Up to this time there was not a printed book in the whole world. There was not a newspaper. There was not a magazine. All books had to be written by hand. This, of course, was extremely slow and expensive, so there were very few of even these handwritten books in all the world. Only kings and very wealthy people had any books at all. Such a book as the Bible, for instance, cost almost as much as a house, and so no poor people could own such a thing. Even when there was a Bible in a church, it was so valuable that it had to be chained to keep it from being stolen. Think of stealing a Bible!
But about 1440 a man thought of a new way to make books. First he put together wooden letters called type, and then smeared them with ink. Then he pressed paper against this inky type and made a copy. After the type was once set up, thousands of copies could be made quickly and easily. This, as you of course know, was printing. It all seems so simple, the wonder is that no one had thought of printing thousands of years before.
Gutenberg at his press.
Comparing a printed sheet with a manuscript.
It is generally believed that a German named Gutenberg made the first printed books about 1440, so he is called the inventor of printing. And what do you suppose was the first book ever printed? Why, the book that people thought the most important book in the world—the Bible. This Bible was not printed in English, however, nor in German, but in Latin!
The first book printed in English was made in England by an English man named Caxton, and you would never guess what the English book was. It was a description of the game of chess, the game that the Arabs had invented.
Before this time few people, even though they were kings and princes, knew how to read, because there were no books to teach them how to read and few books for them to read if they had learned, and so what was the use of learning.
You can see how difficult it must have been for people throughout the Middle Ages, without books or newspapers or anything printed, to learn what was going on in the world, or to learn about anything that one wanted to know.
But, now that printing had been invented, all that was changed. Story-books and school-books and other books could be made in large numbers and very cheaply. People who never before were able to have any books could now own them. Every one could now read all the famous stories of the world and learn about geography, about history, about anything he wanted to know. So the invention of printing was soon to change everything.
The Hundred Years’ War had at last come to an end soon after the invention of printing.