The world's first movable type printing was invented and developed in China by the Han Chinese printer Bi Sheng between the years 1041 and 1048. His contemporary Shen Kuo wrote extensively about the movable type printing technology developed by Bi Sheng in his scientific book, the Dream Pool Essays, which was published in 1088. This technology was transmitted to Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty, where the Korean inventors subsequently made many new technological improvements and innovations upon the original technology and in 1234 created the world's first metal movable-type printing technology for printing paper books 216 years before Gutenberg's printing press. This led to the printing of a Korean book, using the ancient Chinese writing system, known in Korean as the Jikji in 1377; it is the oldest extant movable metal printed book. This form of metal movable type technology has been described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as similar to Gutenberg's.[3]
The mechanical movable type printing press was developed in Europe by roughly 1450 and is credited to the German printer Johannes Gutenberg.[4] The exact date of Gutenberg's press is debated based on existing screw presses that were an essential component of the printing press device. Gutenberg, a goldsmith by profession, developed a printing system by both adapting existing technologies and making inventions of his own. His newly devised hand mould made possible the rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. The printing press displaced earlier methods of printing and led to the first assembly line-style mass production of books.[5] A single Renaissance printing press could produce 3,600 pages per workday,[6] compared to about 2,000 by typographic block-printing prevalent in East Asia,[7] and a few by hand-copying.[8] Books of bestselling authors such as Luther and Erasmus were sold by the hundreds of thousands in their lifetime.[9]
