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Gutenberg : The Importance Of The Printing Press

Decent Essays

While Gutenberg’s printing press helped further many things, the most important was the growth of literacy. Before the printing press, books were written by hand and took a long time to finish. Short books could take could take several months to complete, while books that were longer could take years. To copy books, monks would work with a pen and ink in scriptoriums. A scriptorium was a copying room where around 50 scribes would copy down what a singular reader dictated. While Gutenberg did not invent printing, his invention of the printing press greatly improved the rate at which books could be copied. “In 1455 Gutenberg printed 180 Bibles, each of them over 1800 pages long” (Background essay). Gutenberg was able to print books so rapidly using a process called typesetting. He would screw together the needed letters until the page was formed then attach it to the lower part of the press. The letters would then be covered in ink and have a paper placed on top, afterwhich, a flat plate would then be screwed onto the top of the paper. This allowed many copies of the same sheet to be printed in a very short amount of time. Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention of the printing press paved the way for modern science and developments in knowledge due to the explosive growth of literacy that followed. Soon after the Gutenberg’s invention, books became significantly more popular. This was due to the growth of literacy and availability of books for cheaper prices. By the year 1471,

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