01/02/2026
Books were expensive and rare during the Middle Ages. Each copy of a book typically had to be written by hand, copied page by page. In the mid-1400s a German craftsman named Johannes Gutenberg developed a way to handle this process by machine—the first printing press. His invention combined movable pieces of metal type that could be reused with a press that could produce sharp impressions on paper over and over again.
In Gutenberg's printing press, movable type was arranged over a flat wooden plate called the lower platen. Ink was applied to the type, and a sheet of paper was laid on top. An upper platen was brought down to meet the lower platen. The two plates pressed the paper and type together, creating sharp images on the paper. This kind of wooden printing press could print about 250 sheets per hour.
The printing press made it possible to produce books and other texts quickly, accurately, and less expensively, which allowed them to be reproduced in greater numbers. Before the printing press, books belonged primarily to the upper classes. But with books cheaper and more readily available, the middle classes could access them as well. This led to an increase in the literacy and education of the public. The development of the printing press has been credited with helping to usher in the modern era by enabling the spread of information across all levels of society.
The printing press has gone through many alterations and improvements in the centuries since its creation. Today newspapers commonly use a method called offset printing. In this type of printing, a plate cylinder inks an image on a rubber cylinder, which then transfers, or offsets, the images to the paper being printed. The fastest offset presses can print about 70,000 sheets per hour, or about 280 times as many sheets as Gutenberg's press.
