This presentation was given as the semester-end presentation on the Discovery of "the Printing Press" for the paper 'History of English Literature 105' in the M.A. English Semester 1
2. Introduction
Name: Ghanshyam Katariya
Roll No:8
Paper No: 105
Paper Name: History of English Literature
Topic: The Discovery of Printing Press
Submitted At: Smt. S. B. Gardi. Department of English
Email ID: gkatariya67@gmail.com
3. Invention of Printing Press
● In Germany, around 1440,
goldsmith Johannes
Gutenberg invented the
movable-type printing
press, which started the
Printing Revolution.
5. ● Ever since Gutenberg,
printers have been
demanding presses which
would reduce their costs and
improve the quality of their
work. Ideally, the nature of
the individual printing job
should determine the choice
of the style and size of
machine on which it is to be
printed.(Pollak)
6. Revolution of Printing
● The movable type printing press was the great innovation in
early modern information technology.
● The first printing press was established in Mainz, Germany,
between 1446 and 1450.
● Over the next 50 years the technology diffused across Europe.
Between 1450 and 1500, the price of books fell by two-thirds,
transforming the ways ideas were disseminated and the
conditions of intellectual work.
● Historians suggest the printing press was one of the most
revolutionary inventions in human history.(DITTMAR)
7. Revolutionary Innovation in History
● Mokyr (2005) notes that innovation depends on the cost of
accessing existing knowledge, and that the printing press was
one of the most important access cost– reducing inventions in
history.
● Jones (1981) also argues that “western progress owed much to
the superior means of storing and disseminating information.”
● Baten and van Zanden (2008) find a significant association
between simulated national-level wages and observed
differences in aggregate book production in European history.
(DITTMAR)
8. Religious Angle in the Printing.
● According to ‘The frontispiece
of a commemorative history of
printing’ published in 1740
(fig. 1). A god and a goddess:
Mercury and Minerva (the
latter accompanied by
identifying helmet and owl),
escort the wooden hand press
in its descent from the
heavens toward
earth.(Eisenstein)
9. ● There it is awaited by figures embodying the five nations:
Germany, Holland, England, Italy and France. Each nation holds
a medallion honoring early printers: Germany holds Gutenberg
and Fust; Holland, Coster; England, Caxton; Italy, Aldus
Manutius and France, Robert Estienne. (The choice of printers
will be discussed later.) This conception of printing as a gift from
the gods, entrusted to a heroic generation of master craftsmen,
was a heritage from earlier centuries.
● In 1515, a censorship decree was issued by Pope Leo X. It
warned against abusing the new powers of the press but also
described printing as a God-given invention which descended
from the heavens. (Eisenstein)
10. Development of Skills
● Print media played a key role in the acquisition and
development of skills that were valuable to merchants.
● The ability to calculate interest rates, profit shares, and
exchange rates was associated with high returns for
merchants engaged in large scale and long-distance trade.
● Starting in the 1480s, European presses produced a stream
of “commercial arithmetics.” (DITTMAR)
11. ● Commercial arithmetics were the first printed mathematics
textbooks and were designed for students preparing for careers
in business.
● They transmitted commercial know-how and quantitative skills
by working students through problems concerned with
determining payments for goods, currency conversions, interest
payments, and profit shares.
● The first known printed mathematics text is the Treviso
Arithmetic (1478).(DITTMAR)
12.
13. Work Cited
DITTMAR, JEREMIAH E. “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMIC CHANGE: THE
IMPACT OF THE PRINTING PRESS∗.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 126, no.
3, 2011.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. "Gods, Devils, and Gutenberg: The Eighteenth Century Confronts the
Printing Press." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 27, 1998, p. 1-24. Project
MUSE, doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0189.
Pollak, Michael. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, vol. 44, no. 2, 1974, pp.
170–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306396. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.
