How did the printing press change the course of history? What ideas were spread using this invention?
Answers
Explanation:
in early days there were no printing press so there was no paper or book but now there was so
Answer:
There actually two different methods of printing. The Far East used a different idea of using basically method as the West. China would carve the message in Chinese characters in a wooden block. Then the characters in relief would be inked with a water base ink and a sheet of paper put over the text and rubbed on the back side of the paper with a barren. A barren is a slightly padded block that presses a small area of the paper to transfer the ink to the paper. In a book, only one side of the paper is printed and the paper fold ends up on the outside of the book.
Explanation:
In the West, a modified wine press presses the paper against the entire form of individual types of cast metal individual letters that are returned to storage after the printing is accomplished. This requires any reprinting requires resetting the type. With the Chinese method, all that is required retrieving the block which is stored, inked again and printed using a barren as described above. Essentially printing on demand centuries before we finally went to that.
The ink used in the west is oil based and both sides of the sheet of paper is used and the fold is in the gutter rather than the outside. Printing from types (identical copies) cast in a mixture of led and tin with a bit of antimony to prevent the metal from shrinking away from the mold. But with western languages about a hundred characters (and therefore only 100 molds) need to be made. Whereas there are several thousand, one for each word in the Chinese Language. Potentially 100,000 for any text. (English has 250,000 words) other Europeans languages from 150,000 to 200,000) each different. Words that have endings and prefixes that would add to the number of required characters. Chinese has no such endings or prefixes. Each word part of speech is determined by position in the sentence. (Example from English: The fix is in. We need to fix this.)
Each method is geared to the language and needs.
The printing method is not what changes society. Instead the page of type can be set almost as fast as a careful scribe can copy a text. So the first copy takes say the same time. It is the second and later where speed picks up. Now just the text need be pressed against the paper. And paper is cheaper to make than parchment or vellum. Each sheet of vellum is cut from a single tanned skin of a calf or sheep or goat. In short a piece of top grade leather. Now the price really begins to rise for a book. Even a small book. Plus each page must be copied by hand and then the entire book assembled. Printing on paper brings the price down to where the middle class can own books. And they get different ideas from books than the very rich who could only afford books when hand copied onto vellum. Early editions might be 300 to 500 copies. But as demand grew and more people could read the price dropped more per copy. So now we buy paperbacks for pocket change. Also as more could and did read education improved and increased the demand for a variety of books. That is the real power of the “printing press.” Unsung the Chinese system, Japan probably had a 50% literacy rate in 1854 when opened to Western Trade. They now claim 98 or 99% literacy rate. Few Western Countries could claim a 50% literacy rate in 1854. But those countries with universal free education were the ones to lead the old world into the modern world. Massachusetts was the first government in the world to require free public education. Prussia, which would become Germany, was the second. The reasons were different but the progress is the same. In 1854 there were only 3 printing Presses in the entire Ottoman Empire. There is an explanation for the lack of progress. Muslim schools used students as copists, to help defer the cost of schooling and the different alphabet helped defeat adoption of printing. Actually the third press was owned by American Missionaries. They could not find good Arabic type in Europe. So they designed their own and had it cast in Italy. American Arabic is their design and is the Times Roman of the Middle East. The government in Istanbul and the government in Cairo were the other two presses in the Middle East at that time.