Short history of print in two pictures

This is what Gutenberg’s hand-powered printing press probably looked like:

And this is what a steam-driven rotary printing press looked like in 1851:

And that’s before we get to wide use of electricity, before wood-pulp paper, before linotype machines, before offset printing for images, before typewriters and paperbacks, before almost everything.

This is why it bothers me when people say things like “the book is stalled out, in terms of technology, at 1500 AD.” You just have no idea what you’re talking about.

See also Matthew Battles, “shut up about gutenberg already.”

Images via the Museum of Idaho and Scientific American. (The second picture is of SciAm’s press in the 19th century.)

• book history
• Gutenberg
• Scientific American