Printing Press & Its Influence on the United States
In 1950, German-born Johann Gutenberg invented the first Printing Press with movable type (Rubin, 2014). The need to make communications easier and to unify national languages and the rising needs for Religious manuscripts and education for Renaissance Europe’s Elites led to this invention. The Printing Press evolved again during the 1900s when an American entrepreneur pioneered the cheaper and less bulky Paperback and revolutionized the American reading culture.
Cultural factors that led to the invention of the Printing Press
Before printing was invented, people in Asian and European civilizations communicate orally or via manuscripts (Kovarik, 2015). Oral culture requires memorization and was enhanced using symbolic ivory and bone carvings during the Ice Age and visual communication embedded in Renaissance architecture, sculpture, and painting. Manually reproducing manuscripts reduce the need for memorization but requires a lot of time and were fairly inaccurate (Kovarik, 2015).
The need to unify national languages also led to the invention of the Printing Press. As this invention speeds up printing, besides Latin, the dominant language in Renaissance Europe, more books could be published in vernacular languages (Kovarik, 2015). Printing literature and scientific books, and especially the Bible had the effect of standardizing and codifying distant dialects and thus creates a culturally unifying effect.
Social factors that led to the invention of the Printing Press
The Catholic Church was very keen in the Printing Press as this invention helped to serve its religious courses. Besides Bibles, the Church also utilized the press to print ordinances, indulgences, and anti-Islamic Crusade propaganda during the late 1400s and early 1500s (McDaniel, 2015). The Printing Press was able to meet the Church’s demands and some monasteries even claimed the Printing Press was a gift from God.
The Printing Press was also able to meet the rising demand for education among Renaissance Europe’s nobility and merchant classes (Kovarik, 2015). As their needs increased around the 1200s, scribes and illuminators were unable to keep up with the demand of the Elites who possess the purchasing power to buy more books. Thus, the invention of the Printing Press helped to solve the problem.
The evolution of the Hardcover to Paperback in the United States
American entrepreneur Robert de Graff’s creation of the ‘Pocket Books’, better known as Paperbacks today, was another evolution of the Printing Press. The two key elements of the Paperback is price and design (Shribbs, 2015). The paperback is cheaper to manufacture than Hardcovers, and the average price of a novel changed from $2.50 to $0.25. The bulky Hardcover was miniaturized into a smaller four by six inches format.
The influence of the Printing Press & Paperback on the United States culture
A huge number of Americans who were not usually avid readers started to buy these Paperback books and publishers were unable to keep up with demands for these books (Shribbs, 2015). Smaller publishing companies started to rush …
