Impacts of the Metal Type Press Response

Impacts of the Metal Type Press Response

By Piper Shiflet

Today in class we discussed the impacts of the metal moving type press, created by Guttenberg, and how it effected the history of writing. We first talked about different things that improved when we starting to produce better books and other things, with the metal type press.
We discussed it’s impact on religion, the spread of literacy among the lower class, how it improved our economy, and how it helped people share knowledge. I thought sharing knowledge was one of the most important topics we discussed, and the topic of how important the printing press was had also become relevant in our discussion.
Being able to share knowledge meant that people from further distances didn’t have to hear the word from another person, and word of new inventions and discoveries would no longer be jumbled up like a game of telephone. Having a printing press meant that people could make documents about scientific discoveries that could change our history, and it could be published an shared to many more people than if you were to spread it by word.
This also meant that the discoveries of new medicine would be more wide spread and people would be more knowledgeable about it. The printing press was a key invention that helped shape and spread word across America. And having a printing press also meant that more news papers were becoming relevant. People could talk about current events and issues with society (which did lead to a lot of issues and controversy before the 1st amendment), and could speak their minds. People wrote books before, but they were inconsistent and could look completely different, and making books of course required a lot of labor. This meant that many people were illiterate, but with the printing press making books was a lot easier and more sufficient and really shaped our history as writers.