Gutenberg Revolution: Inventor of the Printing Press

Prior to the year 1450 making a book was a painstaking task, resulting in only 40–50 pages being printed per day. However, the invention of the printing press allowed mass production of books, with knowledge quickly being able to spread throughout Europe.

Xylography

The earliest form of printing in Europe was by a process called Xylography, which is the method of using wooden blocks to press ink into paper. During this time, some written works were still being reproduced by hand. They were also very expensive and only the elite could afford them.

Inventor of the Printing Press

In the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg of Germany introduced a new concept that would make the process of printing books more efficient. With his invention of the printing press, which utilized movable text, thousands of pages per day could be printed. This process increased development in science, art and religion, increasing the amount of shareable knowledge and decreasing costs so more people had access to it.

How it worked:

• Used a mixture of lead, tin and antimony
• Melted it at a low temperature
• Created the lower and upper-case letters, punctuation marks etc.
• Mechanized the transfer of ink from moveable type to paper
• Characters were rearranged and reused during printing
• Accommodated 42-lines per page

Gutenberg Bible

After the invention of the printing press, the first document to be mass published in the west was the Gutenberg Bible. Gutenberg had begun partnerships that supported his printing experiments by providing the funds needed to create a large press. In the mid-15thcentury there was thought to only be around 30,000 books in Europe, with 180 Gutenberg Bible’s circulating. Today 49 copies still exist in libraries, universities and museums and a complete copy is estimated to be worth around $35 million.

Modern Day Printing

Today, a computer can produce the same amount of characters in mere seconds that Gutenberg’s printing press could complete in an hour. We can now also print more words per second than what was printed annually during the fifteenth and sixtieth century.

Although improvements had been made to the printing press over the years, it was still used to print books well into the eighteen and 1900s. Later, steam and electrical engines would be incorporated into the process, with computers being integrated in the 1970s.

Originally published on Whipcord’s Blog.