The Printing Press

 

How did the printing press effect society?

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-Since the fifteenth century, printing had been done with words carved into a wooden block.  So much time and effort were required that no one wanted to make a whole book this way.  This fashion was used mostly to copy illustrations.

 

- Johann Gutenberg printed his Latin Bible using his invention, the printing press, in 1455.  It was the fist book to be published in the west.  However, the history of printing dates back much farther than that.  Guetnberg is known for using the movable type.

 

- It isn’t certain where or when the idea of printing with moveable type came from, but the credit goes to Gutenberg.  The moveable type began the rapid development of the printed word.

 

-The idea spread rapidly and by 1500 there were roughly 200 presses in Europe.

 

-Books were sold for the equivalent of $2 or $3 in modern money.  A medieval copyist could produce two books a year.  The books were available for the first time to scholars, priests and merchants and the demand rose quickly. Libraries were created and they allowed a single copy to reach many readers. 

 

 -Printed books had fewer errors than the hand-copied versions before and they were more easily read.

 

 

Effects

 

- The printing press encouraged literacy- ever since Charlemagne, kings and princes encouraged schools to teach literacy to provide educated bureaucrats to work for them. 

Without people who could read, think critically and write reliable reports, not kingdom could be properly governed. 

 

- By the fifteenth century, a literate public had been created because of an enormous expansion of schools and universities during the middle ages.

 

-Literacy effected people everywhere, nurtured self esteem and a critical frame of mind.  The print revolution made anyone who could read an instant authority. 

 

-The expanding market for printed material allowed writers to earn a living from their work for the first time.  Some writers, such as Voltaire, grew wealthy and paved the way for other writers.  Philosophers, humanists and scientists published their ideas, ideas we may never have herd of without the printing press.

 

 

 

-The printing press was also a source for political and religious propaganda.  The Protestant Reformation was the first revolutionary mass movement partly because it took advantage of the printing press.  Martin Luther used it to beget the Reformation and  John Calvin published his works.  Before printed words, propaganda was released with pictures.

 

- Toward the end of the seventeenth century, half the books published were religious.  By 1780, only ten percent were.

 

-Familiarity with books and secular ideas became popular with the aristocratic and middle class society.  Coffee houses became centers of discussion of writing and ideas.

 

-Books and newspapers could have thousands of readers. Writers answered  to  the readers.  (page 596-textbook--quotation)

 

-Print culture circulated the ideas of the Enlightenment to all literate groups in society.

 

-   The expanding literary public and growing influence on secular printed works created a new social force--public opinion. 

 

- Politics became a popular topic to read about and discuss.  Governments couldn’t operate in secret and politics were discussed openly.

 

- Continental European governments knew that the printed word had a political power.  They regulated book trade, censored newspapers and books, confiscated offending tiles and imprisoned the offending authors.  Freedom of the press eventually represented another expansion of print culture with independant readers, authors and publishers. 

 

Sources:

Encarta Encyclopedia 1997

The Gutenberg Bible - Christie Manson & Woods international Inc. 1978

Western Heritage seventh edition.