Printing press

Printing press

Recreated Gutenberg press at the International Printing Museum, Carson, California
Inventor	Johannes Gutenberg
Inception	1440; 584 years ago (1440)

Part of a series on the
History of printing
Techniques Woodblock printing 200 Movable type 1040 Intaglio (printmaking) 1430 Printing press c. 1440 Etching c. 1515 Mezzotint 1642 Relief printing 1690 Aquatint 1772 Lithography 1796 Chromolithography 1837 Rotary press 1843 Hectograph 1860 Offset printing 1875 Hot metal typesetting 1884 Mimeograph 1885 Daisy wheel printing 1889 Photostat and rectigraph 1907 Screen printing 1911 Spirit duplicator 1923 Dot matrix printing 1925 Xerography 1938 Spark printing 1940 Phototypesetting 1949 Inkjet printing 1950 Dye-sublimation 1957 Laser printing 1969 Thermal printing c. 1972 Solid ink printing 1972 Thermal-transfer printing 1981 3D printing 1986 Digital printing 1991
v t e

A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper, or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.^[1][2]

In Germany, around 1440, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday,^[3] compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.^[4] Gutenberg's newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. His two inventions, the hand mould and the movable-type printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents in Europe, particularly for shorter print runs.

A finding in 2015 brought evidence of quires as claimed by extensive research, printed in 1444–1446 possibly assigned to Procopius Waldvogel.

From Mainz, the movable-type printing press spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries.^[5] By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million volumes.^[5] In the 16th century, with presses spreading further afield, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies.^[5] By the mid-17th century, the first printing presses arrived in colonial America in response to the increasing demand for Bibles and other religious literature.^[6] The operation of a press became synonymous with the enterprise of printing and lent its name to a new medium of expression and communication, "the press".^[7]

The arrival of mechanical movable type printing in Europe in the Renaissance introduced the era of mass communication, which permanently altered the structure of society. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation, and threatened the power of political and religious authorities. The sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its peoples led to the rise of proto-nationalism and accelerated the development of European vernaculars, to the detriment of Latin's status as lingua franca.^[8] In the 19th century, the replacement of the hand-operated Gutenberg-style press by steam-powered rotary presses allowed printing on an industrial scale.^[9]