Johann Gutenberg's Influence To The Spread Of Renaissance

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Johann Gutenberg, the 1400s printing press inventor contributed his invention to the spread of Renaissance. The printing press was invented in 1455 in Mainz, Germany by Mr. Gutenberg, Johann. "It combined movable pieces of metal type that could be reused; with a press that could produce sharp impressions on paper that could be redone over and over again; movable type was arranged over a flat wooden plate called the lower platen; ink was applied to the type and the sheet of paper was laid on top; an upper platen was brought down to meet the lower platen; and the two plates pressed the paper and type together creating sharp images in the paper." Gutenberg’s machine printed two-hundred- fifty sheets per hour. Modern day offset printing prints about 70,000 sheets per hour. …show more content…

The Chinese during the 13th century brought playing cards and paper money to the west. Japan and Korea in the 18th century had "carved wooden clock-printing to produce Buddhist and Taoist treaties. One of the earliest surviving books printed in this fashion, an ancient Buddhist text known as 'The Diamond Sutra'." However, the block-printing method would be ineffective and un-expanding. The normal way for producing copied books was to copy them hand by hand, which took way too long. As a result for both these unsuccessful methods books were primarily for the wealthier/upper-classes. Gutenberg’s printing press was faster at printing sheets and could produce a lot more sheets in faster times. Besides producing many more sheets of paper in less time, Gutenberg sets his machine away from other methods by using metal types not wooden types; when Gutenberg tried wooden blocks he found them unclear and

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