The matrix was then mounted on the contact end of the modified screw press and lowered until it struck the paper underneath. The process, while labor intensive, allowed Gutenberg to print pages at a much greater rate than printers using the block printing method or those doing manuscript work. Johannes Gutenberg's moveable type press marked the beginning of the Printing Revolution in the western world, a colossal moment in the history of information and learning. With access to printing presses, scientists, philosophers, politicians, and religious officials could replicate their ideas quickly and make them available to large audiences.
Manuscript leaf embellished by hand with red, blue, and gold. More images here. Europeans, however, took to movable type quickly. Before the invention of the printing press — sometime between and — most European texts were printed using xylography, a form of woodblock printing similar to the Chinese method used to print "The Diamond Sutra" in Manuscripts not printed with woodblocks were painstakingly copied by hand. Both processes were extremely labor intensive and, as a result, books in Europe were very expensive and few could afford to buy them.
But all that changed in the middle of the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg established himself as a goldsmith and craftsman in Strasbourg, Germany.
In Strasbourg, Gutenberg first began experimenting with both xylography and the development of a more efficient method of printing. Like Bi Sheng, Wang Chen and Baegun before him, Gutenberg determined that to speed up the printing process, he would need to break the conventional wooden blocks down into their individual components — lower- and upper-case letters, punctuation marks, etc.
He cast these movable blocks of letters and symbols out of various metals, including lead, antimony and tin. He also created his own ink using linseed oil and soot — a development that represented a major improvement over the water-based inks used in China. But what really set Gutenberg apart from his predecessors in Asia was his development of a press that mechanized the transfer of ink from movable type to paper.
Adapting the screw mechanisms found in wine presses, papermakers' presses and linen presses, Gutenberg developed a press perfectly suited for printing. The first printing press allowed for an assembly line-style production process that was much more efficient than pressing paper to ink by hand.
For the first time in history, books could be mass-produced — and at a fraction of the cost of conventional printing methods. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
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