Paper and the printing press
Follow paper from China through Samarkand and Baghdad to Europe, see why Gutenberg's press took off in the 1450s, and learn to separate the ingredients of a change from its results.
BEFORE
Every book was handmade
Since lesson 2, writing had moved from clay to papyrus and then to parchment, made from scraped animal skin. A large book could use up the skins of a whole flock, and a trained copyist needed months or years to finish it. A collection of a few hundred volumes counted as a great library.
Hand copying has a second cost: every copy adds new slips. After ten generations of copying, two versions of the same text can disagree in hundreds of places, and no reader can tell which is right.
Paper's thousand-year journey west
- China, by about 100 CE
Craftsmen pulp rags, bark and old fishing nets in water, lift a thin mat of fibres on a screen and dry it. The result is light, smooth and far cheaper than silk or skin.
- Central Asia, 700s
Paper-making reaches Samarkand along the Silk Roads of lesson 4. A later tradition says Chinese prisoners taken in a battle in 751 taught the craft; whatever the exact route, Samarkand paper became famous.
- Baghdad, 790s
Paper mills open in the Abbasid capital. Government offices switch to paper, and a street of booksellers and copyists grows up.
- Cairo, North Africa, Spain
The craft moves west across the Islamic world, reaching Spain by about the 1100s.
- Italy and beyond, 1200s on
Italian mills add water-powered hammers. By 1400 paper is common across Europe and costs a fraction of parchment.
FIRST EFFECTS
What cheap paper did in Baghdad
With paper, copying a book cost far less, so many more books were copied. From about 800 CE scholars in Baghdad translated Greek, Persian and Indian works into Arabic and built on them. Al-Khwarizmi, working there in the 820s, wrote the book whose title gave us the word algebra, and another explaining Indian numerals. His own name became the word algorithm.
Libraries in Baghdad, Cairo and Córdoba held tens of thousands of volumes when the largest monastery libraries in western Europe held a few hundred. The difference was not talent. It was the price of the page.
Check yourself
Around 900 CE a Baghdad bookseller switches from parchment to paper and his costs drop sharply. Which result is most likely over the next century?
- Books stay as rare as before, because few people could read anyway
- More titles get copied, including specialist works on maths and medicine
- Scholars stop memorising anything, and learning declines across the region
- Hand copying disappears, since paper can only be used in a printing press
Show the answer
More titles get copied, including specialist works on maths and medicine
Yes. When the cost of a copy falls, it becomes worth copying books with only a few hundred possible readers. That is how specialist knowledge builds up.
WHAT CHANGED
Printing, and then Gutenberg
Gutenberg did not invent printing. In China whole pages were being printed from carved woodblocks by the 700s; the oldest dated printed book we have is a Buddhist text from 868. A Chinese craftsman made movable type from baked clay in the 1040s, and Korean printers were casting metal type by the 1300s. What Johannes Gutenberg did in Mainz around 1450 was combine several things into a fast workable system: metal letters cast in a reusable mould, an oil-based ink, a press adapted from wine-making, and cheap paper.
His famous Bible was finished in the mid-1450s. Within fifty years there were presses in a couple of hundred European towns and millions of printed books in circulation.
Check yourself
- China, 1040s: movable type is invented. The script has thousands of different characters, and carved woodblocks already work well. Movable type stays a minor method.
- Germany, 1450s: movable type is introduced. The alphabet has about two dozen letters, paper is cheap, and rival towns compete for the trade. It spreads across a continent in fifty years.
What best explains the different outcomes?
- Europeans were more inventive than the Chinese
- An invention spreads when it fits local conditions; being first is not enough
- Movable type was kept secret in China
Show the answer
An invention spreads when it fits local conditions; being first is not enough
Right. Sorting a few dozen letters is quick; sorting thousands of characters is not, so woodblocks stayed the sensible choice in China. Always separate invention from adoption.
One skilled scribe
1 complete Bible ≈ 2 to 3 years
Gutenberg's workshop
about 180 Bibles ≈ 3 yearsRoughly 180 copies in the time a scribe needed for one, and every copy identical.The second half of that line matters as much as the first. Identical copies mean a scholar in Kraków and one in Paris can refer to the same page, the same diagram and the same table of numbers, and a corrected edition fixes an error for everyone at once.
What followed
- Religion. In 1517 Martin Luther's criticisms of the Church were printed and reprinted across Germany within weeks. Short, cheap pamphlets in everyday German reached people no sermon could.
- Language. Printers needed one spelling to sell across a whole region, so printed versions of German, English, French and Italian hardened into national standards.
- Knowledge. Maps, anatomy drawings and star tables could be reproduced exactly and improved edition by edition. Lesson 7 depends on this.
- Reading itself. With more to read and lower prices, literacy slowly stopped being a specialist skill.
Cheap information cuts both ways
Gains
More voices, faster spread of discoveries, fewer copying errors, books within reach of ordinary townspeople, and rulers and churches losing their monopoly on what could be read.
Costs
Printed rumours, forgeries and witch-hunting manuals sold as well as science did. Religious division fed more than a century of wars in Europe. Authorities answered with licences and lists of banned books. Copyists lost their living.
Check yourself
Was it an ingredient already in place before 1450, or a result of the press?
- Cheap paper, arrived through the Islamic world
- Standard spelling across a whole country
- Goldsmiths skilled at casting small metal parts
- Official lists of banned books
- Universities and merchants hungry for more books
- Reformation pamphlets read in every German town
Show the answer
Ingredient: Cheap paper, arrived through the Islamic world, Goldsmiths skilled at casting small metal parts, Universities and merchants hungry for more books
Result: Standard spelling across a whole country, Official lists of banned books, Reformation pamphlets read in every German town
Check yourself
Hamed says: 'The printing press caused the Reformation. No press, no Luther.' Which correction is the most accurate?
- Criticism of the Church was older; the press let it spread too fast to stop
- The press played no part; religion changes only for religious reasons
- Luther built the first press himself in order to spread his ideas
- The Reformation came first and created the demand that led to printing
Show the answer
Criticism of the Church was older; the press let it spread too fast to stop
Exactly. The grievances were a necessary cause and so was the means to spread them. Neither alone is enough, which is what 'multiple causes' means in practice.
Lesson recap
- Paper, invented in China, travelled west through Samarkand and Baghdad, made books far cheaper and fed a great age of scholarship in the Islamic world before it reached Europe.
- Printing and movable type were East Asian inventions; Gutenberg's system of the 1450s took off because it fitted Europe's alphabet, paper supply and markets.
- Cheap identical copies changed religion, language and science, and also spread rumours, fed wars and provoked censorship.
- Separate invention from adoption, and ingredients from results; a technology amplifies causes that are already there.