Abstract
Between 1436 and 1440 a certain Johannes Gutenberg, a native of the German city of Mainz, used for the first time a movable-type printing press, an epochal invention that would completely revolutionize the spread of knowledge and literacy. The impact of the printing press in Europe entailed a huge increase in both the number and the rapidity of books produced, easier and cheaper access to the texts in demand, a consequent rise in literacy rates and in the use of the vernacular, and the creation of public libraries. Notwithstanding the introduction of censorship and the control over book circulation that arrived in the second half of the sixteenth century, the wave of radical thinking released by the printing industry would alter the course of history, fueling the Renaissance and the Reformation and paving the way both for the Enlightenment and for modernity as we know it today.
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Provvidera, T. (2022). Printing and Publishing in the Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_682-1
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