On February 3, 1468, the German Johannes Gutenberg , inventor of the modern printing press, died. Let’s know the origins of this revolutionary device.
When and how did this invention come about? Until the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, books and in general any type of document, were preserved and disseminated by making handwritten copies that in most cases were made by monks. But copying the writings by hand was not only arduous, but very slow.
There is antecedents between 440 BC and 430 BC by the Romans , who used stamps that they printed on clay objects. But if we talk about printing on paper, the first to seek a solution to the problem were the Chinese. We have to go back to the 10th century , in the middle of the Middle Ages, to find a device in which fired clay letters were individually inserted into a wooden plate , where after inking said plate, the chosen characters were captured on sheets of paper.
However, we will have to wait until about 1440 for the modern press of metal and mobile type to see the light.
Gutenberg exchanged the classic tablets for wooden molds with all the letters of the alphabet, which he later filled with lead . Once the letters were held with a mobile support of his invention , the resistance and speed of printing made it the invention that would revolutionize the world of culture by allowing the massive diffusion of literature , which until then, had been within the reach of a few.
