Butterfly Effect - the Printing Press

The Impact of the

Invention of the Printing Press

on Human History

Throughout the centuries, countless inventions have shaped the way we live and function. Technologies of all sorts continue to improve such things as our efficiency, our comfort, our capabilities, and our understanding. However, in considering the full range of inventions over man’s history, there is one specific invention that is the most important of all. This invention is the printing press, created by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. Not only did Gutenberg’s printing process persist as the primary method of printing through the 20th Century, it enabled other advances during those centuries and shaped the way we have evolved and live today like no other single invention. (http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/printing_press.htm paragraph 2)

In inventing the printing press, Gutenberg developed a method of creating a poured-metal casting from a metal impression of a page of movable metal type and then pressing the inked-casting onto a page to transfer the text onto it. Before the printing press, books were very tedious to make and very expensive, because the process involved either handwriting pages, or inking carved wooden blocks, placing paper on them, and then rubbing the paper to transfer the ink. If a wood block split, it had to be discarded and a new one made. The first book printed on Gutenberg’s printing press was the Bible. Utilizing the new printing method, approximately 180 “Gutenberg Bibles” were printed, of which 21 remain in existence today. (http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/press.html)

Immediate Impacts

Among the immediate impacts of the printing press were the following: 1) Information was reproduced far more accurately than before. Before the press, books were very