Talk:Printing press/Archive 1

Part in question
"Some theorists, such as McLuhan, Eisenstein, Kittler, and Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from printing, removing the role of the image from society." Eisenstein doesn't believe that the printing press removed the role of the image from the society. She strongly claims that that didn't happen and everything that has to do with the shift from scripts to print is more complex than that."

I've often heard that Gutenberg's contribution to the printing press was the development of movable type. As opposed to unique fixed blocks of text, Gutenberg used letters which could be rearranged for each page. I'm posting this on the Talk page since I don't know for sure that this is correct.

To my knowledge, your understanding is correct. I think it is alluded to in this article by the statement: :''Used Printing Presses are of definite need. Quality presses are always found at usedpressdepot.com. ''


 * Gutenberg refined the technique by inventing an oil-based ink and [metal type], 

I added your Ass to the page as I also believe that the above statements are correct -- mike dill

"'He is also credited with the first use of an oil-based ink, and using 'rag' paper introduced into Europe from China by way of Muslims.'"

Odd way to say this - can anybody narrow down a little more specifically who these "Muslims" actually were?

Soy-based ink??
The article states that Gutenberg used soy-based ink. Is this correct? It seems quite unlikely and contradicts the Printing article. --NBR 21:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this must be vandalism? According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"::Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from movable type that was used without important change until the 20th century. The unique elements of his invention consisted of a mold, with punch-stamped matrices (metal prisms used to mold the face of the type) with which type could be cast precisely and in large quantities; a type-metal alloy; a new press, derived from those used in wine making, papermaking, and bookbinding; and an oil-based printing ink. None of these features existed in Chinese or Korean printing, or in the existing European technique of stamping letters on various surfaces, or in woodblock printing."
 * So I'm thinking SOY-BASED should be OIL-BASED? I've gone ahead and changed this - please change back with an explanation if soy-based ink was in fact part of Gutenberg's invention.... Lijil 17:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Picture trouble
I've tried downloading this picture, resizing it and re-uploading it, but for some reason, it isn't working. Can somebody fix the size, please? -- Zoe

Is that my fault because I am the one who put the initial big picture. Is uppercase extension problem? Anyway, I resized the picture. -- Taku 01:10 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Diagram
What do each of the numbers in the diagram refer to?
 * Noldoaran 23:45, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

Translation from German

 * Article: de:Buchdruck (and some of the linked-to pages!)
 * Corresponding English-language article: printing
 * Worth doing because: German version is much more complete than English, english one is quite poor, doesn't cover topic adequately
 * Originally Requested by: Lady Tenar 00:21, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Status: Got tired of this sitting here. I added most of the information from the German into printing press and some of it into printing. A few bits I left out as well. Maybe someone could take a look. I did a lot of Internet verification of details, but maybe this should be looked at more closely. Mpolo 18:54, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * Other notes: May be this should be done by someone who knows a bit about the topic, i'm not doing it myself because i can't translate most of the words specific to printing

Ancient history section removed
I have removed the section below. The relationship of the Phaitos Disc to moveable type is a misconception. Some of this info is relevant to the history of punch cutting and could go into history of typography, but I dont think it needs to be here. Maybe there should be something on early development of presses, eg olive oil / wine presses whhich were adapted by Gutenberg, otherwise this Ancient history seems irrelevant.


 * The oldest use of moveable type comes from about 1500 BC. The Phaistos Disc is the oldest example of a printed work produced with moveable type (Bossert, 1931).


 * Seals and signet rings also preceded printing. Nobles would carve a seal or a ring to press onto documents as official verification. This technique dates back to ancient times.

--mervyn 18:21, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Correct. The statement "'...oldest use of moveable type comes from about 1500 BC. The Phaistos Disc is the oldest example of a printed work produced with moveable type...'" is incorrect, because the Phaistos disc was not printing with moveable type, but more akin to printing with a daisy wheel printer or a Dymo labelling machine. Do we call either of those two printing with moveable type? Nope, because they're not.
 * Arbo 18:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

You say it 'is a misconception'. What is your source for that? The bit you removed had a bibl. reference. I think you should at least match that with one of your own. Prater 18:46, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * It's a misconception because the Phaistos Disc does not print by means of "moveable type".
 * Arbo 18:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I strongly maintain that "movable type" is totally out of context with regard to the Phaistos Disc. Movable type is cast in quantity from matrices, which in turn are made from engraved punches. AFAIK there is no evidence for movable type before the 1400s. I suspect it originated as a misconception from engraved letter/ideogram punches - of which, indeed, the Phaistos Disc is an early example. Unless you can advise me better, I think wikipedia should not connect the Phaistos disc with "movable type". Any standard work on printing history eg Lucien Febvre "The Coming of the Book" will give the background information.

--mervyn 06:36, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The title of that book suggests it is not a history of printing so it is no surprise it doesn't mention the fact we are discussing. Bossert and Chadwick say it's printed text, who supports your view? Prater 09:08, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * The book does not have to be a dedicated history of printing to contain relevant information. As long as the information is accurate and relevant, it is applicable to this article on the printing press. And, there is a difference between "printed text" and printing with moveable type. The process of printing with the Phaistos Disc is not the same as the process of printing with moveable type. In other words, there are different ways and methods of printing.
 * Arbo 18:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * this is not about finding a counter source, it is about rejecting a statement made by a source in 1931 that contradicts accepted understanding of the term movable type. The technique of impressing characters into clay from a seal or punch is not what is meant by the term "movable type". In any case, my other argument still stands that the "Ancient History" section is not relevant to the Printing Press article so I think it best to leave it removed. --mervyn 10:45, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Right on Arbo 18:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Further to my above comment, you have amended the ref to movable type on the Phaistos Disc page, thanks. --mervyn 10:45, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Glad to oblige. And I do in fact agree with the removal of that section from printing press (If only because none of it involved any presses!). Prater 11:49, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Improvement drive
The article on Johann Gutenberg has been nominated to be improved on WP:IDRIVE. Come and support it with your vote!--Fenice 21:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Revolution
Burke in Day the Universe Changed suggests it started a revolution, making memory & eyewitnesses less important than documents... Trekphiler 08:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Shame there isn't more details on the political side of the advent of the printing press. I recall reading that most of the produced paper were owned and commandeered by the church and/or the "local" government before the introduction of the press, and that the press in itself represented an opening in this closed "market" as producing a manuscript was well over the price any private organisation could actually afford, and therefore the need for the main producers of written texts to sue Gutenberg in the first place.
 * On a side note, I think that comparing the internet to the printing press (as a revolution) is actually ignoring the strong opposition of major players against this new technology (the printing press), where as the internet has been embraced the most. In that regard the internet isn't a revolution as it is not fought against. On the other hand if you do mention the peer to peer technology, that could be a valid comparison as all the players involved in the technology are looking for a solution, which are ranging from denial and lawsuit (RIAA) to acknowledgement(ISP/Users).94.193.57.20 (talk) 09:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Movable Type
Does anyone else find it inappropriate that a link to Movable Type - the blogging software - appears on this page even when someone comes to it from direct links to "Printing press"? It has no place on the "Printing press" page. I'll remove it in a week if there are no objections.
 * As the notice says, "Movable type" redirects there. In such circumstances, the notice is shown unconditionally. This is common practice; compare, for instance, Central Intelligence Agency. --Sneftel 04:13, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Something I would like to see added to this article...
I think this article could use a section on the status of the printing press today; specifically, in the face of newer, more modern techniques, why is it's use still so wide-spread in industries such as the newspaper printing industry or the book printing industry?

