A printing press is a machine that transfers ink onto materials such as paper or cloth by applying pressure to an inked surface. It marked a major advance on earlier methods, in which ink was applied to the printing surface and the paper was rubbed by hand to transfer it. The invention and global spread of the printing press transformed book production and communication during the early modern period. Around 1440, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented a method for mass-producing movable type for a printing press, beginning the Printing Revolution in Europe. Modeled on the screw presses already in common use, a European press around 1600 could produce up to 3,600 impressions during a 15-hour workday. Woodblock printing could produce 1,500 to 2,000 double sheets a day, while Korean metal movable type produced 40 sheets. Gutenberg's hand mold allowed metal type to be cast quickly and in quantity. From Mainz the press spread within a few decades to around 270 cities across Europe, and by 1500 the presses of Western Europe had produced more than twenty million copies. The spread of printing introduced an era of mass communication that reshaped European society. The freer circulation of information crossed borders, carried the Reformation rapidly across the continent, and supported the exchange of ideas behind the Scientific Revolution. Printed texts became cheaper and more widely available than manuscripts, while adult literacy rose across Europe at different rates. As books increasingly appeared in vernacular languages rather than Latin, print helped to standardize the spelling and syntax of national languages. The basic design of the wooden handpress changed little for more than three centuries, until the Industrial Revolution. By 1800 Lord Stanhope had built the first iron printing press, which could print a whole sheet at a single pull. In the 1810s Friedrich Koenig added steam power and the rotary motion of cylinders, and The Times adopted his presses in 1814. The rotary printing press of Richard M. Hoe, introduced in 1843, enabled 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 largely displaced letterpress for commercial work.
History
Johannes Gutenberg developed the movable-type printing press around 1440, 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 to create conditions in which his press could succeed commercially. The growth of trade and commerce had expanded the urban middle class, while the growing number of universities from the twelfth century onward had 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 integrated these four technologies into a single working system and added a number of innovations of his own, including a hand mold for casting type and an oil-based ink suited to metal type. The first of these was the screw press, which allowed direct pressure to be applied on a flat plane. It was already ancient in Gutenberg's time and was used for a wide range of tasks. Introduced in the 1st century AD by the Romans, it was commonly employed in agricultural production for pressing grapes for wine and olives for oil. Gutenberg may also have been inspired by the paper presses which had spread through the German lands since the late 14th century and operated on the same mechanical principles. Gutenberg adopted the basic design, thereby mechanizing the printing process. Printing, however, placed different demands on the machine. Gutenberg adapted the construction so that the pressing power exerted by the platen on the paper was applied evenly and with minimal smearing. To speed up the printing process, he introduced a movable undertable with a plane surface on which the sheets could be swiftly changed.
The second element was movable type, the typographical principle 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 employed (imprinting, punching and assembling individual letters) did not have the refinement and efficiency needed to become widely accepted. In China, movable type saw limited use, in part 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 in this respect because it allowed the type-setter 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 format. It is more convenient to read, more compact, and less costly, and both recto and verso sides can be used for writing or printing, unlike the scroll.
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