Abstract
Printing is important as a means of recording and distributing knowledge and ideas (information) in long-lived visual form and passing it on to future generations. It was not invented by Gutenberg, but his name is associated with it because of the obvious link to the Protestant Reformation and the rise of capitalism. This chapter is about the history of printing, starting with the invention of paper by the Egyptians or the Chinese, the invention of books, and the spread of Bibles, in Europe, and the ideas carried by those Bibles.
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Notes
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Martin Luther wrote a lot of books. His first was the famous “Ninety-five Theses (1517), followed by “Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany,” “Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” and “On the Freedom of the Christian” (all in 1520), followed by Luther’s Large Catechism, Luther’s Small Catechism (both in 1529), followed by Luther’s Bible (1534), and some others of lesser note and one that should never have been written “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543).
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Ayres, R.U. (2021). Printing, Movable Type, and Books. In: The History and Future of Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71393-5_5
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