Impact of Printing on Society

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Impact of Printing on Society

Reading books was a luxury before printing presses were
invented. Then, the only way to obtain a version of the
book was to copy it by hand. This made this whole process
cumbersome and expensive and copying was exclusively done
for books considered worth copying.

The legendary Great Library at Alexander stocked its
shelves, so the legend goes, by impounding any written
material found on boats that docked in their port. These
were copied by hand, then returned.

The above-mentioned factors ensured that reading was
confined to the upper classes. This was the only group of
people proficient in reading and writing. The only popular
and well-known book in the dark ages in Europe was the Holy
Bible. You could understand now why the priests wielded so
much power as they were the only ones capable of reading
and interpreting it.

When the printing revolution occurred in Europe, the church
was the first to suffer. This was due to extensive
propaganda launched by its critics and it also contributed
to the spread of Protestant reformation.

Literacy rates were still low however and many of the books
used illustrations rather than text to tell the tales. One
such book was the 'Whore of Babylon', in which the Pope was
seen as the whore. He was often depicted behaving as though
he were greater than Jesus Christ - the Pope letting people
wash his feet whereas Christ had washed the feet of the
poor, or wearing three golden crowns when Christ had died
wearing a Crown of Thorns. They demonstrated clearly how the
Catholic Church had become sacrilegious in the eyes of it's
critics.

Printing did not originate in Europe, as earlier believed,
when the Gutenburg press printed for the first time in 1440
A.D. This is a fallacy. Similar movable-type metal printing
press was already in action as early as 1404. Another
reason is that printing is recorded as early as 6th century
B.C. in the East.

Sophisticated printing using wood was common in the East by
the 9th Century, and at the start of the 11th century
printing with moveable typefaces was invented by a Chinaman,
Pi Sheng. Arabic and Chinese libraries were stocked with
many thousands of printed books by the 13th century.

It can be easily said that the invention of printing
brought about major social change. With the advent of
printing knowledge could be spread amongst masses
effectively and rapidly. With the spread of books the
literacy rate amongst the lower classes also increased. Now
printing is an inseparable part of our lives.