What was Gutenberg's great invention?

Answer 1

With his invention of the movable type. He was able to spread his ideas farther and faster than before. Instead of being only available to the rich books, could be mass produced.This invention also improved literacy rates.

Answer 2

AnswerThe printing press. One of the world's most significant inventions. AnswerI think the best answer is that Gutenberg invented printing.

Gutenberg was credited by his contemporaries with the invention of printing, but no one really recorded what that meant.

There is some evidence that the printing press was used for block printing on cloth during the 1300's. About the time of the turn of the 1400's, people started using printing presses for making playing cards. Shortly after, it was used for printing picture books, including picture books of Bible stories, made using woodcut blocks.

There is also some physical evidence that movable type was invented in Holland by Laurens Janszoon Coster sometime before 1428. Regardless of whether Coster invented it, movable type was invented at least twice in China and once in Korea. We should note one important fact about the invention of movable type: in none of these places did the invention of movable type develop quickly into widespread printing. The Chinese and Koreans never had a printing press, and the techniques they were using for making type probably did not make type that could have worked in a printing press. And while Coster probably did have printing presses available, and may even have used his type in one, it is possible that the technical difficulties of using his type in a press were too great to make the project practical.

Woodcuts are often printed by hand by pressing paper on the inked block and carefully pressing on areas of the paper with something like a spoon to apply pressure. Movable type can be printed in the same way, and was used this way in China. But it is a time consuming process, and not very practical for book production.

In order to be used in a printing press, where all the pressure comes across the page at the same time, the type has to be the same precise height, and the face of the type has to be precisely level - any piece that is a different height will either punch through the paper or fail to print, and any piece that has its face not level will print only on its highest areas. Furthermore, the type has to be of uniform thickness (height in terms of body point size), though the thickness may vary, or it will move in the form on the press.

In order for printing to be practical, the type has to be made in an apparatus that can make it with uniform dimensions and a level face. This can be done by casting in a mold, but there is the additional problem that the letter bodies have varying width - ranging from the width of a period or lower case i or l to the width of an upper case M or W. So it is necessary to have a variable width mold. The mold must also have an way of opening to get the type out without damaging it. And the cap of the mold has to be a matrix that carries the letter form, properly aligned, level, and of the precisely correct depth. None of this is trivial. I have no way of knowing who first suggested that Gutenberg invented the type mold, but I rather believe it is probably true.

Inventing the one, final thing that enables a system can be said to be equivalent to inventing the system itself. If it is true that Gutenberg invented the type mold and this enabled printing, then it is also true that Gutenberg invented the first practical method for printing.

Answer 3

Johannes Gutenberg's great invention was the printing press, which revolutionized the way information was disseminated by allowing for the mass production of books and other printed materials using movable type. This innovation played a crucial role in the spread of knowledge and the development of literacy in Europe during the 15th century and beyond.

Answer 4

made the move-able printing press out of metal

Answer 5

The printing press.