My husband works in newspapers, and his paper got a new press, and I asked him why newspapers are still using that sort of technology instead of, say, laser printing directly from computer. He's a reporter, not a press operator, so didn't know. However, for a document that is only intended to have one run (like a newspaper), albeit a large run, what advantages are offered by a press rather then more modern (and one would think faster and more efficent) printing technology?

As it stands the pages are sent by computer to the press operator, and then metal plates must be made for each page each day. Why can't they adapt the same technology that allows computer printers, fax machines, and photocopiers to print without plates? What modern advantages to presses have?

Obviously, not knowing the awnsers I can't add the section, but maybe someone who does know could?


 * Flexographic and offset litho web printing may seem out of date or outmoded, but the latest presses of that kind are in fact fully up to date with digital technology, and still offer the most economical means of printing newspapers. The advantage is a matter of economics and scale of production. The technologies inside your "...computer printers, fax machines, and photocopiers [that] print without plates..." are practical for a small office or home, but not practical for large-scale print operations producing tens or hundreds of thousands of copies. Laser printing directly from a computer would be too costly per imprint, and laser toner doesn't stick very well to newspaper. Contrary to what you might think, laser and bubble-jet printing are far slower than a flexographic press, which runs off huindreds of copies per minute. Printing from flexographic metal plates is still the cheapest and fastest method for printing newspapers. Offset presses offer the same advantages for book printing.


 * The main change in the digital era is the way plates are made---with a digital imagesetter instead of the older photo-bromide process.


 * I am more than happy to add this perspective once we sort out which of the articles on printing and publishing will be merged.
 * Best regards, Arbo 18:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge with printing?
What do people think about merging these two articles? It seems to me that some of the information is duplicative and Wikipedia could maybe get by with one article and a redirect from Printing press to printing. The printing article is, I think, a better article, but the printing press article has lots of information the printing article doesn't. What do others think? Good idea? Bad idea? ONUnicorn 17:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea. Definitely. I've left a message of support on the talk page for Printing. The best strategy would be to merge Printing Press with Printing and put in a redirect for "printing press". Unicorn&mdash;do you know how to do a merge? Arbo 16:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Movable Type already redirects here, and this trend to merge every article under the sun is rather scaring me. Printing is a generic process, but the Printing Press is a specific type of process with specific and significant roots in history.  Rather than hacking up the article to make it fit into Printing, I wish it were expanded upon.  Some things I feel are missing are historic events that included the destruction of printing presses in an attempt to oppress freedom of press, how the printing press brought about printed news, and how news media became known as the 'press' because of this.  "Stop The Presses" also needs to be mentioned.


 * If you must merge Printing Press with Printing, then please merge Printing with Writing, and Writing with Words, and Words with Letters, and Letters with Drawing. - Eric 04:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Year of invention of rotary press
Just been reading the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on the rotary press, and it says: ":'In 1844 Richard Hoe in the United States patented his type revolving press, the first rotary to be based on this principle. It consisted of a cylinder of large diameter, bearing columns of type bracketed together on its outer surface; pressure was provided by several small cylinders, each of which was fed sheets of paper by hand. This system gave speeds of more than 8,000 copies per hour; its only drawback was its fragility; faulty locking up of the forms caused the type to fall out of the cylinder. ('Printing.' Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 19 Sept. 2006 .)'" Our article says ":'Later on in the middle of the 19th century the rotary press (invented in 1833 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe) allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.'" Can anyone check the year the rotary press was invented? Either it was invented in 1833 and not patented till 1844 - or else either we or the Encyclopedia Britannica is wrong. Lijil 17:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Movable type and other things

 * I agree completely with that movable type should not redirect here, especially since this article defines it as a separate invention. There is a article on typography, which has a very brief discussion of the technology of movable type, and I suggest that additional material could be put in there; (I know enough to add based on the standard books on the subject) and the redirect changed. Perhaps this will solve some of the problems referred to above.
 * A composing stick is an early improvement, not a later invention in the sense of the other see alsos
 * A good deal more is needed about the later technologies, but I am not really competent for this one. DGG 04:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
Since neither we nor anyone apparently knows whether or not the inventions were independent, we might as well simply present them both, along with the appropriate references that had previously been added. The important thing is to present both.
 * I still search for a better place to redirect "movable type". This one isn't sensible, because we do all seem to agree that they were independent inventions, whether in Europe the same man made both of them, or combined them in a novel way. DGG 06:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Upon further thought, I have decided to move it to Typography if nobody has a better suggestion. DGG 18:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Phaistos disk
As it is concluded in this article not to be true movable type, what is the point of a 75 year old quote that it is? DGG 03:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

But what do you want? A black and white article? Obviously the Phaistos disc is a border case, therefore I am also giving room to views which support the notion of it being movable type.

Gun Powder Ma 04:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * OK. It's more a matter of space. but it can't really be discussed in less, & the remedy is to add more material on the later printing press that is so badly needed. I am not going to argue about this too much,  when we basically agree about so much of the controversy on this and related pages. I'd rather deal with the POV there.
 * I don't see your sentence "'The Phaistos Disc clearly shows an understanding of the concept of printing, that is to reproduce a body of text non-manually with reusable characters.'" I hope I did not accidentally edit over it, or deleted anything else by mistake.

That doesn't mean you've convinced me, for Anyway, I've added your new sentence to the disc page, because it is certainly at any rate worth mentioning there, adjust it if preferred. And perhaps this should go on the printing page instead, because it did not use a press? (see #3, above) DGG 06:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) the very learned people fighting on the disk page have none of them thought to mention it.
 * 2) Can you cite any modern ref. that treats it as a serious precurson? By your chosen definition in the page it is not printing. (Equally, I would have to look for something modern that says it isn't.)
 * 3) It would only resemble printing if the characters were impressed at the same time, or in a mechanical fashion. Since according to the article on it the characters overstruck each other, & are found on both sides, and go from the edges in, it doesn't seem it's very close.
 * 4) I'm not sure what you mean by non-manually? I don't think you mean a machine, but rather a character-shaped device rather than a stylus or brush or pen.

