows the worker in metals. Gutenberg multiplied the separate types in metal molds. The types thus produced he built in such a way that they might be aligned like the manuscript he was copying. His aim, technically and ï¿½sthetically so extremely difficult, was the mechanical reproduction of the characters used in the manuscripts, i.e. the hand lettered books of the time.

The works printed by Gutenberg plainly prove that the types used in them were made by a casting process where the letter-patterns were cut on small steel rods termed patrices, and the dies thus made were impressed on some soft metal, such as copper, producing the matrices, which were cast in the mold in such a manner as to form the "face" and "body" of the type at one operation. The printing type represents therefore a multiplicity of cast reproductions of the original die, or patrix. In addition to this technical process of type-setting, Gutenberg found himself confronted with a problem hardly less difficult, namely, the copying of the beautiful calligraphy found in the books of the fifteenth century, constantly bearing in mind that it must be possible to engrave and to cast the individual forms, since the types, when set, must be substantially replicas of the model. The genius of Gutenberg found a brilliant solution to this problem in all its complicated details. Even in the earliest types he made (e.g. in the Calendar for 1448), it can recognize not only the splendid reproduction of the actual forms of the original handwriting, but also the extremely artistic remodeling of individual letters necessitated by technical requirements.

The type reproductions were the work of a calligraphic artist of the highest order. He applied the well-tested rules of the calligraphist's art to the casting of types, observing in particular the rudimentary principle of always leaving the same space between the vertical columns of the text. Consequently Gutenberg prepared two markedly different forms of each letter, the normal separate form, and the compound or linked form which, being joined closely to the type next to it, avoids gaps. It is significant that this unique kind of letter is to be found in only four types, and these four are associated with Gutenberg. No typographer in the fifteenth century was able to follow the ideal of the original inventor, and consequently research attributes to Gutenberg types of this character, namely, the two Bible and the two Psalter types. Especially in the magnificent design and in the technical preparation of the Psalter of 1457 do we recognize the pure, ever-soaring inventive genius of Gutenberg. Gutenberg's Printing Press The spread of literacy and the development of universities meant that by the 15th century, despite an assembly line approach to the production of books, supply was no longer able to meet demand.

As a result there was widespread interest in finding an alternative means of producing books.Before books could be mass produced, several developments were necessary. A ready supply of suitable material that could be printed on was required. Manuscript books were written on vellum and this material was used for some early printed books, but vellum was expensive and not available in sufficient quantity for the mass production of books. The introduction of the technique of making paper and the subsequent development of a European papermaking industry was a necessary condition for the widespread adoption of print technology. Although a number of people had previously attempted to make metal type or had experimented with individual woodcut letters, it was not until a technique was devised for producing metal type in large quantities that printing with moveable type became economically feasible. Gutenberg, who had initially trained as a goldsmith, was to devise a means of producing metal type in sufficient quantities at a reasonable cost. This involved the design of a type-face and the production of molds used for making the individual pieces of type, as well as the development of an alloy that was soft enough to cast yet hard enough to use for printing. It was also necessary to develop suitable inks for printing with the new type.

The water-based inks used for hand lettering and for block printing will not stick to metal type, therefore a viscous oil based ink was required. Finally, a press was needed for transferring the image from type to paper. Precedents existed in the presses used for making wine, cheese and paper and one of Johannes Gutenberg's innovations was to adapt these presses for the printing process. An operator worked a lever to increase and decrease the pressure of the block against the paper. The invention of the printing press, in turn, set off a social revolution that is still in progress. TO LEARN MORE Who Invented the Printing Press? Who Invented the Printing Press? By Elizabeth Palermo, Associate Editor | February 25, 2014 01:48am ET MORE Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1398-1468) Credit: Public domain. Johannes Gutenberg is usually cited as the inventor of the printing press. Indeed, the German goldsmith's 15th-century contribution to the technology was revolutionary — enabling the mass production of books and the rapid dissemination of knowledge throughout Europe. However, the history of printing begins long before Gutenberg's time.

