Printing press Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Mass production and spread of printed books === {{See also|Global spread of the printing press|List of early modern newspapers}} [[File:Printing towns incunabula.svg|thumb|left|Spread of printing in the 15th century from [[Mainz]], Germany]] [[File:European Output of Printed Books ca. 1450–1800.png|thumb|European book output rose from a few million to around one billion copies within a span of less than four centuries.<ref>{{harvnb|Buringh|van Zanden|2009|p=417, table 2}}</ref>]] The invention of mechanical movable type printing led to a huge increase of printing activities across Europe within only a few decades. From a single print shop in [[Mainz]], Germany, printing had spread to no less than around 270 cities in Central, Western and Eastern Europe by the end of the 15th century.<ref name="ISTC">{{cite web |url=http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html |title=Incunabula Short Title Catalogue |publisher=[[British Library]] |access-date=2 March 2011 |archive-date=12 March 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110312185857/http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref> As early as 1480, there were printers active in 110 different places in Germany, Italy, [[France]], [[Spain]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Belgium]], [[Switzerland]], [[England]], [[Bohemia]] and [[Poland]].<ref name="Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean 1976 by Anderson, Benedict 1993, 58f."/> From that time on, it is assumed that "the printed book was in universal use in Europe".<ref name="Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean 1976 by Anderson, Benedict 1993, 58f."/> In Italy, a center of early printing, print shops had been established in 77 cities and towns by 1500. At the end of the following century, 151 locations in Italy had seen at one time printing activities, with a total of nearly three thousand printers known to be active. Despite this proliferation, printing centres soon emerged; thus, one third of the Italian printers published in [[Venice]].<ref>{{harvnb|Borsa|1976|p=314}}; {{harvnb|Borsa|1977|p=166−169}}</ref> By 1500, the printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million copies.<ref name="Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean 1976 by Anderson, Benedict 1993, 58f."/> In the following century, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies.<ref name="Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean 1976 by Anderson, Benedict 1993, 58f."/> European printing presses of around 1600 were capable of producing between 1,500<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Pollak |first1=Michael|title=The performance of the wooden printing press|journal=The Library Quarterly|date=1972|volume=42|issue=2|pages=218–264|doi=10.1086/620028|jstor=4306163|s2cid=144726990}}</ref> and 3,600 impressions per workday.<ref name="Wolf 1974, 67f.">{{harvnb|Wolf|1974|pp=67f.}}: {{quote|From old price tables it can be deduced that the capacity of a printing press around 1600, assuming a fifteen-hour workday, was between 3.200 and 3.600 impressions per day.}}</ref> By comparison, [[Far Eastern]] printing, where the back of the paper was manually rubbed to the page,<ref>Needham 1965, p. 211: {{quote|The outstanding difference between the two ends of the Old World was the absence of screw-presses from China, but this is only another manifestation of the fact that this basic mechanism was foreign to that culture.}} {{harvnb|Widmann|1974|p=34, fn. 14}}: {{quote|In East Asia, both woodblock and movable type printing were manual reproduction techniques, that is hand printing.}} {{harvnb|Duchesne|2006|p=83}}; {{harvnb|Man|2002|pp=112–115}}: {{quote|Chinese paper was suitable only for calligraphy or block-printing; there were no screw-based presses in the east, because they were not wine-drinkers, didn't have olives, and used other means to dry their paper.}} Encyclopædia Britannica 2006: "Printing": {{quote|The second necessary element was the concept of the printing press itself, an idea that had never been conceived in the Far East.}}</ref> did not exceed an output of forty pages per day.<ref name="Ch'on Hye-bong 1993, 12">Ch'on Hye-bong 1993, p. 12: {{quote|This method almost doubled the printing speed and produced more than 40 copies a day. Printing technology reached its peak at this point.}}</ref> Of [[Erasmus]]'s work, at least 750,000 copies were sold during his lifetime alone (1469–1536).<ref>{{harvnb|Issawi|1980|pp=492}}</ref> In the early days of the Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took princes and [[papacy]] alike by surprise. In the period from 1518 to 1524, the publication of books in Germany alone skyrocketed sevenfold; between 1518 and 1520, [[Martin Luther|Luther]]'s tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies.<ref>{{harvnb|Duchesne|2006|p=83}}</ref> The rapidity of typographical text production, as well as the sharp fall in unit costs, led to the issuing of the first [[newspaper]]s (see ''[[Relation (journal)|Relation]]'') which opened up an entirely new field for conveying up-to-date information to the public.<ref>{{harvnb|Weber|2006|pp=387f.}}</ref> [[Incunable]] are surviving pre-16th century print works which are collected by many of the libraries in Europe and [[North America]].<ref>The British Library [http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html Incunabula Short Title Catalogue] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110312185857/http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html|date=12 March 2011}} gives 29,777 separate ''editions'' (not copies) as of 8 January 2008, which however includes some print items from the 16th century (retrieved 11 March 2010). According to Bettina Wagner: "Das Second-Life der Wiegendrucke. Die Inkunabelsammlung der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek", in: Griebel, Rolf; Ceynowa, Klaus (eds.): "Information, Innovation, Inspiration. 450 Jahre Bayerische Staatsbibliothek", K G Saur, München 2008, {{ISBN|978-3-598-11772-5}}, pp. 207–224 (207f.), the [[Incunabula Short Title Catalogue]] lists 28,107 editions published before 1501.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page