Gutenberg’s printing system
photograph of a reconstructed Gutenberg-era press on display at the Printing History Museum, Lyon; Wikimedia Commons file page identifies the depicted object as a reproduction; uploader Ghw released the photograph into the public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gutenberg.press.jpg. Labeled as a reconstruction, not Gutenberg’s surviving original.
In the mid-fifteenth century in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg combined movable metal type, a hand mould for casting it, and a screw press that evenly pressed paper against the inked type. This mechanical transfer of the image sped printing up compared with rubbing a sheet by hand. Movable type had been used earlier in China, and by 1377 a surviving book had already been printed with metal type in Korea; Gutenberg’s system was novel not because it invented movable type, but because it combined and mechanized the printing process in Europe.