The Effect Of The Printing Press

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The Effects of the Printing Press Many years ago books were hard to come by. When you did come by one you must have been rich to own one because they cost a fortune or you were of high power in the Catholic Church. To destroy one was a great deal to the masses because they were so time consuming to make and difficult to replace. It was a time when all things read, were written by hand. It would be mind blowing to try to imagine a time where there were not any printers of some sort or technology to copy a paper. Think about this for a moment, we have all experienced a moment when we were in need of a printer and there wasn’t one around. We have all had a paper due and needed a last minute touch up. True, those times are rough, I know. Can you imagine living in the time where there were no printers to make copies or print your work? Now granted, there weren’t as many essays to be turned in in the early 1400’s. However, there were still books and news to be spread. The reason books used to cost up to a thousand dollars before the invention of the printing press is because writers had to write every copy. There were many mistakes made and errors found in the handwritten books. They were not as easily corrected as they are today. There was so much time and effort put into writings of manuscripts and books. There were few copies of any types of writings anywhere. Centuries ago it was the Catholic churches who decided what would be published. This was their way of censoring what was being written. During the Hussite Wars, in the early 1400’s, there were nearly 200 manuscripts that were ordered to be burned by the churches, all of which were handwritten and would be difficult to replace since the churches would not loan the use of sc... ... middle of paper ... ...resident? We probably wouldn’t have nearly the amount of voters at the ballot stands to vote on the president because they wouldn’t know who they were voting for. Would we have such upgraded transportation? Would we have computer and cell phones? It could be possible but I believe it would have been introduced at a much slower rate. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these events and inventions would have never been invented without the printing press. What I am saying is that the printing press helped speed up to process of knowledge and made us more capable to understand how to create things. The printing press is a wonderful piece of technology that simplified the distribution of news and information, it paved the way for learning and literacy, and it helped writers to make copies of their works in a manner much easier than rewriting every word by hand.

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