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The end of one epoch is the beginning of another. An elite society gave way to a mass society.
–Lucien Febvre

Printed Books

The method of printing pages of image and text from single woodblocks had been developed in China as early as the 9th century.

However, the invention of printing is generally ascribed to Johann Gutenberg, who developed the printing press and the technology of moveable type in Mainz, Germany, around 1455. The first substantial book to be produced by this new technology was Gutenberg’s Bible.

Within a decade of Gutenberg’s invention, German printers were operating out of the major cities of Europe, including Venice where Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was produced. Some years later, Anton Koberger, who is considered to be one of the greatest early German printers, produced the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Schatzbehalter. At around the same time, William Caxton, England's first printer, created Myrrour of the Worlde.

The earliest printed books reflected the black letter style of the German Gothic script. By the 1470s, printers in Venice, such as Nicholas Jenson, were developing more open typefaces, based on the scripts of the Italian Humanists. These typographic innovations led to the development of the Roman typeface still used today.

Manuscript books continued to be produced in Europe for more than half a century after the birth of printing. But the high cost of their production, compared with the printed book, ensured that the latter would become the pre-eminent technology of the book.