Chinese monks and blocks Nearly 600 years before Gutenberg, Chinese monks were setting ink to paper using a method known as block printing, in which wooden blocks are coated with ink and pressed to sheets of paper. One of the earliest surviving books printed in this fashion — an ancient Buddhist text known as "The Diamond Sutra" — was created in 868 during the Tang (T'ang) Dynasty (618-909) in China. The book, which was sealed inside a cave near the city of Dunhuang, China, for nearly a thousand years before its discovery in 1900, is now housed in the British Library in London. The carved wooden blocks used for this early method of printing were also used in Japan and Korea as early as the eighth century. Private printers in these places used both wood and metal blocks to produce Buddhist and Taoist treatises and histories in the centuries before movable type was invented. An important advancement to woodblock printing came in the early eleventh century, when a Chinese peasant named Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng) developed the world's first movable type.

Though Sheng himself was a commoner and didn't leave much of a historical trail, his ingenious method of printing, which involved the production of hundreds of individual characters, was well-documented by his contemporary, a scholar and scientist named Shen Kuo. In his 11th-century work, "Dream Pool Essays," Kuo explains that Sheng's movable characters were made out of baked clay. The ink he used was a mix of pine resin, wax and paper ashes, and as Kuo tells it, Sheng's method could be used to print thousands of copies of a document fairly quickly. While earthenware movable type was used by several other Chinese printers throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, Sheng's movable type didn't go mainstream in China or elsewhere until many centuries later. In the 14th century, Wang Chen, a Chinese government official of the Yuan Dynasty, independently created his own set of movable characters out of wood. His motivation for developing this new method of printing was the publication of a voluminous series of books on agriculture, titled "Nung Shu." "Nung Shu" was eventually printed in 1313 using tried-and-true woodblock methods, not movable type.

But Chen's printing method did catch on, albeit slowly, and was used for reproducing documents in the centuries that followed. Metal type — made from bronze and perhaps tin — was also used in China for the printing of books and paper money until at least the 18th century. Historical evidence suggests that metal movable type was also developed independently in Korea in the late 14th century. In 1377, a Korean monk named Baegun is credited with printing a compilation of Buddhist sayings using movable metal type. The two-volume book, known as "Jikji," is believed to be the oldest book in the world printed with metal type. One volume of the work is held at the National Library of France. Despite early successes with movable type, this method of printing didn't catch on as quickly in Asia as it did in Europe. This lukewarm reception was most likely due to the complexities of Asian writing systems . Unlike the concise, alphabetic script of many Western languages, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are made up of thousands of characters, which would each have to be cast individually for printing using movable type. Such a daunting task may have made woodblocks seem like a more efficient option for printing in these languages.

Europeans, however, took to movable type quickly. Before the invention of the printing press — sometime between 1440 and 1450 — most European texts were printed using xylography, a form of woodblock printing similar to the Chinese method used to print "The Diamond Sutra" in 868. Manuscripts not printed with woodblocks were painstakingly copied by hand. Both processes were extremely labor intensive and, as a result, books in Europe were very expensive and few could afford to buy them. But all that changed in the middle of the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg established himself as a goldsmith and craftsman in Strasbourg, Germany. In Strasbourg, Gutenberg first began experimenting with both xylography and the development of a more efficient method of printing. A printer demonstrates a Gutenberg press. Credit: upstudio / Shutterstock.com Gutenberg printing press Like Bi Sheng, Wang Chen and Baegun before him, Gutenberg determined that to speed up the printing process, he would need to break the conventional wooden blocks down into their individual components — lower- and upper-case letters, punctuation marks, etc.

He cast these movable blocks of letters and symbols out of various metals, including lead, antimony and tin. He also created his own ink using linseed oil and soot — a development that represented a major improvement over the water-based inks used in China. But what really set Gutenberg apart from his predecessors in Asia was his development of a press that mechanized the transfer of ink from movable type to paper. Adapting the screw mechanisms found in wine presses, papermakers' presses and linen presses, Gutenberg developed a press perfectly suited for printing. The first printing press allowed for an assembly line-style production process that was much more efficient than pressing paper to ink by hand. For the first time in history, books could be mass-produced — and at a fraction of the cost of conventional printing methods. Examples of movable type, which uses separate components for each letter, number and punctuation mark. Credit: computersmiths - History of Chinese Invention - The Invention of Block Printing History of Chinese Invention - The Invention of Block Printing The invention of printing is generally conceded to be one of the defining inventions for the advancement of civilization. Gutenberg's movable type printing press about 1450 AD is often cited as the single greatest invention for world civilization.

