Lasting effects of Gutenberg's press
In 1043 Bi Sheng invented the first movable type printing press but his press was largely ineffective due to the Chinese alphabet being character based meaning that each word has a specific character associated with it, and also his pieces were made of porcelain or clay making them easy to break and hard to reproduce. Gutenberg invented his movable type printing press in 1440 nearly 400 years after Bi Sheng. Gutenberg's invention had two very serious advantages to it, the first of which was that Gutenberg made his prices from metal which meant they would last longer, were easier to reproduce, and much harder to break. The other advantage Gutenberg had was the German alphabet which only had 28 basic characters and then upper case letters, punctuation, and accented letters, but at most he would have to make 80 or 85 pieces, whereas Bi Sheng would have to make thousands and constantly be making new ones. Gutenberg made books easier to print and cheaper, with this he made the technology of literacy useful to everyday people not only the rich and powerful. It sparked a revolution of putting books especially bibles into the hands of everyday people, this made the church accountable to the people for the first time and let the people see what scripture actually was vs what was told to appease them. It also allowed people to know what rifts they had and what laws were actually in place not just what was told to them by the local lord or Baron. Without the printing press the transfer of ideas would happen in far fewer numbers and at a far slower rate, events like the American and French Revolution would never have happened and absolute power would be unlikely unopposed.
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