Printing press

The printing press is a mechanical device for printing multiple copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. It was first invented in China in 1041. It was reinvented in the West by a German goldsmith and eventual printer, Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s. Apart from Gutenberg, the Dutch Laurens Janszoon Coster has also been credited with this invention.

Impact of printing

Diffusion of printing in Europe

Previously, books were copied mainly in monasteries, or (from the 13th century) in commercial scriptoria, where scribes wrote them out by hand. Books were therefore a scarce resource. While it might take someone a year or more to hand copy a Bible, with the Gutenberg press it was possible to create several hundred copies a year, with two or three people that could read, and a few people to support the effort. Each sheet still had to be fed manually, which limited the reproduction speed, and the type had to be set manually for each page, which limited the number of different pages created per day. Books produced in this period, between the first work of Johann Gutenberg and the year 1500, are collectively referred to as incunabula.

Related Topics:
Monasteries - 13th century - Scriptoria - Scribe - Incunabula

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The supplantation of hand copied manuscripts with printed works was not received with unanimous encomium. Not only did the papal court contemplate making printing presses an industry requiring a license from the Catholic Church (an idea rejected in the end), but as early as in the 15th century some nobles refused to have printed books in their libraries to sully their valuable handcopied manuscripts. Similar resistance was later encountered in much of the Islamic world, where calligraphic traditions were extremely important, and also in the Far East.

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Despite this resistance, Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly across Europe. Within thirty years of its invention in 1453, towns from Hungary to Spain, and from Italy to Britain had functional printing presses. It has been theorized that this incredibly rapid expansion shows not only a higher level of industry (fueled by the high-quality European paper mills that had been opening over the previous century) than expected, but also a significantly higher level of literacy than has often been estimated.

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The first printing press in a Muslim territory opened in Andalusia (Muslim Spain) in the 1480s. This printing press was run by a family of Jewish merchants who printed texts with the Hebrew script. After the reconquista in the 1490s, the press was moved from Granada to Istanbul (a popular destination for thousands of Andalusian Jews).

Related Topics:
Andalusia - Reconquista - Granada - Istanbul

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Effects of printing on culture

The discovery and establishment of the printing of books with moveable type marks a paradigm shift in the way information was transferred in Europe. The impact of printing is comparable to the development of language, and the invention of the alphabet, as far as its effects on the society.

Related Topics:
Paradigm shift - Language - Alphabet

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Gutenberg's findings not only allowed a much broader audience to read Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible, it also helped spread Luther's other writings, greatly accelerating the pace of Protestant Reformation. They also led to the establishment of a community of scientists (previously scientists were mostly isolated) that could easily communicate their discoveries, bringing on the scientific revolution. Also, although early texts were printed in Latin, books were soon produced in common European vernacular, leading to the decline of the Latin language.

Related Topics:
Martin Luther - Protestant Reformation - Scientists - Scientific revolution - Latin - Vernacular

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In Korea and China, there were no texts similar to the Bible which could guarantee a printer return on the high capital investment of a printing press, and so the primary form of printing was wood block printing which was more suited for short runs of texts for which the return was uncertain.

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Some credit the printing press with giving Europe the technological and communication edge over Eastern countries in the end, one of the major questions in world history.

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Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before, the author was less important, since a copy of Aristotle made in Paris might not be identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author was entirely lost.

Related Topics:
Author - Aristotle

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Because the printing process ensured that the same information fell on the same pages, page numbering, tables of contents, and indices became common. The process of reading was also changed, gradually changing from oral readings to silent, private reading. This gradually raised the literacy level as well, revolutionizing education.

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It can also be argued that printing changed the way Europeans thought. With the older illuminated manuscripts, the emphasis was on the images and the beauty of the page. Early printed works emphasized principally the text and the line of argument. In the sciences, the introduction of the printing press marked a move from the medieval language of metaphors to the adoption of the scientific method.

Related Topics:
Metaphor - Scientific method

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In general, knowledge came closer to the hands of the people, since printed books could be sold for a fraction of the cost of illuminated manuscripts. There were also more copies of each book available, so that more people could discuss them. Within 50-60 years, the entire library of "classical" knowledge had been printed on the new presses (Eisenstein, 1969; 52). The spread of works also led to the creation of copies by other parties than the original author, leading to the formulation of copyright laws. Furthermore, as the books spread into the hands of the people, Latin was gradually replaced by the national languages. This development was one of the keys to the creation of modern nations.

Related Topics:
Copyright - Latin

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Some theorists, such as McLuhan, Eisenstein, Kittler, and Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from printing, removing the role of the image from society. Other authors stress that printed works themselves are a visual medium.

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