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How Did Johannes Gutenberg Impact The Printing Press

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In 1454, Johannes Gutenberg crafted numerous volumes of the Catholic Bible with his printing press. These Latin Bibles sold at prices affordable to the middle class, when previously only the wealthiest churches could afford them. Although it was not the first printing press, Gutenberg’s printing press positively impacted Western Civilization for centuries, because it spread literacy and Christianity, and allowed books to become commonplace and affordable.

Gutenberg built upon the success of others. China and Japan printed with engraved wooden blocks as early as the eighth and ninth centuries, with movable type invented in the eleventh century. By the fourteenth century, Europe used the same techniques. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains his merging of ideas: “Johannes Gutenberg is generally credited with… the invention of modern printing: the use of dies to make individual pieces of type that could be assembled as required and then reused, and the use of a press by which sharp impressions could be made many times over, on both sides of a sheet of paper …show more content…

An estimate by Susan Bauer in her textbook, “The Story of The World,” states: “... Gutenberg and twenty helpers printed 450 Bibles in one year. If twenty monks had tried to write out these Bibles by hand, it would have taken them ninety years each.” Gutenberg’s easily accessible Bibles spread knowledge of Christianity, because any literate person could now read the word of God anytime he

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