The Printing Press

The Printing Press................. The Printing Press................

The invention of the printing press gave the world its earliest idea of mass communication. Although invented in China more than 33,000 years ago, it had its greatest impact in Europe. When the moveable type was introduced there around 1450, by Johann Guttenbrg. of Mainz, printing became more used than any other means of spreading ideas. Previously, the passing of news was limited to the power of human voice or the ability of scribes to copy   written material repeatedly. Every single book was hand written. Scribes could take months to make just one copy. In 1333 a new testament of 278 pages took 6 months to write. An average of 3-4 pages per day. It was impossible to prevent errors from creeping into texts. Because of the costs of books, many scholars had to make there own copies of work that they might need. Medieval European Library's were rare and usually small, hardly ever containing more than 500 books and normally chained down to prevent theft.