Printing press

A printing press is a machine that uses pressure to move ink onto a surface such as paper or cloth. The people who run these machines are called printing press operators. The printing press was a big step forward from older methods, where people rubbed paper by hand to pick up the ink.

The printing press was invented by the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg around 1440. After that, printing spread to many places around the world and changed how books and information were made and shared. Printing brought an era of mass communication to European society, letting information travel quickly across Europe. It also helped the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Printed books became cheaper and easier to get, which helped more adults learn to read across Europe. Books more often appeared in vernacular languages instead of Latin, and national languages became more standard.

For more than three hundred years, the basic design of the wooden handpress stayed mostly the same, until the Industrial Revolution. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had built a new printing press made of iron that could print a sheet with one pull. In 1814, The Times began using Friedrich Koenig's new presses, which used steam power and rotary motion. Richard M. Hoe's rotary printing press, introduced in 1843, allowed much greater output, and later rotary presses could print a very large number of pages in a single day.

In the twentieth century, the letterpress was mostly replaced in commercial work by offset printing, phototypesetting, and digital printing.

History

Main article: History of printing

Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press around 1440. He combined four existing technologies: the screw press, movable type, the codex book format, and machine-made paper. In late medieval Europe, growing trade and commerce and more universities needed more books. Copying books by hand was slow and expensive. Gutenberg brought these technologies together into one working system. He also made his own improvements, such as an oil-based ink that worked well with metal type. Long before him, the Chinese artisan Bi Sheng had invented movable type in the 11th century. Gutenberg's press used the Latin alphabet, which needed only a small set of letters.

See also: Letterpress printing

Printing spread quickly across Europe. By the end of the 15th century, many European cities had printing presses. By 1500, presses in Western Europe had made millions of copies. The Jesuit missionaries also set up a press at Goa in 1556. This showed that printing had spread beyond Europe too. Printing machines were later improved. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had built the first iron printing press. The German printer Friedrich Koenig introduced steam power and rotating cylinders. In the United States, Richard M. Hoe invented a steam-powered rotary printing press in 1843. In the 20th century, Offset printing became the most common commercial printing method by the middle of the century. Later, desktop publishing and digital printing changed how printing was done.

See also: List of early modern newspapers

See also: Scientific Revolution § Printing, and The Gutenberg Galaxy

The wide spread of information and ideas thanks to the printing press is often called the "printing revolution." The historian Elizabeth Eisenstein described the press as an "agent of change." After printing began, more books were made and sold. Authors became more closely linked with their works, and reading became more of a private activity. Latin also became less used as the language of scholarship. In 1997, Time Life named Gutenberg's invention the most important event of the second millennium.

Printing changed how people wrote, read, and worked. Identical copies made it easier to point to exact words, so authors began adding page numbers and tables of contents to their books. Reading changed from listening to speeches together to reading silently on one's own. Over the next two centuries, more adults in Europe learned to read. Scientists could share their findings more widely and quickly, and groups of scientists formed across Europe. Governments used printed pamphlets to spread their messages. Some church leaders and governments tried to control what was printed. As printing spread, vernacular languages became more common in print. Some people were critical of the new press.

Printing capacity

The table shows how fast several printing press designs could print in one hour.