The 12 Biggest Breakthroughs in Communication Technology
THE 12 BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGHS IN COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY by Vicki C Hayes
1 The Printing Press Spreads Knowledge and Ideas People need and like to communicate with each other Over the years this has led to many amazing inventions One of the first was the printing press Before the middle of the 1400s there was no mechanical printing Everything was done by hand It took a long time to make a book There weren’t many books And the books that did exist were very expensive At first that didn’t matter much Very few people could read In 1450 only about seven percent of people in Germany could read But the printing press changed all that The first person to successfully use a printing press was Johannes Gutenberg He was a stonecutter and goldsmith in Gutenberg examines the first sheets printed on his press 44
Germany With his printing press books could be made quickly Soon more printing presses were built By 1500 2,500 cities in Europe had printing presses Ten million books had been printed These books were cheaper than early books Information became easier to share New ideas were spreading quickly More people learned how to read Today 83 percent of all people in the world can read 200 Number of Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1452 Early books were made The printing press made books quickly More people learned to read Very few people could by hand read MOVABLE METAL TYPE The first printing presses used movable type Each letter of the alphabet was cast in metal and attached to a block of metal or wood The blocks were put together to make words Lines of words made a page First a printer would put together a whole page Then many copies of the page could be printed quickly 55
