Have You Ever Wondered What a Printing Press Is, or What Its Importance Was?

DBQ Essay Brendan Sullivan

Have you ever wondered what a printing press is, or what its importance was? The printing press was created by Johannes Gutenberg. It was a machine that was used to make books and maps much quicker and easier. There were 2 types of printing presses - woodblock printing press and movable type printing press. The woodblock press was much more difficult to use, because you had to carve into a block of wood what you wanted on the paper, and then put ink on the piece of wood, and press it on the paper. One of the difficulties with woodblock printing was that the wood wood break often. Movable type was the more efficient way of the printing press. You would arrange metal letters and put ink on them and them put in on a piece of paper.

My first reason is that anyone could use the printing press. Many people used the printing press, including someone named Martin Luther. Martin Luther used the printing press to revolt against the church, because he didn’t believe what they were doing was right. What the church was doing that Luther didn’t believe in was selling indulgences. Indulgences were things you could buy from the church to lessen your time in the purgatory, after death. Martin Luther used the printing press to write up his 95 theses, which were all the things he didn’t think were right that the church was doing, and hung them up on the church’s front door. His ideas spread and around and people started to go with him. That is one of the reasons that the printing press is important.

My second reason the printing press was important was because Martin Luther’s ideas spread, and maps became more accurate because of the printing press. Martin Luther’s ideas spread all over Europe in about 60 years, which caused a lot of Europe to become Protestant, even some whole countries turned Protestant. The second point I made is that maps weren’t very accurate