Writing and Printing

Global spread of the printing press

Following the invention of the printing press in the German city of Mainz by Johannes Gutenberg c. 1439, Western printing technology spread across the world, and was adopted worldwide by the end of the 19th century. The technology, which mechanized the process of printing with moveable type, displaced the manuscript and block printing. In the Western world, the operation of a press became synonymous with the enterprise of publishing and lent its name to a new branch of media, the "press" (see List of the oldest newspapers).

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Boris Karloff
• ▸Ashangi Basalts
• ▸History of Cyprus

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.