The printing press was one of the most important and influential inventions of all time.
The printing press was one of the most important and influential inventions of all time.
It spread knowledge and ideas to more people, more cheaply and more quickly than ever before.
It fuelled the Renaissance, during which scientists, inventors, philosophers and artists changed the world.
Before Johannes Gutenberg perfected his printing press in the 1440s, all books in Europe were produced by hand – every word had to be written out, mostly by monks or other scribes in monasteries.
Books were extremely expensive, took a long time to make, and production was completely controlled by the Church.
A single copy of the Bible – the most commonly produced book at the time – normally took three years to make.
Gutenberg’s press could print hundreds in the same time.
It had a large wooden handle attached to a screw thread. When the handle was pulled, the letters to be printed – the type – pressed against a sheet of paper lying underneath.
The letters were raised, like on a rubber stamp, and were coated with ink before each impression. This kind of printing is called ‘letterpress’.
The most important aspect of Gutenberg’s invention was ‘moveable type’: each letter, number or punctuation mark was made of a small, individual metal block.
These were arranged into words and set into a larger block for printing over and over again.
Like most inventions, Gutenberg’s press was not entirely new.
Printing originated in China some time in the 6th or 7th century.
Early Chinese printing used carved wooden blocks. Even moveable type had been thought up before – in China and Korea – in the 12th and 13th centuries.
But Gutenberg combined several ideas, threw in some of his own and changed the world.
His timing was perfect. In the 15th century Europe was on the brink of a revolution in thinking: the Renaissance.
Within decades of Gutenberg’s first successful prints, presses were running in many cities across Europe.
Books became much cheaper and more available and many scientists began to publish their ideas.
Philosophers inspired people with new ways of looking at things.
New ideas spread like wildfire and more and more people learned to read.
Gutenberg’s letterpress printing is cumbersome compared with modern printing technologies, and hardly used.
Most books, newspapers and magazines are now printed by huge machines with sheets of paper moving continuously at high speed.
These machines can print in full colour using ‘offset lithography’.
This uses flat, not raised, plates.
The ink is transferred in two stages: from the flat plate to a rubber blanket, then from the blanket to the paper.
Both plate and blanket are wrapped around rollers, which are in contact with other, inked rollers.
For making just a few books or magazines, digital printing is increasingly popular.
Digital printers are controlled directly from computers, and normally use static electric charge to attract the ink to the right parts of the paper.
