Inventions & Innovation: Printing Press

The advent of the printing press transformed the dissemination of information and created what some historians call a “printing revolution.” Early printing presses are often remembered for producing religious works, such as the famous Gutenberg Bible and the Malleus Malificarum witch-hunting manual. These two works were printed in large quantities during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, helping to stimulate both the Reformation and the great European witch hunt. The Reformation resulted in the splintering of the Protestant faith and the persecutions of fringe groups such as the Pilgrims and the Puritans, who fled England and established colonies in North America. Although the first group of Puritans journeyed to the New World with a printing press listed among the cargo for the purpose of printing additional Bibles, this group operated as a mercantile colony within the triangle trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

How did the printing press shape the modern economy of the Western world? The answer, as you'll learn, is inextricably linked with scientific and technological progress, including the rapid circulation of new ideas, the rise of a lay intelligentsia, and the establishment of new ways of organizing knowledge.

Survey the development of writing from the days of clay tablets and parchment through the development of the printing press. You'll learn about the surprising history of movable type, which originated in Asia hundreds of years before the Gutenberg press in Europe. You'll also see how different cultural circumstances shaped the impact of different inventions.

1450—Mayence—Johannes Gutenberg has been working on creating a printing press for more than two years. After a not entirely successful demonstration, he tries to persuade the wealthy banker Johann Fust to help finance his project. Fust agrees and lends Gutenberg 800 florins, plus 300 florins per annum for general expenses—a considerable sum for the period. The two men become partners. Fust and Gutenberg’s choice of the first work to be printed is an astute one: Saint Jerome’s Latin version of the Bible. It enjoys an immediate and resounding success. Gutenberg then perfects the various elements that make up his invention. He improves the hand press, movable print characters in a suitable alloy, special ink... These inventions mean knowledge can be disseminated much more rapidly. They revolutionize European civilization and open the way for the Renaissance and the development of Humanism.

RBM : a journal of rare books, manuscripts, and cultural heritage, 2016, Vol.17 (1), p.15-16
Description
The arrival of the Kelmscott/Goudy press to the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology in January 2014 was a homecoming of sorts. From 1932 to 1941, the press belonged to our library’s namesake, Melbert B. Cary, Jr., director of the Continental Type Founders Association in New York City. Cary used the press to produce the whimsical publications of his Press of the Woolly Whale. In addition to its connection with the press’s past, the Cary Collection offers a home where the press can be maintained and used in support of teaching and the book arts.

The printing press had the potential to break the common lawyers' monopoly of legal knowledge. Early-modern England witnessed debates about the desirability of wider dissemination of legal learning. Previous scholarship has identified the long-term trend to increased printing of the law in English, focusing on ideological debates between lawyers and other key actors. Only selected texts and types of material were made available to the wider public before the 1620s. From the later 1620s a wider range of material which had hitherto existed only in manuscript was printed in English. Knowledge of the common law became more commonly available. This article identifies this crucial moment and explains the change. Rather than the ideological questions which are discussed in the existing literature, more mundane causes are identified for the legal profession's reduced control over the transmission of legal knowledge: a shift to the use of English by lawyers themselves, and a loss of professional control over manuscripts. The paper therefore demonstrates an important methodological point: understanding and assessing the history of legal printing requires engagement with older methods of transmitting the law.