An important event for the Eastern world that took place during the Tang (618-906) dynasty was the invention of printing, possibly between the 4th and 7th century AD. It began as blocks cut from wood used to print textiles and then used to reproduce short Buddhist religious texts that were carried as charms by believers. Later long scrolls and books were produced, first by wood-block printing and then, beginning in the 11th century, by using movable type. Inexpensive printed books became widely available in China during the Song (960-1279) dynasty. The first mention of printing was in an imperial decree of 593 in which Sui emperor Wen-ti ordered the printing of Buddhist images and scriptures. The text was first written on a piece of thin paper, then glued face down onto a wooden plate. The characters were carved out to make a wood-block printing plate, which was used to print the text. Wood-block required a new block had to be carved for every page in a book, but when the stamps were complete, an expert could print a thousand or more sheets a day.

In the 9th century, printed books first appeared in quantities in Shu (modern Szechuan province) and could be purchased from private dealers. Soon the printing technique spread to other provinces, and by the end of the 9th century it was common all over China. The printed books included Confucian classics, Buddhist scriptures, dictionaries, mathematics and others. The technique was advanced very fast. By 1000, paged books in the modern style had replaced scrolls. Two color printing (black and red) was seen as early as 1340. The "Diamond Sutra" scroll is the world's earliest, dated, printed book. A central text of Indian Buddhism, the work was first translated from Sanskrit into Chinese in about 400 AD, and block-printed in China in 868 AD. Although not the earliest example of blockprinting, this scroll is the earliest which bears an actual date.

The colophon, at the inner end, reads: "Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e., 11th May, 868 AD]". The scroll was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein in a walled-up cave at Dunhuang cave (Caves of the Thousand Buddhas), near the Silk Road in northwest China. It was one of a small number of printed items among many thousands of manuscripts, comprising a library which must have been sealed about 1000 AD. The quality of definition makes it clear that the blockcutter had a considerable experience and skill. It is not known where the printing was carried out, although Sichuan, in southwest China, is known to have been a center of printing activity at this time. These illustrations from the British Library reveal details from the frontispiece (next to the title page), along with a page detail. As late as the Tang dynasty the production of books by block printing was still practiced on a limited scale.

It was not until the time of the Late Tang (923-936) that the government, upon the recommendation of its prime minister Feng Tao, first sponsored the reproduction of the Five Classics by block printing. From then on practically all important books were produced by block printing. During the Ch'ing-li period (1041-1048) the printing technique was further advanced through the invention of movable type . However, even the greatest technology is constrained by cultural circumstances. Chinese character ideograms are too specific. Consequently, the thousands of distinct characters are difficulte to categorize in molds. And although the more complex characters can often be decomposed into simpler elements, the process of doing so is so unsystematic that mechanising it efficiently proved impossible. True mass printing could only thrive in a culture with a less sophisticated writing system – an alphabet of few characters. Movable type is a reform in the history of printing and contributed much to human civilization. The basic print technology may have made its way to Europe from China in the 1300s, although some scholars claim that a European had the insight independently.

Building on movable type in the 1450s, Dutch goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg transformed Western civilization and society with mass printing, enabling the dispersal of information to the populace. This print invention is regarded by many as the invention of the millennium. References FC74: The invention of the printing press and its effects - The Flow of History The Flow of History A Dynamic and Graphic Approach to Teaching History Primary Links FC74: The invention of the printing press and its effects Flowchart Covered in multimedia lecture # 2943 . Introduction At the height of the Hussite crisis in the early 1400's, when the authorities ordered 200 manuscripts of heretical writings burned, people on both sides realized quite well the significance of that act. Two hundred handwritten manuscripts would be hard to replace. Not only would it be a time consuming job, but also trained scribes would be hard to find. After all, most of them worked for the Church, and it seemed unlikely that the Church would loan out its scribes to copy the works of heretics. Although the Hussites more than held their own against the Church, their movement remained confined mainly to the borders of their homeland of Bohemia.

One main reason for this was that there was no mass media, such as the printing press to spread the word. A century later, all that had changed. Like any other invention, the printing press came along and had an impact when the right conditions existed at the right time and place. In this case, that was Europe in the mid 1400's. Like many or most inventions, the printing press was not the result of just one man's ingenious insight into all the problems involved in creating the printing press. Rather, printing was a combination of several different inventions and innovations: block printing, rag paper, oil based ink, interchangeable metal type, and the squeeze press. If one process started the chain reaction of events that led to the invention of the printing press, it was the rise of towns in Western Europe that sparked trade with the outside world all the way to China. That trade exposed Europeans to three things important for the invention of the printing press: rag paper, block printing, and, oddly enough, the Black Death. For centuries the Chinese had been making rag paper, which was made from a pulp of water and discarded rags that was then pressed into sheets of paper.

