The Gutenberg printing press is widely considered to be one of humanity鈥檚 defining inventions. But it couldn鈥檛 have changed the world without another brilliant invention: paper.
The Gutenberg printing press is widely considered to be one of humanity鈥檚 defining inventions. Actually, you can quibble with Gutenberg鈥檚 place in history. He wasn鈥檛 the first to invent a movable type press 鈥� it was originally developed in China. Still the Gutenberg press changed the world. It led to Europe鈥檚 reformation, science, the newspaper, the novel, the school textbook, and much else. But, as Tim Harford explains, it could not have done so without another invention, just as essential but often overlooked: paper. Paper was another Chinese idea, just over 2000 years ago.
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Stack of coloured paper, Credit: Laborant/Shutterstock)
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Sources and related links
Mark Kurlansky -聽Paper: Paging Through History (New York: W.W. Norton) 2016聽
Jonathan Bloom -聽Paper Before Print (Yale University Press) 2001聽聽
James Moseley -聽鈥淭he Technologies of Print鈥� in M.F. Suarez, S.J. and H.R. Woudhuysen The Book: A Global History (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 2013聽
Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper -聽The Myth of the Paperless Office (Cambridge: M.I.T.) 2001聽
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world
