Why Is The Printing Press Important

The printing press may seem like an irrelevant tool and useless to the things we have today but it played a major role in the advances of our modern history. A printing press was obviously used as a faster alternative to make copies of important documents. To us the thought of painstakingly writing out every page of a book seems absolutely unnecessary and a pain. Before the printing press there were scribes that would copy each page of book neatly. Johannes Gutenberg a German craftsman using a measly grape press revolutionized the world during the 1450’s by inventing the printing press. The convenience of the printing press is not the only important factor of why it is considered so important.The printing press lead to many consequences such …show more content…
In the Ten Important Works of Classical and Medieval Authors(Doc K), many of these books were written before the printing press was available so they were in manuscript form and very few people had copies. As soon as the printing press was available these classics were printed and they were easily published in mass quantities to be widely available for the public. The spread of these ancient works allowed everyone that could read this great opportunity and these books are still published today. In the Ten Important Works of Early Modern Authors(Doc L), after the printing press became widely available, books that were just written were printed right way and allowed into the public. This allowed modern and current ideas to be spread quickly and on a larger scale.Many people believe that the printing press did not spark the gain of knowledge but these next two examples seem to prove different. In Isaac Newton’s Bookshelf (Doc M), we all know Isaac Newton was a genius but the printing press played a big role in his discoveries. He used books that were published and made available by the printing press to gain his knowledge. He stood on the shoulders of the brilliant people before him to make it farther than they did. This document proves that the books he would have not been able to receive without the printing press made him discover the theories he created. In the document On the Fabric …show more content…
We have to thank the printing press for some of that. In Columbus’s letter to the King of Spain in 1493(Doc H), Columbus wrote a fifteen page letter that let us know all the details about his adventurous voyage and what he saw and is out there. The letter most likely wouldn’t of been spread to the public but due to the printing press it was spread all around Europe in that year and in many different languages where if it was still written by hand one by one it would of taken many years if not done at all. This letter being spread allowed many other explorers to know what to expect and let the general public to be more interested in exploration and the gain of knowledge of these far off places. In the three printed world maps(Doc I), the printing press allowed these world maps to be published to everyone expanding the knowledge of the globe. It did create the negative consequence of error with maps. Although it did allow explorers to build upon their maps that came before and fix those errors and make them more ideal. In Kenneth Boulding’s book and Daniel Boorstein they both share their opinion about how the printing press spread maps and increased expansion(Doc J), Kenneth Boulding stated that the printing press created feedback so if a map was inaccurate it would be called to attention and another explorer would build upon his work and prove him wrong. Where a scribe wouldn’t