Printing Press

A printing press is a device for printing ink evenly onto a print medium such as cloth or paper. An inked surface on which rests a movable type of device that applies pressure to a print medium, the ink transfer occurs.

Before the printing press the writing and drawings were created by hand which was tedious and time consuming. Only the educational institutions, monasteries, and extremely rich people usually owned books during the middle ages. Thus there was intellectual darkness and economic regression so that time was also known as Dark Ages.

  

It was during the 2nd century when the ancient Chinese began to use wooden blocks to imprint the images of flowers on silk. In Roman Egypt around the 4th century, woodblock printing on cloth was practiced. The 7th century marked the use of paper for printing, the Diamond Sutra, the first complete printed book, in 868 by Chinese.

     

During the years 1041 and 1048, Han Chinese printer Bi Sheng invented and developed the world’s first movable type printing technology. In the early thirteenth century in Korea the movable metal type printing technique was invented during the reign of Goryeo Dynasty which applied the typecasting method that was used in coin casting. 

About the year 1450 in Germany an improved movable type mechanical printing technology was invented by Johannes Gutenberg.  This German man wanted to find a way to make money. Gutenberg used metal instead of wood, the letters of the metal block could was movable and could be used to create new sentences and words. The reproduction of the Bible known as Guttenberg Bible on September 30, 1452, a treasured item for its historical legacy.

                          

The printing press has greatly reduced the required time of printing. It's due to the invention of the printing press that we have newspapers, books, magazine, guides, pamphlets, brochures, flyers, posters, and mailers etc. It allows us to share large volumes of information. The printing press is recognized as one of the greatest inventions of the era. It altered the evolution of the society.