Deleted the 'non-manually', added a quotation and rephrased parts of the text. I am going to post the passage also in 'Printing'. Gun Powder Ma 10:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Why on earth would you want this information in two separate articles? I think it makes better sense in Printing, because if might or might not be a form of printing. The overlapping letters demonstrate that it was not produced in a printing press, even a primitive one. It therefore does not belong in this page at all. I don;'t want to dispute endlessly on whether or not it is printing, but keeping what is after all a side issue in two places is wrong in principle. Obviously it doesn't waste paper, but it does waste reading time, and cause confusion. I am trying to clean up this set of related pages and a number of other people have put their special topic in more than one place, & it's obvious where this has led.
 * Suggestion--Put it in printing, make sure everything you want to say is in there. List it as a cross ref in printing press & anywhere else you like.   I am a little puzzled by your insistence on spreading the news about it. If you had a talk p. we could alternatively discuss it there, or use mine.
 * Alternative suggestion: put it in the article for the disk, and make a section in printing, giving 1 sentence & the link.
 * Second alternative: as there's a lot to say about it, make an article, where all the alternatives can be discussed in depth--that is what you do want, I think, & it makes a lot of sense.
 * Let me know when you decide. Either of us can do the clean-up. DGG 06:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * This may be the single most enigmatic object in the world,

Ok. I take it out from 'printing press', and keep it at printing. Later we also have to take out the sections 'woodblock printing' and 'movable type' from 'printing press' which do not belong there either. As far as the article 'Phaistos Dics' is concerned, I reserve myself to either post the whole section there, too, or make a cross reference to 'printing', however unusual that may be to talk about a thing in another article. At any rate, the section in printing has to be kept, because this is the very first instance of the long development of printing and we have to add later also a section about 'printing on clothes' which predates printing on paper clearly. The important thing is to show the evolution of printing and not to let it begin with an arbitrary date or partial invention. You do not start an article on WW II with the 1. September 1939, either, do you? Gun Powder Ma 12:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your cooperation. I consider the short section of woodblock printing is justified as referring to the main article on the subject, and since woodblocks in Europe may have been printed on something like a printing press. "Movable Type" has moved around  (no pun intended) quite a bit before you & and I got here. I think it does indeed warrant a separate article, but this would apparently mean asking to reconsider a RfD vote.--it ended up mostly merged into Typography, not Printing. I think the vote was probably based on the very similar content at the time, not the logic of the subject.  Incidentally, do you have a ref on early printing on cloth? It's new to me?

In friendship, DGG 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

No reference yet, but I have already seen a lot of pics of ancient cloth printing online. It is very rarely talked about. Until I have no references and/or pics, I will not write anything about it, of course. In my view the final structure of the history of 'printing' should be 1. Stamping 2. Phaistos Disc 3. Cloth printing 4. Woodblock printing 5. Movable type printing, etc. Regards Gun Powder Ma 01:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Consensus text, perhaps
I have tightened up the early part of it, and perhaps it would be fair to consider the lead, section 1, and section 2.1 as at least preliminary consensus text (which does not of course imply that it could not be improved -- I hope it will be. I have marked one or two places where citations are I think needed. Perhaps further elaboration of 1 and 2.1 should be relegated to the more detailed articles. I would not object to a single short sentence saying something like, The existence of stamping as a progenitor of printing is recognized, though details are uncertain, with a see also to the PD) I do not want to add it until there is agreement on the wording, and on its inclusion. As for "The Catholic church decided not to make a monopoly on printing", it seems a little odd to me, since  certainly the various branches of the Inquisition made a success of it. I've left it in the hope it can be clarified.

I worked a little on section 2.2, but to my eyes it remains very vague and quite repetitive. It is essentially a recapitulation of the development of culture over the last 5 centuries, and it's hard to summarize that. Every sentence is a drastic ovesimplification. I hope others can do better with it than I did, though I am going to make another try. In particular, the Gieseke quote out of context does not make sense to me, unless "one piece of information" is interpreteted extremely broadly--Newton's Principia is not one piece of information.

The following sections await. But I think I would like to work for a while on some other subject entirely. DGG 03:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Article needs an actual explanation of how a gutenberg style press works - ideally with diagram or better picture
Johnbod 01:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ironically, Microsoft Encarta has such a diagram. Better than a thousand words. Gun Powder Ma 10:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

colour
Found the refs, found other refs too & will add. Worth writing an article on the Psalter to give the details. DGG 00:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Handkerchief press
Yes really. I was at this this week & they had a very neatly made one "mid C15" from I forget which Italian museum. About 9 inches press space between two screws (maybe 6 inch screw travel up & down). They said irons weren't invented until the C17. Just FYI Johnbod 00:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The section on the effects of printing is too sweeping
The section on the effects of the printing press attributes too many scholarly developments in the late 14th and early 15th centuries to the printing press, and betrays a certain ignorance of the manuscript world. My three main qualms are as follows:

1. The article notes that the press made authorship more important. This is blatantly incorrect. Since the late 14th century, scholars regularly identified themselves in their treatises (and treatises were sometimes wrongly attributed in an effort to give them more authority). The development the author notes is just a continuation of this. What the printing press did do was allow for scholars to debate eachother in writing, as they could expect all readers to have copies of both treatises.

2. According to the article, manuscripts had a visual emphasis that printed books did not have. As a percentage of total popoulation, more early printed books had illuminations than did manuscripts in the 14th and 15th centuries. If anything, the development of the printing press made authors more likely to use visual aids, since diagrams could be created separately by skilled craftsmen and could be reproduced accurately. A good example is Euclid. Very few manuscripts of Euclid have illustrations, but all but a very small number of printed editions do. I am personally amazed at the amount of math that medieval scholars could do in their head without seeing the diagrams on paper. Indeed, as a result of the press, we are now more visually oriented than ever - and a good amount of time is spent creating visual representation of ideas than ever (see Edward Tufte). It can be argued, then, that the printed book made us think even more metaphorically and made us more visually oriented.

3. The article states twice that the printing press led to the production of works in vulgar languages. Nope. Actually, if you look at the number of manuscripts written in vulgar languages before 1500 and the number of books not written in Latin before 1600, you will see a huge drop-off. The reason for this is that manuscripts were made for individuals, whereas books were made for a market. In addition, the production of manuscripts was never really regulated, but printed books required an imprimatur - official permission to be printed. In these two regards, however, printed books did have an effect on the vulgar languages, in that they resulted in the homogenization of dialects into high languages in which books could be sold widely to a population in a form that was approved by the authorities.