When the Arabs met the Chinese at the battle of the Talas River in 751 A.D., they carried off several prisoners skilled in making such paper. The technology spread gradually across the Muslim world, up through Spain and into Western Europe by the late 1200's. The squeeze press used in pressing the pulp into sheets of paper would also lend itself to pressing print evenly onto paper. The Black Death, which itself spread to Western Europe thanks to expanded trade routes, also greatly catalyzed the invention of the printing press in three ways, two of which combined with the invention of rag paper to provide Europe with plentiful paper. First of all, the survivors of the Black Death inherited the property of those who did not survive, so that even peasants found themselves a good deal richer. Since the textile industry was the most developed industry in Western Europe at that time, it should come as no surprise that people spent their money largely on new clothes. However, clothes wear out, leaving rags. As a result, fourteenth century Europe had plenty of rags to make into rag paper, which was much cheaper than the parchment (sheepskin) and vellum (calfskin) used to make books until then.

Even by 1300, paper was only one-sixth the cost of parchment, and its relative cost continued to fall. Considering it took 170 calfskins or 300 sheepskins to make one copy of the Bible, we can see what a bargain paper was. But the Black Death had also killed off many of the monks who copied the books, since the crowded conditions in the monasteries had contributed to an unusually high mortality rate. One result of this was that the cost of copying books rose drastically while the cost of paper was dropping. Many people considered this unacceptable and looked for a better way to copy books. Thus the Black Death rag paper combined to create both lots of cheap paper plus an incentive for the invention of the printing press. The Black Death also helped lead to the decline of the Church, the rise of a money economy, and subsequently the Italian Renaissance with its secular ideas and emphasis on painting. It was the Renaissance artists who, in their search for a more durable paint, came up with oil-based paints. Adapting these to an oil-based ink that would adhere to metal type was fairly simple. Block printing, carved on porcelain, had existed for centuries before making its way to Europe.

Some experiments with interchangeable copper type had been carried on in Korea. However, Chinese printing did not advance beyond that, possibly because the Chinese writing system used thousands of characters and was too unmanageable. For centuries after its introduction into Europe, block printing still found little use, since wooden printing blocks wore out quickly when compared to the time it took to carve them. As a result of the time and expense involved in making block prints, a few playing cards and pages of books were printed this way, but little else. What people needed was a movable type made of metal. And here again, the revival of towns and trade played a major role, since it stimulated a mining boom, especially in Germany, along with better techniques for working metals, including soft metals such as gold and copper. It was a goldsmith from Mainz, Germany, Johannes Gutenberg, who created a durable and interchangeable metal type that allowed him to print many different pages, using the same letters over and over again in different combinations. It was also Gutenberg who combined all these disparate elements of movable type, rag paper, the squeeze press, and oil based inks to invent the first printing press in 1451. The first printed books were religious in nature, as were most medieval books.

They also imitated (handwritten) manuscript form so that people would accept this new revolutionary way of copying books. The printing press soon changed the forms and uses of books quite radically. Books stopped imitating manuscript forms such as lined paper to help the copiers and abbreviations to save time in copying. They also covered an increasingly wider variety of non-religious topics (such as grammars, etiquette, and geology books) that appealed especially to the professional members of the middle class. By 1482, there were about 100 printing presses in Western Europe: 50 in Italy, 30 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 each in Spain and Holland, and 4 in England. A Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, realized that the real market was not for big heavy volumes of the Bible, but for smaller, cheaper, and easier to handle "pocket books". Manutius further revolutionized book copying by his focusing on these smaller editions that more people could afford. He printed translations of the Greek classics and thus helped spread knowledge in general, and the Renaissance in particular, across Europe.

