Printing Press

The printing press emerged in 15th-century Mainz because the conditions finally aligned—not because Gutenberg was uniquely brilliant. Chinese paper-making had reached Europe via the Silk Road, providing cheap substrate. Metalworking techniques from jewelry and coin-making could produce durable type. Screw presses from winemaking provided the mechanism. Oil-based inks from painters solved the adhesion problem. And the commercial demand for religious indulgences created a business model.

Gutenberg didn't invent printing—he assembled existing technologies into a new configuration. That Korea had invented movable metal type 200 years earlier (the Jikji, 1377) but lacked cheap paper and commercial demand proves the point: inventions require ecosystems, not just ideas.

The cascade transformed European civilization within decades. Books that took a scribe months to copy could be reproduced in days. The cost per book collapsed. Literacy spread. The Protestant Reformation exploited the technology: Luther's 95 Theses spread faster than the Church could respond. Scientific knowledge accumulated rather than being lost. The adjacent possible exploded.

Path dependence locked in movable type over woodblock printing (the Chinese method), the Latin alphabet over ideographic systems (which required thousands of characters), and the book format over scrolls. These early choices still shape digital typography.

By 2026, the printing press's descendants—from newspapers to laser printers to digital distribution—face their own disruption. But the fundamental innovation remains: mechanical reproduction of information at low marginal cost.