Harry 17:08, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Harry, I agree with you, but they are conventionally discussed together. I think the conventional view is outmoded scholarship, mostly    based on Lucien Febvre's The Coming of the Book (originally published in 1958) but it will take some time until it can be corrected. As far as i know, the best book on the contemporary scholarly view is The Myth of Print Culture by Joseph A. Dane, 2003. I have a copy, and hope to put in some material from there. DGG (talk) 05:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Talk page formatted
I went and changed all the quotes to blockquotes, fixed a title, removed the horzional lines and fixed a typo or two. Please tell me if i made any errors in correcting the page, as the talk page is very long and I had to run thorugh it about ten times to find all (I hope) the errors. --Ashfire908 17:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Rhetorical device comment
This line seems unnecessary, as it is a bit obvious, and the wording is confusing as well.

"'...&mdash;a rhetorical device, which alludes to the pivotal role of the printing press in the global spread of printing.'"

Do we really need it, should it be rewritten to be less confusing, or should I delete it? --Ashfire908 20:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * what we really need is a disam page to distinguish the two uses of the word. Though the same word is used for both, and they are sometimes treated together, they are really two topics. This confusion, however, is not unique to WP, . I think at least this much is necessary to make a demarcation, as without it the contents moved around a good deal. But a better wording is always desirable., if you can find one. DGG 20:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Briggs and Burke
Is a general elementary textbook on graphic arts, and is not a universally used authority. It's an elementary level tertiary reference only, and there are much more reliable sources for every aspect. it's absurd to base the main argument on quotations from them. it's enough to list them as a general reference. I am going to adjust the article accordingly. DGG (talk) 04:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * But is the main reference useed, Meggs, any better? Johnbod (talk) 19:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Huge revert
I just reverted way, way back, removing a number of POV'd essays and some vandalism. I may have removed a couple of good edits when I did so, however -- so if anyone finds something good I reverted, fix it, please. Thanks! Gscshoyru 22:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I consider most or all of what you did very acceptable---I woouldnt have called it POV exactly, but rather material that was somewhat outside the main point of the article. DGG (talk) 16:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Giesecke 1989
There was a question in SHARP-L regarding the enigmatic Giesecke 1989. If http://www.jchilders.com/imd450/printingpress/effects.html has the priority there might be a copyvio? --Historiograf (talk) 17:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

It is more likely that the Childers page - which has a disclaimer at the bottom - "borrowed" from this article. It is traditional for this type of in-line citation ("(Giesecke, 1989; 325)") to be paired with a fuller citation (i.e. including title) in a bibliography which should be in the "sources" section here. This lapse is sadly ironic given the subject at hand. jbeekman-atsign-jclibrary-dot-org 11/27/2007 15:00 EDT

coster et al
This is fringe--and was fringe even the the 19th century. erratically, the main article in the 11th eb was written by someone who believed it, though other articles in the same ed. make it quite clear otherwise. This needs to be discussed, but not really in this article, its already discussed in history of typography. The EB stuff needs to be attributed to the actual author of the article--not an official position of the EB. Let me think of the best place to put it, and then it can be expanded & fully referenced. For the moment I moved the material to a separate section here. it does not belong in the main discussion as if it is considered equally likely as gutenberg. Which reminds me to find better sources generally than the over-general over-elementary graphic arts textbook being relied upon here. DGG (talk) 16:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I agree with that broadly, but before I saw this reinstated it as a footnote, which I think is a better holding solution. I agree better sources are needed - in particular the article does not explain that the classic double-strike "Gutenberg press" does not appear until ca. 1500 - JG himself used a single-strike press, like printmakers. Johnbod (talk) 16:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * John,I think the footnote is indeed better. I think we'd need to say G presumably used a single-strike press, as nobody knows what he actually did use.DGG (talk) 03:19, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Apparently close examination of his pages proves this; I'm not sure how. But as it is the article doesn't give enough detailed description of either type. Johnbod (talk) 03:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Printing Press in Koramangala, Bangalore
There is no printing presses in Koramangala so, I have started Printing Press in Koramangala, i.e. SRIVAIBHAVALAKSHMI PRINTING PRESS, 8th Block, Koramangala, Bangalore. contact me for printing works Email ID : srivaibhavalakshmi.graphics@gmail.com, WEB : HTTP://SVLPRINTERS.GOOGLEPAGES.COM. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.75.65.8 (talk) 04:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Lightsaber
Just a warning: Stephen Colbert noted a while back that the article on the lightsaber was longer than the article on the printing press. After that, the lightsaber article was radically trimmed, and for a while the printing press article was longer. But now the lightsaber article is longer once again.  Serendi pod ous  05:51, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Introduction
debate about the origin printing press aside - the comment in the introduction about 'all technological inventions happened in China a long time before anywhere else' is an outrageous claim.
 * it has been removed. DGG (talk) 02:25, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Uighurs and Printing Press
Check this source for Uighur's Printing Press. I think it should also be included. Will try to look for books about this. http://the_uighurs.tripod.com/Scrpt.htm Ancalimonungol (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Johannes Gutenberg (creator of the press)
Johannes Guttenberg was just intrigued by the way that books were binding and put together and this intrigued him to start and pursue something as the movable type, little did he know that his invention of the printing press would effect the society in such a large way. Gutenberg was not the only man or women involed in the creation of the printing press he worked with others but they were not as heavily involved as Gutenberg. His printing press became well known around the world when he came out with the Gutenberg bible, otherwise known as the 42 lined bible. The bible was very elegant and admired by many people. After ashort time period he then shortened his famous Bible down to a smaller 36 lined Bible ( 36 lines per page). The ideas of the Rennisance were much easily shared through Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, people were able to access and see the information much quicker than ever before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Megfinley (talk • contribs) 03:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

How to
The point of this section was that it provided information about what actually happens in the use of a press. Though the wording may appear non-encylcopedic. I think it needs to be considered for restoration, because I think the basic material may not be clear without it. DGG (talk) 00:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Good point; maybe turning it into a diagram or making the list more concise would work better? —Parhamr 00:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Potential book sources
 * Typographia, or the Printers' instructor
 * The Harper establishment, or, How the story books are made.
 * History of the processes of manufacture and uses of printing…
 * The American printer
 * Printing; a textbook for printers' apprentices, continuation classes, and for general use in schools
 * Commercial engraving and printing


 * Potential video sources
 * This video might be a good source to use for creating a visual diagram and/or explanation.
 * A 1947 film about jobs in the printing industry is also a great source—public domain, too!


