Early true crime
Johannes Gutenberg developed one of the first printing presses in the mid-1400s, making it possible to produce books and other texts quickly, accurately, and less expensively.
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Transcript
In the Middle Ages books were for the rich. Each copy of
a book typically had to be written by hand and copied
page by page.
How did that change? With the development of the
printing press: a painstaking process that stretched
across centuries—and continents.
One early development dates to 11th-century China,
where scholars were already mass-producing
books—page by page—using woodblock printing.
Chinese artisans developed movable type as a natural
extension of this technology—but it wasn’t immediately
practical for printing in a language made up of tens of
thousands of characters.
The oldest-surviving book printed with movable type is
credited to 14th-century Korea: an anthology of
Buddhist teachings.
In the mid-1400s printing was revolutionized again,
when a German craftsman named Johannes Gutenberg
developed a way to handle this process by machine.
In early printing presses, movable type was arranged
over a flat wooden plate called the lower platen. Ink was
applied to the type, and a sheet of paper was laid on
an upper platen was brought down to meet the lower
platen. The two plates pressed the paper and type
together, creating sharp images on the paper.
This kind of wooden printing press could print about 250
sheets per hour.
The printing press made it possible to produce books
and other texts quickly, accurately, and less expensively,
which allowed them to be reproduced in greater numbers. Before the printing press, books belonged
primarily to the upper classes.
But with books cheaper and more readily available, the
middle classes could access them as well. This led to an
increase in the literacy and education levels of the
European public.
The development of the printing press has been
credited with helping to usher in the modern era by
enabling the spread of information across all levels of
society.
a book typically had to be written by hand and copied
page by page.
How did that change? With the development of the
printing press: a painstaking process that stretched
across centuries—and continents.
One early development dates to 11th-century China,
where scholars were already mass-producing
books—page by page—using woodblock printing.
Chinese artisans developed movable type as a natural
extension of this technology—but it wasn’t immediately
practical for printing in a language made up of tens of
thousands of characters.
The oldest-surviving book printed with movable type is
credited to 14th-century Korea: an anthology of
Buddhist teachings.
In the mid-1400s printing was revolutionized again,
when a German craftsman named Johannes Gutenberg
developed a way to handle this process by machine.
In early printing presses, movable type was arranged
over a flat wooden plate called the lower platen. Ink was
applied to the type, and a sheet of paper was laid on
an upper platen was brought down to meet the lower
platen. The two plates pressed the paper and type
together, creating sharp images on the paper.
This kind of wooden printing press could print about 250
sheets per hour.
The printing press made it possible to produce books
and other texts quickly, accurately, and less expensively,
which allowed them to be reproduced in greater numbers. Before the printing press, books belonged
primarily to the upper classes.
But with books cheaper and more readily available, the
middle classes could access them as well. This led to an
increase in the literacy and education levels of the
European public.
The development of the printing press has been
credited with helping to usher in the modern era by
enabling the spread of information across all levels of
society.