Printing press

A printing press works by pressing an inked surface against paper or cloth to transfer the image. This was a big step forward from earlier methods, where ink was put on the printing surface and paper was rubbed by hand to make the transfer. The invention and worldwide spread of this machine changed how books were made and how people communicated in the early modern period.

Around 1440, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg came up with a way to mass-produce movable type for a printing press, which started the Printing Revolution in Europe. His press was based on the screw presses that were already common. By about 1600, a European press could make up to 3,600 impressions in a 15-hour workday. For comparison, woodblock printing could produce 1,500 to 2,000 double sheets a day, and Korean metal movable type could manage only 40 sheets. Gutenberg’s hand mold made it possible to cast metal type quickly and in large amounts. From the city of Mainz, the press spread to around 270 cities across Europe within a few decades. By 1500, presses in Western Europe had printed more than twenty million copies.

This spread of printing created an age of mass communication that changed European society. Information moved more freely across borders, helped the Reformation spread quickly across the continent, and supported the exchange of ideas that fueled the Scientific Revolution. Printed texts became cheaper and easier to get than handwritten manuscripts, and adult literacy rose at different rates across Europe. As more books were printed in local languages instead of Latin, print helped standardize the spelling and grammar of national languages.

The basic design of the wooden handpress stayed almost the same for over three hundred years, until the Industrial Revolution. By 1800, Lord Stanhope built the first iron printing press, which could print a whole sheet with a single pull. In the 1810s, Friedrich Koenig added steam power and rotating cylinders, and *The Times* newspaper started using his presses in 1814. Richard M. Hoe’s rotary printing press, introduced in 1843, allowed much higher output; later rotary presses could produce millions of page impressions in a day. During the twentieth century, offset printing, phototypesetting, and digital printing mostly replaced letterpress for commercial work.

**History**

Johannes Gutenberg developed the movable-type printing press around 1440 by combining four technologies that had each matured by the mid-fifteenth century: the screw press, movable type, the codex book format, and mechanized paper production.

The economic and cultural changes of late medieval Europe helped create conditions where his press could succeed commercially. Trade and commerce had grown, expanding the urban middle class, and the rising number of universities from the twelfth century onward increased demand for books. Hand-copying was slow and expensive, and by the fifteenth century, the supply of manuscripts fell far short of this growing demand.

**Technological factors**

Gutenberg brought these four technologies together into a single working system and added several innovations of his own, including a hand mold for casting type and an oil-based ink that worked well with metal type.

The first technology was the screw press, which allowed direct pressure to be applied on a flat surface. It was already ancient in Gutenberg’s time and used for many tasks. Introduced by the Romans in the 1st century AD, it was commonly used in agriculture for pressing grapes for wine and olives for oil. Gutenberg may also have been inspired by paper presses that had spread through German lands since the late 14th century, which worked on the same mechanical principles. Gutenberg adopted the basic design, thereby mechanizing the printing process. But printing placed different demands on the machine. He adapted the construction so that the pressing power from the platen on the paper was applied evenly and with minimal smearing. To speed things up, he added a movable undertable with a flat surface so sheets could be changed quickly.

The second element was movable type—the idea of composing a text from individual reusable characters. The first movable type was invented by the Chinese artisan Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty, using characters made of baked clay. Around 1300, Wang Zhen developed a set of movable wooden type, arranged on revolving tables, which he used to print a local gazetteer and described in his agricultural treatise. Woodblock printing remained the dominant technique in East Asia. The oldest surviving book printed with metal movable type is the *Jikji*, produced in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era. However, the various techniques used—imprinting, punching, and assembling individual letters—did not have the refinement and efficiency needed for wide acceptance. In China, movable type saw limited use, partly because a logographic script required many thousands of separate characters, making a full set of type costly to produce. Gutenberg’s use of the Latin alphabet was a practical advantage here because it allowed the typesetter to represent any text with a relatively small set of characters.

The third element was the codex book format, which had originated in the Roman period. Considered the most important advance in the history of the book before printing, the codex had replaced the ancient scroll by the beginning of the Middle Ages (AD 500) among Christian and Muslim scribes. The codex has several practical advantages over the scroll: it is more convenient to read, more compact, and less costly, and both sides of the page (recto and verso) can be used for writing or printing, unlike the scroll.

The fourth element was paper. Medieval papermakers had succeeded in mechanizing paper manufacture. Water-powered paper mills, first documented with certainty in 1282, greatly increased production.