 * Potential image sources
 * a good photo of a pressroom in 1905

I will try to get the above books. —Parhamr 09:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Corrections
Gun Powder Ma (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The                                          device was also used from very early on in urban contexts as a cloth press for printing patterns, and for printings engravings on paper. Not that I dispute this, but a reference couldn't hurt.
 * In this situation, the decentralised state of the medieval landscape allowed a certain freedom to pursue individual solutions beyond the restrictions imposed by political and religious authorities. Restored as this is one of the key hypotheses of the authors quoted.
 * since the late 14th century and which worked on the same mechanical principles. There is nothing to clarify, paper presses worked by the same screw principle as printing presses
 * as well as its use in China from the 11th century (using ceramic or wood blocks) and Korea (using bronze) This is still off-topic here as there is no known connection between Far Eastern and Western printing. The thrust of this passage is obviously that the idea of movable type had been in the air in medieval Europe for centuries, perhaps as early as antiquity (cf. Medieval letter tile, Pruefening dedicatory inscription and Roman lead pipe inscription. There is no more reason to refer to Far Eastern typography here than in an article on the history of Chinese characters to prior, but unrelated Sumerian writing. Post hoc is not propter hoc.
 * compared to forty by hand-printing. Obviously, we are talking here about typography, printing presses were not used for woodblock printing to any extent
 * What does the reference actually say for "In this situation, the decentralised state of the medieval landscape allowed a certain freedom to pursue individual solutions beyond the restrictions imposed by political and religious authorities"? As it stands it makes very little sense. "Religious authorities" were notoriously more centralized in late medieval Europe than at almost any other time or place in history, and the growing, if not very co-ordinated, Habsburg state, was reaching its zenith. But neither took any great interest in imposing "restrictions" on industrial processes, which were however often very tightly contolled by local guild regulations. I will remove it again - if you want to re-add it in a clearer form, please put a draft here first. Johnbod (talk) 00:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * While I remember, we might mention the elaborate metal punches with ornamental designs used to decorate leather bookbindings & other leather goods, which had been around for centuries, & were often used in combinations to make up a design. Johnbod–— (talk) 05:21, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What source would you recommend? I am interested in these things. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:40, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a short book on the subject: John P. Harthan, Bookbindings, Second revised edition (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961 (ie Victoria & Albert Museum), which doesn't mention any link with printing presses I think but gives a basic account of the history. His Introduction is here but not so much use without the pictures. He seems to be a top man anyway. See the preceding piece too. There are lots of books on google books, but I've been looking for stuff on the gold tooling technique that largely replaced the stamps, so can't make a specific recommendation.  Let us know if you find something good. This object is interesting for example - was the inscription stamped or incised (see picture of top)? One could ask.  I take it you know about metalcut prints, where the image was very largely composed with repeated punch stamps?  Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No, this is news to me, but thanks for it. I am still quite new to such early realizations of the typographic principle, but their diverseness is fascinating, isn't it? The other day I have seen pictures from the inscriptions on the silver retable at Cividale. Clearly made by individual punches - around 1200. Now I am wondering how widely the techique was also applied in the Byzantine realm. Not much research has be done on it, so it feels a bit like pioneering work. Let me know if you happen to know something about these staurotheca and lipsanotheca, a good museum art catalogue with sharp images can much help identify the technique. I'll follow up your recommended reading, perhaps this is even worth an article of its own one day? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There are several different articles, or ways of doing an article, we could do with. Don't know about Byzantine stuff, but much use of punches was common to all goldsmiths. The metalcut prints that use punches so much seem to have started at just the same time as Gutenberg btw, so can't clearly be said to be earlier. Johnbod (talk) 02:54, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Marxist historiographical account too narrow
Under the heading "History", there is actually very little history. The intellectual theory presented under "Economic conditions and intellectual climate" is purely Marxist and does not take into account any variations to that theory, let alone other broad theories behind the development of literacy, so it is biased.

Edits should include something along the lines of "Some historians suggest..." at the start of the first paragraph, then the reference to "The sharp rise of medieval learning and literacy" needs to either be provided with a factual basis and references, and it should be measured by some reference to current cultural historical theory which recognises that secondary literacy (learning through listening) was widespread in Medieval Europe, and that "medieval learning" was available through church attendance, plays, participation in juries and the court system, and to those in service in houses with educated members.

For an overview, the best possible summary is in the 2006 "A Social History of England", ed. by R. Horrox and W. Mark Ormod, which contains essays on writing and links with the rest of Europe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Athomas.wadh (talk • contribs) 16:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Speed of typographic hand-printing
In the introductory section and in the "Mass production and spread of printed books" section, the article currently says that typographic hand-printing using movable type did not exceed 40 pages per day, compared to over 3000 for printing presses. The difference in printing speeds is important, because previous printing technologies (used in Asia for instance) apparently fell into the typographic hand-printing category.

However, the article History_of_printing_in_East_Asia says that a skilled printer could produce 1500 or 2000 pages per day. Also, 40 pages per day seems intuitively implausible&mdash;presumably even hand-copying could produce 40 pages per day. Should this comparison be removed, or updated to the 1500+ number? Z8 (talk) 19:39, 24 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Neither. The 1500 or 2000 pages per day refer to woodblock printing, not typographic printing. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Category German Inventions
I noticed this has gone back and forth a few times and I'm a little confused. Even if Gutenberg didn't invent movable type or "printing" broadly, it's not fair to say the machine known as the "printing press" was his invention -- and thus a German invention? I don't have any particular stake in this -- just curious why it's controversial. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  14:45, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. However there is a long-running sockpuppeting problem involving many articles that are not German inventions too. As a result, no-one has been in a hurry to categorise this legitimately as German. See my comment above for the scope of how much is German (press, maybe yes; printing, definitely not).
 * If you personally have seen adequate sourcing to convince yourself that Gutenberg's was innovative and has primacy, also that Gutenberg was German according to a reasonable interpretation, then go ahead and add it. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:44, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