By 1500, there were some 40,000 different editions with over 6,000,000 copies in print. The impact of the printing press The printing press had dramatic effects on European civilization. Its immediate effect was that it spread information quickly and accurately. This helped create a wider literate reading public. However, its importance lay not just in how it spread information and opinions, but also in what sorts of information and opinions it was spreading. There were two main directions printing took, both of which were probably totally unforeseen by its creators. First of all, more and more books of a secular nature were printed, with especially profound results in science. Scientists working on the same problem in different parts of Europe especially benefited, since they could print the results of their work and share it accurately with a large number of other scientists. They in turn could take that accurate, not miscopied, information, work with it and advance knowledge and understanding further. Of course, they could accurately share their information with many others and the process would continue. By the 1600's, this process would lead to the Scientific Revolution of the Enlightenment, which would radically alter how Europeans viewed the world and universe.

The printing press also created its share of trouble as far as some people were concerned. It took book copying out of the hands of the Church and made it much harder for the Church to control or censor what was being written. It was hard enough to control what Wycliffe and Hus wrote with just a few hundred copies of their works in circulation. Imagine the problems the Church had when literally thousands of such works could be produced at a fraction of the cost. Each new printing press was just another hole in the dyke to be plugged up, and the Church had only so many fingers with which to do the job. It is no accident that the breakup of Europe's religious unity during the Protestant Reformation corresponded with the spread of printing. The difference between Martin Luther's successful Reformation and the Hussites' much more limited success was that Luther was armed with the printing press and knew how to use it with devastating effect. Some people go as far as to say that the printing press is the most important invention between the invention of writing itself and the computer. Although it is impossible to justify that statement to everyone's satisfaction, one can safely say that the printing press has been one of the most powerful inventions of the modern era.

It has advanced and spread knowledge and molded public opinion in a way that nothing before the advent of television and radio in the twentieth century could rival. If it were not able to, then freedom of the press would not be such a jealously guarded liberty as it is today. » The impact of the printing press, The Reformation, Renaissance and Reformation, SOSE: History Year 8, QLD | Online Education Home Schooling Skwirk Australia 0 Exams Introduction The printing press was one of the most significant inventions of the Middle Ages. It was invented in the mid-15th century (during the Renaissance period) by a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg. As it enabled the fast flow of information and encouraged the spread of new ideas, it was also a huge driving force behind the spread of Protestantism across Europe. Only half a century after the first Christian Bible was published in 1452, the printing press acted as a catalyst for the decline of the Catholic Church in north-western Europe. Before the printing press During ancient times, and for most of the Middle Ages, books were hand-written by scribes or monks and many people did not learn how to read.

Most books were written in Latin, a language which only the most educated people could understand. This was before the printing press revolutionised the world of literature. A ground-breaking invention Johannes Gutenberg was the German goldsmith who invented the printing press in the mid-15th century. As he was not famous during his lifetime, Gutenberg's exact date of birth is not known; it is thought to be around 1400. It is also believed that he first commenced work on his printing press in the late 1430s and had finished it by 1440. See Image one The printing press is considered one of the most significant inventions of the Middle Ages because, like nothing before, it enabled the fast flow of information and lead to the spread of new ideas. Once it became possible to reproduce text very quickly, books could be read by many more people. This meant that people who were previously illiterate now had motivation to learn how to read, which lead to a more educated and inquisitive population. Impact of the printing press on the Catholic Church Now that books were being translated from Latin into different languages, people began to question why Mass was still being delivered in Latin.

People such as Martin Luther started asking why Church services were not conducted in a language that all members of society, regardless of their level of wealth and education, could actually understand. The first book to be printed in several volumes and multiple copies was the Bible. It was published by Gutenberg and his associate, Johann Fust in 1452. This was some 65 years before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany (refer to Topic three, Chapter two). If it had not been for Gutenberg's invention, news of Luther's revolutionary ideas would not have been able to spread as quickly as they did. See Image two Luther's 95 theses and the Protestant pamphlets Within weeks of Luther writing his 95 theses in 1517, pamphlets were copied, printed and distributed across Germany. Between 1518 and 1520, copies of these pamphlets reached people in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Italy, France and England. See Animation one See Image three Printing press - New World Encyclopedia Printing press For the invention and technology of movable type, see Movable type.

Printing press from 1811, photographed in Munich, Germany. A printing press is a mechanical device to print many copies of text on a medium such as paper or cloth. The machine applies pressure to an inked surface resting on the medium, thereby transferring an image. Invention of the printing press has been attributed to various people, including Laurens J. Coster of the Netherlands and Panfilo Castaldi of Italy , but most scholars credit Johannes Gutenberg , a German goldsmith, with its invention. [1] [2] Both woodblock printing and movable type printing technologies had been developed in ancient China and Korea a few hundred years earlier, but their presses differed from that used by Gutenberg and their impact was limited. Printing methods based on Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly first across Europe and then the rest of the world. Books became widely available and affordable, leading to a dramatic rise in the adult literacy rate throughout Europe. In addition, scientists and scholars were able to publish their discoveries and ideas and communicate with one another through scholarly journals. This development contributed to the coming of the scientific revolution.

