The Printing Press

The most important invention in history

We take for granted newspapers, magazines, CD covers, books,

television, greeting cards, posters, and other printed material.

None of the printed items we enjoy today would be around

without one man.

Johann Gutenberg

The inventor of the Printing Press

in 1450

The ways in which the

printing press has affected the

world are too numerous to

count.

Before the printing press in 1450, books were written out by hand, mainly by monks in monasteries.

It could take one person six months or longer to write out a book, word for word and page by page.

Text was scarce in medieval Europe. Books were expensive to

produce. If a book was to survive, it had to be copied over

and over, every generation.

This is a page from “Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer. It was handwritten about 1400.

In about 1450, a man from a small German town came up with a

printing press. This press had pieces of metal type that could be used over and over again to print pages of text.

Johann Gutenberg took a wine press, transformed it into a printing press, and mixed

oil and soap together to make ink.

In 1456, he made 180 copies of the first printed book: a Bible.

Only 49 copies of these Bibles survive today. The last time a Gutenberg Bible sold, it went

for $2.4 million.

Moveable text meant that books could be quickly printed and

passed out to the average person to read.

Most people at the time were illiterate.

Before the Printing Press, woodblock printing was

common. A sheet of paper was laid over an inked piece of wood and an impression

was taken by rubbing. Gutenberg broke up the text

into lower and upper case letters and punctuation marks.

Imagine what this knowledge meant to the common people. Instead of having to take the

church’s or the king’s word on something, they could learn to

read and form their own opinion.

Communication changedthe world.

Knowledge from the printed word meant that people could decide

for themselves what should happen in their lives. The Printing

Press helped begin the Renaissance all over Europe.

The importance of Gutenberg’s invention

caused him to be named the most influential

person in the past 1,000 years by the Biography

Channel.