What key technologies allowed construction of the Gutenberg printing press?
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Actually the printing press itself - which I think works similarly to to an ancient olive press or wine press - might not have been the key invention that made the printing press practical.
I once read somewhere that Gutenberg & co. made a number of innovations.
People used solid engraved blocks to print for centuries - for example printing paper money in China - before Gutenberg used blocks with many assembled tiny separate letter blocks to spell words, moveable type. Using moveable type to write a printing block instead of slowly engraving a solid block was a great time and money saver.
And other people supposedly had used moveable type to print before, but supposedly Gutenberg invented better moveable type, perhpas using a superior alloy, which made it easier to cast multiple copies of a letter and/or did not wear out as fast, thus saving time and money.
And there is the substance printed on. The earliest paper like writing substances in Europe were expensive papyrus imported from Egypt which was very fragile, and much superior but even more expensive parchement. Paper making, invented in China, eventually was introduced in Europe and spread. Paper is much better for printing on.
And it is possible that Gutenberg also produced a new type of paper that would be better to print on that the other types of paper available at the time.
I have often written things with a pen and found that some words got smeared by carelessly touching the paper while the ink was still wet. And that was using advanced 20th and 21st century pen inks. I suspect that medieval pen inks would have smeared much more and might have been bad for printing presses. And I think that the article which I read said that Gutenberg & co. developed a new type of ink that worked much better on a printing press.
So you should do research to find out whether that article was correct, and find out what other things beside the printing press needed to be invented to making printing practical.
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