The History and Relevance of the Printing Press

"The three inventions that forever changed the world: gunpowder, the nautical compass, and the printing press."

That quote came from English philosopher Francis Bacon, most popularly credited with developing the modern scientific method. It's no surprise that the reputation of the printing press is one of the most well-recognized in history, as it truly did usher in a brand new era of communication and discovery of knowledge. The number of key moments in human history that come from being able to mass produce a piece of writing is countless. Pivotal events like the Italian Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution would never have come to pass if it weren't for the ability to share all the new radical ideas being explored in those times. 

For a clear understanding of why this is such a big deal, the most important thing to do is to consider the technology's history. similar to the development of paper and mailing services, printing has its roots in Ancient China. The earliest known printed text in history is the Diamond Sutra, an ancient Buddhist text from 868 A.D. These first prints from around this time would use wooden blocks, and would mark the very beginning of moveable type being used for different characters. As a result of this change, the traditional method of writing hand-written scrolls was invalidated. The modern book format we see today would become the standard from then on in China.

Much later on in the West, German engineer Johannes Gutenberg would experiment with his own version of the printing press. In 1450 his technology was perfected, and the Gutenberg Press became the first reputable piece of printing equipment in Europe. The key difference between this and what was being used in China was that Gutenberg's press used metal plates instead of wood, which led to a much more dependable system that didn't need to be renewed after a certain amount of time. The printing press technology would spread rapidly throughout Europe, starting in Italy in 1467, then Spain and Portugal and England all by 1476. Eventually, in 1605, the first newspapers were being printed starting with "Relation" in France.

The rest of the story is pretty linear from there. The exponential spread of printing presses around the world made it so omnipotent that it was essentially required for anyone looking to project out their content. It's hard to name a written document from after the 18th century that isn't a piece of  governmental history, and things only became more universal once the age of computers and digital print arose.

On paper, it's very easy to see what makes printing so appealing for individual people. With print being a new key source of self-expression people are going to want to use it to project their own ideas out into the world. Furthermore, with this new wider distribution of texts people are going to want to seek out this new information that's being presented to them, and thus indulge themselves in ideas they hadn't been exposed to before.