How Did Johannes Gutenberg Build The Printing Press

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented a new type of movable print- the printing press. Gutenberg was a goldsmith born in Mainz in 1397, and went on to develop his press in the Holy Roman Empire. He saw the printing press as a financial opportunity, due to the high cost of books at the time. Prior to his groundbreaking invention, knowledge was very much limited to the royalty or the religious order because attaining access to any sort of literature was a painstaking task. In order to have a copy of a book, including the bible, each word had to be copied into a second version which led to extreme inefficiency and transcription errors which disseminated from volume to volume. Some churches, instead, used the process of wood engraving. A craftsman would have to cut away the background, leaving the area to be printed raised, which was a laborious task which would take an extremely long time. Gutenberg realized there was a way to make literature more …show more content…
Before the press, oral communication was the dominant method in which information was collected and circulated. Though this allowed communities to interact with each other and bound them together, it stopped growth and innovation, as well as deterred the production of an efficient method of retrieving information. This caused historical records and knowledge to be withheld within one community. After the invention of the printing press there was a shift from the arduous manuscript making and copying to the mechanical print which allowed many copies of written work to be created and spread, which in turn allowed lower and middle classes to have more sources information and laid down the framework for the transformation of societal literacy. The printing press also allowed greater uniformity within writing. Before the printing press, written works differed depending on the author. Since there was no standard format, each author