Contents 10 Credits Gutenberg's press was later replaced by a steam-powered machine, followed by the rotary printing press that allowed the printing of millions of copies of a page per day. As a means of creating reproductions for mass consumption, the printing press has recently been superseded by the advent of offset printing. Historical beginnings Finely crafted books, like the 1249 Song Dynasty Bencao (materia medica) shown here, were produced by woodblock in China as early as the ninth century. The earliest form of printing , known as woodblock printing, appears to have originated in East Asia. In this technique, carved wooden blocks were pressed against sheets of paper to produce impressions on the paper. This method was used in China to print the Buddhist scripture known as the Diamond Sutra in the mid-ninth century CE. [3] Recently, another Buddhist scripture, dating to about 750 C.E. , was discovered in a Korean pagoda and is regarded as the earliest known printed work in the world. [1] The invention of printing with movable type has been attributed to Bi Sheng of China, who used clay type in 1041.

Later, Wang Zhen produced wood type, which was more durable, and metal type was produced by members of the Korean Goryeo dynasty. The Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377, is the oldest extant book printed with movable metal type. [1] The overall invention of Gutenberg's printing method depended for some of its elements on a combination of technologies from East Asia, including paper , woodblock printing, and possibly Bi Sheng's movable type printing technology . In addition, there was a growing demand by the general European public for the lower-cost paper books , instead of the exorbitantly expensive parchment books. [2] By 1424, Cambridge University library owned only 122 books, each of which had a value equal to that of a farm or vineyard. [2] The demand for these books was driven by rising literacy among the middle class and students in Western Europe. [2] At this time, the Renaissance was still in its early stages, and the populace was gradually removing the monopoly the clergy had held on literacy. [2] Although woodblock printing had arrived in Europe at approximately the same time paper did, this method was not as suitable for literary communication as it was in the East.

[2] Block printing is well-suited to written Chinese because character alignment is not critical. On the other hand, the existence of over 5,000 basic characters made the Chinese movable type technology somewhat inefficient and economically impractical, in terms of profits for the ancient Chinese book publishers. [2] Movable type offered a great advance for the West, because the Latin alphabet requires precise alignment of a much simpler character set. [2] In the development of the printing press, a key technological feature provided European inventors with advantage over their Chinese counterparts: the screw-based presses used in wine and olive oil production. [2] Attaining mechanical sophistication in approximately the year 1000 C.E. , devices for applying pressure on a flat-plane were common in Europe. [4] Gutenberg's Press In this woodblock from 1568, the printer on the left is removing a page from the press, and the one on the right is inking the text-blocks. Johannes Gutenberg 's work on the printing press began in approximately 1436, when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehan—a man he had previously instructed in gem-cutting—and Andreas Heilmann, owner of a paper mill.

[2] It was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that official records exist, in which the testimony of witnesses discussed type, an inventory of metals (including lead ), and his type mold. [2] Others in Europe were developing movable type at this time, including goldsmith Procopius Waldfoghel of France and Laurens Janszoon Coster of the Netherlands . [2] They are not known to have contributed specific advances to the printing press. [2] [5] Having previously worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. He was the first to make type from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony , which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books and proved to be more suitable for printing than the clay , wooden or bronze types invented in East Asia. To create these lead alloy types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention, a special matrix enabling the quick and precise molding of new type blocks from a uniform template. Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink that was more durable than the earlier water-based inks.

For printing material, he used both vellum and paper , the latter having been introduced in Europe a few centuries earlier from China by way of the Arabs . In the Gutenberg Bible , Gutenberg performed a trial of colored printing for a few of the page headings, present only in some copies. [6] A later work, the Mainz Psalter of 1453, presumably designed by Gutenberg but published under the imprint of his successors Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, had elaborate red and blue printed initials. [7] It should be noted that the alphabet made an important contribution to the success of the printing press. [8] [9] Impact on society Although the invention of movable type in China and Korea preceded Gutenberg's printing press, the impact of East Asian movable type printing presses was not as dramatically influential as it was in Western European society. This was likely due to the enormous amount of labor involved in manipulating the thousands of porcelain tablets, or in the case of Korea, metal tablets, required for Chinese characters. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of books, on subjects ranging from Confucian Classics to science and mathematics, were printed using the older technology of woodblock printing, creating the world's first print culture.

