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It's a strange article. The author conflates 'printing press' and 'movable type' in the second paragraph, but then admits that the printing press in Asia wasn't
by gunapologist99 4y ago
It's a strange article. The author conflates 'printing press' and 'movable type' in the second paragraph, but then admits that the printing press in Asia wasn't a machine at all and was entirely manual. The innovation was not in producing the type plate, but in automating the production of printed pages.
- socialdemocrat 4y agoAuthor here, they are conflated for good reason. The printing press is really an advancement of the movable type system developed in Asia. What Gutenberg did wasn't really about the screw press as I elaborate on here: https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-the-printing-press-not-invented https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-the-printing-pre... The screw press already existed in Europe and was widely used. Reducing Gutenbergs invention to just being about using a screw press does not do justice to what he did. It was really about combining several techniques to advance printing. Better alloys for types. Better system for duplicating types. Better ink. A lot of the advancement could have been made even without the printing press itself. And the printing press without these advancement would have made very little improvement.
- gunapologist99 4y agoExcellent clarification, thank you!