What about the last 80 years?
I was hoping to find out a bit about the latest industrial printers that can apparently print millions of individual customized mailers in full color. Instead I find something that runs out of gas even before I was born in the middle of the last century. Let's get hopping. DCDuring (talk) 17:58, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Lead too long
The lead is way too long, and introduces material that is not covered in the article. The lead is supposed to summarize what's in the article. See Manual of Style/Lead section. I tried to move some stuff in to the history section but got reverted. Maybe someone else can try, or explain what they didn't like about what I did. Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The explanation is the long-running "culture war" here, over how much space and prominence to give to East Asian historical techniques. The reasonable complaint in the section above should also be addressed, with a sentence or two and links. Johnbod (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I've done my best to trim it, removing a bunch of unnecessary detail (some entirely irrelevant to the history of printing) and double-linking. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 14:05, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't believe the tag should be removed until such time as there is an agreement on the intro length. Has this agreement been reached? It does still appear to be too long to me.   Leonardo da Vinci Talk  17:04, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Really? If you say so. Feel free to revert my edit and put it back, but I've seen intros to featured articles with roughly the same length, to be honest. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 23:59, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The issue is not about the length of the intro in general, but about its length in proportion to the rest of the article. Intros should generally be about 10% of the article's full length and should summarize the article's content. That is not the case here.   Leonardo da Vinci Talk  11:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Recent disruptive edits to the lead
I would ask that the person using various IP addresses (never the same) to stop reverting my version of the lead to add in a bunch of irrelevant description about the Mongol Empire and Korea's tributary status as a vassal to Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasty China. None of that is relevant in an article about the printing press, and even less relevant in the lead section that's supposed to summarize the article as a whole. You seem awfully new to Wikipedia, because you clearly don't understand the standards that an encyclopedia is supposed to uphold. Also, although he speculates about the strong possibility that paper, the compass, and gunpowder made their way to Europe over the centuries from China, Joseph Needham (who you mentioned in your edit summary but never cited properly) actually says nothing about movable type printing ala Bi Sheng's version being directly transmitted to the West. For that matter, the Chinese form of movable type printing (which remained dwarfed in East Asia by woodblock printing even into the 18th century) did not utilize the Greco-Roman screw press device whatsoever, which is an essential component of the printing press. Gutenberg's printing press was never actually separately invented in China; it was introduced to China in the 19th century and entirely displaced the earlier woodblock printing plus the rarely used Chinese-style of movable type in the tradition of Bi Sheng. Pericles of Athens Talk 07:09, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I would suggest semi-protecting this indefinitely, or certainly until the reversions die down. Thereafter any such changes should be addressed on the talk page by IP editors before redundant edits are made.   Leonardo da Vinci Talk  12:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * If I had the time or the inclination to rewrite this entire article, I would. Sadly, I do not have either. Hopefully someone brilliant can do so and make this a featured article candidate one day. I've got enough featured articles under my belt, but these days I have no time to invest in Wikipedia, at least not like the spare time I had in the past. Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know any moderators; aren't they responsible for locking pages? Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. Usual process it to request protection for an article at WP:RPP, but as I have this on my watchlist and have seen the IP edits I think it is appropriate and will protect. Keith D (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Cool, I might alert them about this if the problem persists. Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The need of some editors to squeeze into the article material totally unrelated to the printing press in terms of technology nd history is starting to get lame. This is not the Chinese Wikipedia... Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:12, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeez, the article has become a mess, not in the least because of the mindless onslaught of East Asian nationalists. This having for months in the printing template is pretty shocking. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:42, 19 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The lead section certainly looks much better now. However, I don't think this has anything to do with this being English or Chinese Wikipedia; ideally both should be saying the same thing because facts are not exclusive to one language Wikipedia over another. In fact, the Chinese language Wikipedia page for the printing press says more or less what the current lead section in this English version has to offer, explicitly mentioning its invention by Gutenberg and no one else. Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Fine. I noticed that this article is a pretty cyclical affair; repeatedly stuff ignorant of the fundamental differences between Gutenberg and Far eastern printing, and movable type and the printing press as technologies in general, has been added by anonymous editors, until it piles up so high that the article becomes factually useless as serious information source.


 * The article should be half-protected for a year or permanently to avoid that in future. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 04:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree about the need for a half-protection lock over a year's time. One could even make the case for a permanent one given the amount of anonymous abuse this article has gotten. Pericles of Athens  Talk 04:41, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I just stumbled upon this discussion. All these anonymous IPs are actually socks of the blocked user:ProfessorJane. I've been dealing with their nationalistic POV-pushing for more than a year. We've got many pages protected because of this user, including Lord Chunshen, Huang (state), Huang (surname), Cao Cao, Culture of Korea, Culture of South Korea, Peking Man (see discussion on my talk page). Their signature is glorifying Chinese history and culture ("9000 year of culture", "direct evolution from Peking Man", etc.) and aggrandizing historical figures (calling Cao Cao an emperor, Lord Chunshen a king, Huang (state) a kingdom, Shen Kuo, Zhang Heng, and Li Shizhen "geniuses", etc.). After I got them blocked from their favorite pages, they're now stalking me and quietly undoing many of my edits on unrelated pages. -Zanhe (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Why am I not surprised? I also feel a bit personally affronted, since it was I who brought the articles Shen Kuo and Zhang Heng up to featured article status long ago. In fact, I recall recently reverting an edit recently in a biographical article on a Chinese historical figure (can't remember who) that placed the opinionated adjective "genius" in the lead section's description of him. Unfortunately this is not the Encyclopedia Brittanica online, so any nationalist nutter with a keyboard can edit an open encyclopedia like Wikipedia. It just stinks for the rest of us because Wikipedia is perhaps the most utilized source for information on the entire world wide web. Millions of people rely on it for basic info, at the least, yet the usefulness and integrity of the site is easily compromised by hacks like this ProfessorJane. It's a good thing people like you are around to bother cleaning up the mess. There's no way I could invest that much time in Wikipedia anymore. Thanks for sharing. Pericles of Athens  Talk 08:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your hard work, ! I've come across many of your expertly written articles, and no one has done as much quality work as you did on Chinese history since your (semi-)retirement. I also find it frustrating that Wikipedia still allows anonymous IPs to edit. A big chunk of my time is wasted on repairing damage done by IP vandals and IP-hopping sockpuppets of banned users such as ProfessorJane. That is unfortunately the reality we have to deal with. -Zanhe (talk) 04:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 August 2015
It's too much work to get around this 'semi-protected' thing, but the remark that "Europe, before the introduction of printing, was a manuscript culture, where scribes would hand-copy a few books a day" is ludicrous. Scribes could copy a few lines per day, but obviously not a few books.

Suggested change:

"Europe, before the introduction of printing, was a manuscript culture, where scribes would hand-copy two to three folios a day."

Reference: Gumbert, J.P., ‘The Speed of Scribes’, in: Emma Conello en Giuseppe De Gregorio eds., Scribi e colofoni: Le sottoscrizioni di copisti dalle origini all’avvento della stampa. Atti del seminario di Erice X Colloquio del Comité international de paléographie latine (23-28 ottobre 1993) (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 1995) 57–69.

TjamkeS (talk) 08:44, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Changed "books" to "pages" Cannolis (talk) 00:03, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Invention
"The invention of printing is credited to Johannes Gutenberg " is badly misleading. Gutenberg's claim is for printing by movable type, not for printing overall (by carved woodblock etc) Andy Dingley (talk) 23:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Precisely. There is a difference between hand printing and mechanical printing. Some of the cave art in France is technically 'printing.' If anything, Gutenberg improved the methods for movable type mechanical printing, but the assertion that he invented printing is absurd. (24.107.190.169 (talk) 16:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)).


