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The Printing Press: Technology that Changed the World Forever

Gutenberg, Printing Press

Much of humanity today enjoys a great number of technological wonders including: email, the personal computer, the Internet, household appliances of every sort imaginable, the automobile, railroads, radio, aviation, satellite technology, cellular phones, video conferencing, television, digital cameras, magnetic resonance imaging, laser surgery, and countless other technologies that impact us on a daily basis. Each of the aforementioned technologies relies on an earlier technology that I argue has had the most significant impact on the world and our civilization: Johannes Gutenberg’s development of the printing press in the mid-15th Century.

As John Man suggests in his book Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words, “Gutenberg’s invention made the soil from which sprang modern history, science, popular literature, the emergence of the nation-state, so much of everything by which we define modernity” (2). And, Paul Gray notes, “We can hardly imagine a world without an abundance of printed matter, and thus we take for granted an invention that produced astonishing consequences” (158).

A December 2000 article in Reading Today points out, “Gutenberg did not, as many believe, invent movable type. That had been invented in China in the 11th century” (41). However, the article continues, “…there is little question that, like many great technological revolutionaries, Gutenberg took a number of extant technologies, refined or invented others, and used them in a new and unquestionably superior way” (41). According to Man, the key to Gutenberg’s success was the invention of a hand-held mould and the perfection of a technique to bind type into a consistent and accurate form, thus creating the ability to mass-produce high quality books. (126-132)

Movable type had been utilized, in one form or another, since at least 1045 A.D. by China’s Pi Sheng. (Koscielniak, 6) And, scribes had been painstakingly creating books by hand one at a time since the invention of the written word. But, not until the development of the printing press was the information contained within books made available to a large population. Gray notes, “Affordable books made literacy a crucial skill and an unprecedented means of social advancement to those who acquired it. Established hierarchies began to crumble. Books were the world’s first mass-produced items. But most important of all, printing proved to be the greatest extension of human consciousness ever created” (159).

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It is nearly impossible to imagine today’s technological advancements without the existence of readily accessible printed material. How much of what we learn, starting from very early in our childhoods, is learned with the aid of the written word? From bedtime stories to the daily newspaper to textbooks to manuals that accompany the latest appliance or computer or mp3 player we’ve purchased, we learn about our world and our technology through the printed word. Letters, notes, instant messages, text messages, blogs, and email all are iterations of what was first mechanized through the development of the printing press. Indeed, a generic term for media has long been the “press,” named so for the invention that Gutenberg developed.

One of the most remarkable things about the printing press was the speed with which it altered our world. Man observes, “Suddenly, in a historical eye-blink, scribes were redundant. One year, it took a month or two to produce a single copy of a book; the next you could have 500 copies in a week” (2). Neil Postman is quoted in Reading Today on the same subject, noting:

Forty years after Gutenberg converted an old wine press into a printing machine with movable type, there were presses in 110 cities in six different countries. Fifty years after the press was invented, more than eight million books had been printed, almost all of them filled with information that had previously been unavailable to the average person. There were books on law, agriculture, politics, exploration, metallurgy, botany, linguistics, pediatrics, even good manners. There were also assorted guides and manuals; the world of commerce rapidly became a world of printed paper through the widespread use of contracts, deeds, promissory notes, and maps. (emphasis added, 41)

Suddenly, with books no longer relegated to the elite in society, average people began to learn how to read. And, it is difficult to overstate the profound impact this development had on society. Richard G. Cole observes, “It is frequently stated that the Reformation would have been impossible or would have had little chance of popular acceptance without the rapid spread of typography” (327). And, The Economist suggests, “… if printing did not actually cause the intellectual changes taking place in Europe at the time, it certainly catalysed [sic] them” (97).

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The changes brought about by the invention and widespread adoption of the printing press went beyond merely increasing literacy rates. Reading Today points out, “The attitude toward knowledge and learning was utterly changed. Inquiry, and the questioning of received wisdom, greatly increased. In many ways, the communal medieval world gave way rapidly to the modern world and its focus on the individual. In both obvious and more subtle but profound ways, the world had changed” (41). Marshall McCluhan takes this a step further, asserting:

I venture to suggest that all of the reasons for nationalism are included in the penetrative powers of Gutenberg technology. Not only does print vividly discover national boundaries, but the print market was itself defined by such boundaries, at least for early printers and publishers. Perhaps also the ability to see one’s mother tongue in uniform and repeatable technological dress creates in the individual reader a feeling of unity and power that he shares with all other readers of that tongue. Quite different sentiments are felt by preliterate or semiliterate populations. (571)

In addition to increased literacy rates, a greater ease in sharing knowledge and scholarship, and the notion of national identities, there are other ripple effects of the printing press. David Vincent asserts, “Literacy is inextricably linked to notions of progress. Its measurement… was a means by which societies began to calibrate their advance, and in developed as well as developing countries command of the basic skills of written communication is still seen as central to economic growth” (405). And, Reading Today observes, “Just 70 years after the press appeared, Francis Bacon said printing was one of three inventions (the others were gunpowder and the compass) that had ‘changed the appearance and state of the whole world'” (41).

It is difficult to imagine living in a world without the ubiquitous printed material with which we are surrounded. We see the printed word on billboards, bus ads, television commercials, subtitles of foreign language films, product packaging, and, of course, books, magazines, and, newspapers. While not all of this is generated with the use of an actual printing press anymore, none of it would exist without the initial development of the printing press. Marshall McCluhan puts it quite succinctly when he states, “The penetrative powers of the Gutenberg technology, irresistible under any conditions, became the means of forming the very ground plan and the superstructure of social and business institutions” (569).

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It is difficult to even catalogue all of the ways in which we are impacted by the written word in our everyday lives. Without it, how would we know how to operate our appliances, our vehicles, our computers, or, our personal entertainment systems? How would we navigate on our own without the use of maps and atlases? Even the fishermen and the farmer are dependent upon the written word in consulting weather reports and almanacs. Every day, in countless ways, we are interacting with words. The invention that enabled the written word to be produced efficiently and in an economic manner truly changed the world, and in so doing, paved the way for all technologies that followed.

Works Cited

Cole, Richard G. “Unsung Heroes.” Sixteenth Century Journal. 15.3 Autumn 1984: 327-339. JSTOR. Roosevelt U Library. 23 Mar. 2007 < http://links.jstor.org>
Economist Magazine. “Hang on lads, I’ve got an idea.” 353.8151 Dec. 31, 1999: 97. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Host. Roosevelt U Library. 23 Mar. 2007
< http://search.ebscohost.com>.
Gray, Paul. “Johann Gutenberg.” 154.27 Dec. 31, 1999: 158-160. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Host. Roosevelt U Library. 23 Mar. 2007
< http://search.ebscohost.com>.
Koscielniak, Bruce. Johann Gutenberg and the Amazing Printing Press. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Man, John. Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
McLuhan, Marshall. Effects of the Improvements of Communication Media.” The Journal of Economic History. 20.4 Dec. 1960: 566-575. JSTOR. Roosevelt U Library. 29 Mar. 2007 < http://links.jstor.org>
Reading Today. “Gutenberg’s millennium.” 18.3 Dec. 2000: 41. Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Roosevelt U Library. 23 Mar. 2007 .
Vincent, David. “The Progress of Literacy.” Victorian Studies. 45.3 Spring 2003: 405-431. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Host. Roosevelt U Library. 23 Mar. 2007
< http://search.ebscohost.com>.