One of the most important developments in early modern Europe was the invention of a printing press which used movable metal type. This development revolutionized the production of printed materials; facilitated the spread of new ideas, such as those generated as part of the Reformation; and resulted in the emergence of a new facet in written culture, through the increased availability of books.
Printing with movable metal type on paper was the intersection of several sets of cultural and technological developments, including writing systems, paper production, and movable metal type. People began crafting writing systems for their languages more than five thousand years ago, one of the earliest being Cuneiform, created by Sumerians in Mesopotamia about 3100 B.C.E. The Chinese developed a process for manufacturing paper about nineteen hundred years ago. By the eighth century this process had spread to the Middle East, with a paper mill operating in Baghdad in 794. Less than four centuries later, in 1151, the first paper mill in Europe was operating in Spain, knowledge about this manufacturing process having spread from the Middle East. Meanwhile the Chinese developed wood-block printing, the precursor to printing presses with movable metal type, in 932. A century later, movable type was invented in China in 1041. By the early fifteenth century wood-block printing had spread to Europe.
Johannes Gutenberg, a fifteenth-century inventor, printer, and publisher, put together these elements, along with movable metal type in a printing press he developed in his home town of Mainz from 1438 to 1444. He used this first practical printing press with movable metal type in Europe to publish what became known as the Gutenberg Bible. The revolutionary feature of movable metal type was that the individual characters could be quickly and easily repositioned for the production of new individual pages in a book, a considerable advantage over the older block printing technology developed by the Chinese. This new system of printing with movable metal type on paper foreshadowed the subsequent development of other industrialized and mechanized manufacturing processes that would define the Industrial Revolution.
During the latter half of the fifteenth century printing presses spread across western and central Europe, so that by 1500 printing presses were operating in Austria, Denmark, England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. The impact of this new printing process was far reaching. First of all it made the production of books faster and less expensive, making them available to a much larger audience of people in the middle classes. Accordingly, literacy rates increased across Europe. The greater availability of books was also one market within the developing consumer culture and market economy of early modern Europe. At this time the book most commonly printed across Europe was the Bible. The greater availability of the Bible in European households allowed Europeans to participate more actively in their religious beliefs. Movable metal type printing presses also facilitated the spread of new ideas in mathematics, philosophy, political science, religion, and science, through dialogues, contributing to the progress and success of the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions.