So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press

[Unkotare]

..... No one would speak about this Chinese invention without Gutenberg - .....

Because you hadn't known about it?

 

[zaangalewa]

.... The chinese invention - if it had really existed and/or is really comparable - had no tradition.......

A tradition at least 600 years old before Gutenberg made his notable version. Your bias does not rest on fact.

And this sentence is exactly the problem. Where is the tradition? ......

600 years seems like a pretty well-established tradition.

Only because something is old it is not a tradition.

What did Gutenberg print that became so widely read?

Everything what he printed became widely read. That was the difference of his new system to the former situation.

Oh yeah, holy text. What were the early Chinese moveable print blocks used for? Oh yeah, holy texts.

So what do I read out of this lines? First of all that you don't know what the Chinese really had printed. I also don't know, but I guess a system of moveable graphic characters was perhaps very good for orders of the Chinese empire to their animals which are normally called in the western world "the consumers" or "the taxpayers", sometimes also "the people" - from time to time even "human beings". I guess they printed a high number of rules and armed herolds had to read this in front of the people.

Gutenberg printed everything what his customers asked for - for example bibles in the German language: a fast-seller. The reason: Bibles existed normally only in cathedrals and in monasteries in the Latin language. An original Gutenberg bible is today unbelievable expensive - one of the older bibles nearly priceless. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton were by the way famous translators of the bible into the German language, two uncomfortable non-conformists.

 

[zaangalewa]

..... No one would speak about this Chinese invention without Gutenberg - .....

Because you hadn't known about it?

Slowly you make yourselve to an idiot.

 

[zaangalewa]

I guess no one in the English speaking world knows any longer what he speaks about when he is using the words "science" and "religion". To be rebound in the truth (god) is religion as well as it is science - and to believe in science is not science and also not religion.

 

[Picaro]

Movable type was first created by Bi Sheng (990-1051), who used baked clay, which was very fragile.
Well, considering the letters were always breaking and that block printing was usually used because it was cheaper, I would say Gutenberg can have the cup for figuring out how to fashion letters from something durable and introducing it to Europe where it caught like a house afire and made us all the well educated people we are today. I read someplace that in China, the Emperor only allowed the most elite among his own staff to learn to read and write, so it would not have revolutionized their civilization like it did the West.
I love Gutenberg. I hope he has statues somewhere.

The first 'movable type' were royal and imperial seals, and stamps were used widely as well, and they were in use long before 990, and long before there was a 'China'. The Indus River cultures were using them circa 5,000 B.C.