Printing Press Research Paper

807 Words2 Pages

The invention of the moveable type printing press is considered one of the most important events in history. The printing press was invent by Johannes Gutenburg in 1454. Gutenberg was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher. Previous to the printing press, books had to be copied by hand in a slow, painstaking process that often took years to complete; which was obviously quite an ineffective method but the only one available at the time. Due to this, very few books were published, including the bible, which limited how many people owned them. Books were normally only available to monks and scholars. His greatest innovation was the idea of moveable type, which were sets of letters made out of metal. This cut out the need to carve out wooden blocks that could only be used for one page. It allowed for the moveable type to be reused …show more content…

By 1500, hundreds of towns had their own printing press and have already produced millions of books. This causes literacy to expand because more people have access to books. This lead to the demand for more books and different types of them. Which in turn lead to authors becoming popular, more relevant, and in high demand. One of the key things that the printing press created was a community of scientist. It allowed scientist to share their work accurately with other scientist through scholarly journals. This caused them to further study the ideas that are already written down and increase their knowledge of the world and universe. Since the old ways of copying written works had so many mistakes and inconsistencies, it was hard to understand the authors intentions in his writing. The printing press allowed for more consistency. It also transformed the way people learned; books provided for a new visual aid to learning. The printing press allowed for a new way of communication which highly contributed to a more educated, literate

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