 * I'm puzzled by this, as Gutenberg did not invent moveable type. The Koreans were using moveable type much earlier. See, for example, this; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jikji


 * Exactly, this article is not historically accurate. The world's first movable type printing press was invented by Bi Sheng over four hundred years before Gutenberg was even born. And the oldest currently known book ever printed by metal movable type is the Korean Jikji as mentioned above. This article needs to be rewritten! 45.120.202.172 (talk) 21:00, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Cylinder press redirect
Why does cylinder press redirect here when the term is not ever mentioned in the body of the article? This article is about the printing press for letterpress, and while cylinder presses for letterpress do exist (but, again, are not mentioned here), the term can alternatively (and perhaps even more commonly) refer to an etching press. Any thoughts about un-doing the redirect? (If anything, cylinder press should redirect here, but that would still ignore its, in my view, primary definition as an etching press). -Michellecornelison (talk) 02:29, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Article content
It seems to me that too much of this article is about the (early) historical development of the press, to the exclusion of the use and social context of the printing press in contemporary times. I propose either creating History of the printing press, and writing more on the modern uses of the press in this article. Or, alternatively, to make it clear that this article is primarily about the historical printing press, and to have a hatnote at the top of the article that links to an article about contemporary issues, perhaps to Printing or Publishing. LK (talk) 02:45, 27 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Before you create another article, have a look at the History of printing article which is the major article on the broad topic and probably contains most of the material that you want to move. For some reason there wasn't a "Main" reference to this (there now is) which may be why the history content has grown. The section "The Printing Revolution" certainly belongs there. If there is historical material here not in that article then that may be the place to put it. Chris55 (talk) 21:36, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The question remains though, is this article about the historical device, the hand powered printing press; Or is it about printing presses in general, including modern rotary printing presses? If the former, the article content is appropriate, but we should note in the lead that it is about the historical device. If the latter, this article needs serious trimming, and move of much of the material to either History of printing or History of the printing press. Which alternative seems more appropriate to the people here? LK (talk) 06:16, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This article should keep enough of a timeline to give context though. A naive reader of this article alone should still get enough information to learn which century the major innovations took place in (printed bible at high cost, printing cheap enough to use for other books, powered presses to print newspapers in bulk, fast typesetting to allow the distribution of breaking news). Also the contemporary processes still used should describe their own innovation and introduction.
 * The detail beyond that though could well move into history of printing. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:34, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the problems are worse at History of printing than here. That is pretty hopeless at the 20th century, and I note its definition of "printing press" excludes the dominant modern technique, rather questionably it seems to me: "As a method of creating reproductions for mass consumption, The printing press has been superseded by the advent of offset printing". I think this one is sufficiently clear as to its subject, & if not clarification should be added to the lead. Johnbod (talk) 13:40, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I think that the article should include a portion that mentions the factors that allowed the rpinting press to be used worldwide. Specifically, had it not been for Genghis Khan and his amazing empire, the printing press wouldn't have made it from Europe, through the Middle East, and to China.Astrocat2374 (talk) 08:10, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 April 2017
Invention: Genghis Khan was the person that spread the printing press throughout the whole world. Because Genghis Khan accepted any religion into his empire, many people were able to use the printing press to write books, etc.

The printing press was invented by the Chinese, then later was discovered by Johannes Gutenberg. According to livescience.com “Who Invented the Printing Press?” it states that “Nearly 600 years before Gutenberg, Chinese monks were setting ink to paper using a method known as block printing, in which wooden blocks are coated with ink and pressed to sheets of paper.” This means that the Chinese were the first ones to use the printing press long way before Johannes Gutenberg did. The wooden blocks that were used for the early printing process was also used in different countries such as, Japan and Korea.

Woodblock printing came in the eleventh century. It was when a Chinese commoner name Bi Sheng created and developed the world’s first movable type printing press. Even though Bi Sheng was a commoner and did not leave much historical trails, his methods of printing was well documented by a scholar and scientist named Shen Kuo. Omfgkels (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  JTP (talk • contribs) 00:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Speed of printing press
In the lead the claim is made that 3600 pages a day could be printed based on a 15 hour workday. This works out to 4 pages a minute, non-stop for 15 hours. In lead too, is the claim that block printing yields 40 pages a day, which works out to about 25 minutes to print a single page. I find this discrepancy incredulous. These two processes are similar, one canot take a hundred times longer to complete compared with the other. I'm removing until better citations are produced. LK (talk) 04:50, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

According to this book, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China, Stanford University Press, 2004, by Kai-wing Chow, a historian at the U of Illinois, printing rates were similar. On page 70 of the book he states that a skilled printer in China could print about 1500 pages a day on woodblock, while a similar printer on a printing press could print about 1000 pages a day. He also states that the most time consuming part of wood block printing was the carving of the blocks. The book itself is well cited, by a respected academic, printed at a prestigious academic press -- a quintessential reliable source. LK (talk) 05:36, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm also removing from the text the ridiculous claim that the printing press is 90 times faster than Chinese block printing. It was comparing pages to books. LK (talk) 09:32, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 1 February 2018
caca caquita — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pakocho (talk • contribs) 12:38, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 April 2020
In the Technological factors section, please change "commonly employed in agricultural production for pressing wine grapes and ( olive ) oil fruit" to commonly employed in agricultural production for pressing wine grapes and olives (for olive oil)". "Oil fruit" is an awkward construction. 2001:BB6:4713:4858:A0D2:3008:6F12:F3B3 (talk) 12:21, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 13:30, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2020
Add to the "The Printing Revolution" section, addressing the effects of the printing press

Between 1450 and 1500, “the price of books fell by two-thirds, transforming the ways ideas were disseminated and the conditions of intellectual work” (Dittmar).

A similar statistic from Foxe informs the reader that prior to the continued innovation of the printing presses, “a New Testament. . . [cost] four marks and forty pence, whereas now, the same price will well serve forty persons with so many books” (Foxe).

Because information was being spread to the public at new rates and the information needed to be conveyed to ensure linguistic understanding, “Publishers. . . direct[ed] their energies to enhancing the effectiveness with which core literate content [was] presented” (Hirsch).

Working with texts written in a variety of styles, spellings, and dialects, publishers and print technicians moved to homogenize works printed at their presses in order to ensure readability among the masses, which “. . . facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the regularisation of inflection and syntax, and a widening gap between the spoken and the written word” (Shorthand).

With the continuation of the mass production of texts, top publishers began taking the “language of the literate strata of society as having priority, and treat[ed]. . . usage. . . in the published works of major writers as providing the permanent standard against which to judge any other forms of English” (Harris).

