The Power of Print Photo by Authenticated News/Getty Images Photo by How the Printing Press Changed History
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INVENTIONS/BY BEN MUSACHIO The Power of Print Photo by Authenticated News/Getty Images Photo by How the printing press changed history. > By today’s standards, the Gutenberg came on the scene in Europe Bible is a challenge to read. With no when Gutenberg was growing indentations, paragraph breaks or even up but actually had its origins spacing between words, its pages are a in ancient China. sea of Latin words. Chinese printers would But when the first copies of the Bible cut a block of wood to the debuted around 1455, the two-volume size of a page, then carve out book marked the start of the Printing each word on the smooth Engraving of the first printing press, invented by Revolution. It was the first book to be face of the wood to create a Johannes Gutenberg, 16th century. mass-produced using a movable-type stamp, which was then dipped printing press. While people would have in ink. Multiple copies of a page could and adhered more effectively to guessed it at the time, that printing be made relatively quickly this way. Of rag-cotton linen paper. (Such paper press—the invention of German course, it took a long time to carve each would rapidly replace the more expen- metalworker Johannes Gutenberg— block, which in turn could only print sive vellum, derived from animal skin, would become one of the most import- a single page. Nevertheless, the Chinese which had been in use for centuries.) ant inventions in human history. can claim the production of the first Once the blocks were inked, paper By making books and other printed complete printed book in AD 868, would be hand-fed through a roller. material affordable and available for the titled the Diamond Sutra. In 1041, Bi By 1440, Gutenberg was using his masses, the printing press broke the Sheng’s movable clay type expedited this press to print indulgences for the monopoly that had been held by the process. However, his proto-European Catholic Church. He turned soon after literate elite, allowing for the mass movable press fell into disrepair often to printing the 42-line Bible, a communication of potentially revolu- because of fragile clay construction and trial-and-error endeavor that would tionary ideas. It bolstered the rise of never worked for large-scale printing. guarantee him a spot in the history the middle class, permanently altering By the 1430s in Germany, books but, ironically, earn him no the structure of society. Historians Gutenberg had become familiar with money. In the expensive process of credit the printing press with playing block printing and was determined to developing the printing press, a key role in the development of the improve upon it. Using at first wood, Gutenberg had secured funding from Renaissance, Reformation, Age of and later metal (tin, lead and antimony), a German lawyer named Johann Enlightenment and the Scientific he developed 290 blocks of letters and Fust. Impatient for a return on his Revolution. symbols; these could be arranged to investment, Fust successfully sued Of course, Johannes Gutenberg had create words. Unlike earlier fixed blocks, Gutenberg and won everything he no such lofty ambitions when he began these new types were movable; they owned, including his tools and press. his tinkering in the 1430s. He just could be set up to print one page, then By the time of Gutenberg’s death in needed to make money to pay down his taken apart and set up to create an 1468, printing presses were churning debt from missteps he’d made in his entirely different one. out books in cities across Europe. The family metal-working business. Gutenberg’s true genius lay in printing system that he had invented— In the centuries before Gutenberg’s combining several elements into a which inspired revolutions and forever birth in Mainz, Germany, around practical system that allowed for mass altered the course of human history— 1399, books had been painstakingly production. To construct his printing would remain relatively unchanged reproduced by hand, primarily by machine, he adapted a wine press, until the late 20th century. But Johannes monks (copyists) who toiled away in the which allowed him to slide paper in and Gutenberg died in poverty. “scriptoriums” of monasteries. The out of it. He also developed an oil-based process got a bit easier with the ink (linseed- and soot-based) that introduction of block printing, which improved upon earlier water-based inks 38 BOSS 4 s pr i ng 2014.