[10] By contrast, the impact of Gutenberg's printing press in Europe was comparable to the development of writing , or the invention of the alphabet or the Internet , regarding its impact on society. [1] Just as writing did not replace speaking, printing did not achieve a position of total dominance, and handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced. However, the cost of books was drastically reduced, and many copies of each book became quickly available. The wider availability of printed materials led to a drastic rise in adult literacy rate throughout Europe. The printing press became valuable for scientists and scholars, as it enabled them to publish their discoveries and ideas and communicate with one another through scholarly journals. This development contributed to the coming of the scientific revolution. Moreover, even as the printing press allowed for rapid production and distribution of information, it led to an awareness of the importance of authorship and the need to cite references accurately. Before the advent of the printing press, the author's name was often lost. [1] Within about 50 or 60 years from the invention of the printing press, practically the entire classical canon had been reprinted and widely promulgated across Europe.

[1] Now that more people had access to knowledge both new and old, more people could discuss these works. Furthermore, with the rise of book production as a commercial enterprise, the first copyright laws were passed to protect what we now call intellectual property rights. An additional consequence of this popularization of knowledge was the decline of Latin as the language of most published works. Latin was replaced by the vernacular language of each area, increasing the variety of published works. Paradoxically, the printing word also helped unify and standardize the spelling and syntax of these vernaculars, thereby "decreasing" their variability. The rise in importance of national languages (as opposed to pan-European Latin) has been cited as one factor that led to the rise of nationalism in Europe. The Industrial Revolution Koenig's 1814 steam-powered printing press. A printing press of the Miehle P.P. & Mfg. Co., 1905. Given its usefulness and efficiency, the Gutenberg press remained nearly unchanged for more than 300 years.

[11] By 1800, Lord Stanhope had constructed a press completely from cast iron, reducing the force required by 90 percent while doubling the size of the printed area. [11] Although Stanhope had improved the efficiency of the press, it was still capable of printing only 250 sheets per hour. [11] German printer Friedrich Koenig became the first to design a non-manpowered machine, using steam power. [11] Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig soon met Thomas Bensley and secured financial support for his project in 1807. [11] Patented in 1810, Koenig had designed a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine." [11] The first production trial of this model occurred in April 1811. He produced his machine with assistance from German engineer Andreas Friedrich Bauer. It could make 1,100 impressions per hour. In 1814, Koenig and Bauer sold a couple of their first models to The Times in London . They then improved on the model to get simultaneous, double-sided printing.

These developments led to the mass-production of newspapers , which in turn led to a rise in literacy levels. [1] From the 1820s, the nature of book production also changed. Their company, Koenig & Bauer AG, remains one of the world's largest manufacturers of printing presses today. In 1843, Richard M. Hoe of the United States invented the rotary printing press, allowing the printing of millions of copies of a page per day. Also, with the use of rolled paper, the speed of the presses was greatly enhanced. [1] Around the same time, small, jobbing presses were developed to print small pieces such as business cards, envelopes, and letterheads. They could generate 1,000-1,500 impressions per hour. [1] Later inventions Later inventions in the field of printing have included the following: Lithography Augustus Applegath - inventor of the vertical print press Anilox ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Meggs, pp. 130–133.

References Citation from The Encyclopedia of World History Sixth Edition, Peter N. Stearns (general editor), © 2001 The Houghton Mifflin Company, at Bartleby.com. On the effects of Gutenberg's printing Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge University Press, September 1980. ISBN 0-521-29955-1 More recent, abridged version: Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd Rev ed. Cambridge University Press, September 2005. ISBN 0-521-60774-4 McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Univ. of Toronto Press (1st ed.); reissued by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. ISBN 0-7100-1818-5 External links All links retrieved June 2, 2015.

Gutenberg printing Photos of Incunabula and the Gutenberg Bible (1455) Internet Archive: Printing (1947) —a film from the Prelinger Archives explaining the printing industry Credits New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards . This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

Question: Who invented the printing press in Europe?
Answer: Johannes Gutenberg