Sources: Dittmar, Jeremiah. “Ideas, Technology, and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press.” Unpublished thesis, Yale University, 2009.

Foxe, John. “The Benefit and Invention of Printing.” The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837.

Harris, Roy. “The history men.” A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hirsch, E.D. “The Theory Behind the Dictionary: Cultural Literacy and Education.” The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1988.

“How Did William Caxton Influence and Change Modern English Language?” Shorthand, 		social.shorthand.com/Bh21oeGraeme/nyCvKlbObj/how-did-william-caxton-influence-and-change-modern-english-language. Ethanvoss12 (talk) 03:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Please use an appropriate citation style, see MOS:CITE Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 20:33, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 March 2021
Wish to add image of advertsitment from a city directory, circa 1860 of a printer that has a illustration of a printing pressing, it would be near the history section. Ma&#39;amBushey (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This article is already pretty well illustrated. I suggest you try to get consensus to replace an image with this, or consensus on where it could be added. Thanks. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:47, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Omissions from this article
This article is missing some critical historical information. https://lithub.com/so-gutenberg-didnt-actually-invent-the-printing-press/

The first printing press was invented by Choi Yun-ui (최윤의,崔允儀) in 1234. He invented the moveable type printing press and published the book Sangyeong yemun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choe_Yun-ui

Woodblock printing of books existed prior to this in China and Korea starting in the 10th century. It would be a grave omission to not include this information in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Copepod2021 (talk • contribs) 02:31, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

"Theoretical minimum" letters
"The Latin alphabet proved to be an enormous advantage in the process because, in contrast to logographic writing systems, it allowed the type-setter to represent any text with a theoretical minimum of only around two dozen different letters.[23]" This is untrue. For example, German script at that time had several ligatures and letter variants (of which ß remains today, but which also included ſ and ꭍ, for example) that were recognized as part of standard script, as well as umlauts that put total letters well over 30. Capital letters were also required; there was also punctuation; and most importantly, the convention of full justification required the typesetter to have at least all lower-case letters available in many multiple widths. A German could theoretically, sure, print a book using only 24 letters, but nobody would have accepted it as writing. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 22:27, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Scrolls used throughout the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern era
The statement that codices had replaced scrolls by 500 is not true. In Britain, rolls were used for administrative records of all sorts throughout the Middle Ages and later. Henrik Thiil Nielsen (talk) 21:22, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2021
The printing press was not invented by Gutenberg. It was invented by the Koreans about 200 years before the dating of the Gutenberg press. Please include this information. Citing is link is here 76.64.236.168 (talk) 04:25, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. See explanation immediately above. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:41, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Too Eurocentric, and PLEASE edit
Add the printing history about China and Korea, and do not make it look inferior. It is more important. 107.184.63.8 (talk) 22:42, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:55, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is coveredin other articles, like History of printing, which are linked. But East Asia did not use the Printing press (subject of this article) until very late. Johnbod (talk) 00:57, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Can you stop being a racist and add that section about the movable type, or just rename the article and edit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.184.63.8 (talk) 19:11, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Too Eurocentric
Chronologically, the Chinese came first, then Koreans, before Gutenberg, but the first sentence of the second paragraph gives it all to Gutenberg and then it launches only into Gutenberg, like the Chinese and Koreans did nothing. For all other historical objects, the order with which it was invented in, not by the Eurocentric knowledge of who invented it comes first, not thrown in first. Therefore, Tang should come before Gutenberg, then Koreans, etc in the lead. Also, to say outright in the redirection that "Gutenberg invented it" is rather brash. "This article is about the historical device created by Johannes Gutenberg." Umm... Clearly, Tang comes before Gutenberg. Please follow the chronological order of the invention and give credit where it is really due, using the names of the Chinese people involved before giving it to Gutenberg, who is only thought to have done it in Europe and only worldwide contribution is adjustable brackets for printing, rather than go on about how he invented the Printing Press, when he didn't. The article states this later on, yes, but it's kinda weird to see an article contradict itself and name a European, but fail to name a Chinese person in the lead of the article. Comes off as PoCs can't be named, but the whole race is credited, but Europeans--oh well, gotta name them. It comes off wrong. And before you say anything about me, I'm not effing Chinese. I'm pointing out that it's slanted and needs serious fixing to be in line with other historical objects and articles about said objects.--KimYunmi (talk) 01:24, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * This is an article on the printing press, not printing. We also have specific articles on history of printing in East Asia etc.
 * So what's the Asian involvement in printing, as it concerns either the press, or movable type, as are the focus here? Andy Dingley (talk) 02:16, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would be possible to change the part stating "Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press" to "Johannes Gutenberg reinvented the printing press." The printing press and movable type was invented by Bi Sheng around 1042. The Chinese and/or Koreans mastered the use of metal movable characters around 1405 and the printing press was already in use prior to Gutenberg's reinvention of it.
 * Amerikasend (talk) 07:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Does he specifically say the "press"? See History of printing in East Asia - Asia printing was all hand-rubbed until very late. Johnbod (talk) 13:52, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Or Johannes Gutenberg copied/renovated the printing press? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.184.63.8 (talk) 19:13, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

strange english
this sentence "In Korea, the movable metal type printing technique was invented in the early thirteenth century during the Goryeo Dynasty. However, the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea printed Jikgi by using the similar method about 72 years earlier than Gutenberg," why would you say "however". that sounds really strange. this is clearly rubbish and there is no source to this claim anyway. I would remove it. if anyone thinks it should stay, reply within the next view days. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.203.152.180 (talk) 15:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep it or maybe revise it with sources. It may be hard to because of eurocentrism, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.184.63.8 (talk) 19:18, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

lol
laugh out loud — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nolious (talk • contribs) 21:15, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Two things
1. protestant revolution, 2. To all of you who keep talking about east asia inventing it, you are all fucking idiots, east asia invented the movable type you silly people, we are talking about the PRESS 2001:448A:1082:3860:7D6A:CFD:E78D:9D49 (talk) 14:39, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Ink ball material accuracy
This article (under Function and approach) describes dog skin leather as being the preferred, if not only, leather used to create ink balls. However, the ink ball article describes them as being made with sheepskin. Which, if either, of these, is accurate? inclusivedisjunction (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 July 2023
Please remove this hatnote on top per WP:NOTAMB, it is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous. 2001:4451:824F:B700:5007:9004:1AE9:2312 (talk) 12:19, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Leaning towards not removing it as I can see how people would get printing press confused with printing in general, but I'll leave this open for others to review. Deauthorized. (talk) 13:35, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * ❌ Agreeing with Deauthorized here. NotAGenious (talk) 15:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. M.Bitton (talk) 15:38, 16 July 2023 (UTC)