Why Was the Printing Press Not Invented in China?
What cultural, technological and economic conditions allowed Europeans to develop the printing press first?
Why didn’t the printing press get developed in China when it had such a major technological lead over the West? From the time the Chinese mastered paper-making, it took over 1300 years before Europeans acquired the same skill.
As discussed in one of my other stories, movable type already existed in China. It discusses why the Gutenberg approach to printing was better. In this story I want to get into details of why a Gutenberg style system of printing did not evolve in China or Korea (another pioneer in movable type).
It is always tempting for people with an overly patriotic zeal to explain such differences in terms of things like “we were just so much more clever.” Such explanations are silly. Instead, we need to dig deeper to uncover the root causes. The Gutenberg printing revolution was based on several components:
- A screw press to imprint the…
