Why Was the Printing Press Not Invented in China?

What cultural, technological and economic conditions allowed Europeans to develop the printing press first?

Erik Engheim
Lessons from History
9 min readSep 4, 2022

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Old printing press in similar style to that of the original Gutenberg printing press
Old printing press in similar style to that of the original Gutenberg printing press

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…

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Erik Engheim
Lessons from History

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.