The First Printed Books

The First Printed Books

The sixteenth century saw a revolution that changed how knowledge travelled: the mastery of printing. Before this, if you wanted to see a great painting or building, you had to go to Italy. But the written word worked differently — once something was written in Italy, it could reach other countries. The reason was printing technology, which allowed ideas to move without the author or the reader having to travel.

Europe did not invent this technology on its own. Europeans were indebted to the Chinese for printing technology, and to the Mongol rulers, because European traders and diplomats had become familiar with printing during their visits to Mongol courts. The same was true for three other important innovations: firearms, the compass, and the abacus. All four had reached Europe through contact with other peoples.

Before printing, texts existed only in a few handwritten copies. Producing a book was slow and laborious — a monk might spend as much time writing out a single copy of the Bible as it took to print many. That changed in 1455, when 150 copies of the Bible were printed in the workshop of Johannes Gutenberg (1400–1458), the German who made the first printing press. The contrast is striking: one monk would have taken the same amount of time to write out just one copy of the Bible by hand.

The impact was rapid. By 1500, many classical texts — nearly all in Latin — had been printed in Italy. Printed books could be bought, so students no longer had to depend solely on lecture-notes. Ideas, opinions, and information moved more widely and more rapidly than ever before. A printed book promoting new ideas could quickly reach hundreds of readers. …