1.2 Printing: A German Man Named Gutenburg and a Buddhist Monk Named Baegun

Many have heard that it was a sacred text that inspired the first mechanized printing efforts, and that is true. But rather than look to Germany and the Christian Bible, we need to really start in Korea in the year 1377. Here we find the first evidence of movable type being used to print ink onto paper (or vellum, which was specially treated animal skin) to produce multiple copies of a document called the Jikji. The Jikji was a collection of Zen Buddhist teachings, 307 chapters in length, printed by a monk named Baegun. While we don’t know how many copies were originally printed, multiple copies of several chapters have survived the centuries, showing this to be the first mass-produced book using moveable type (where each character or letter was cast independently and each printed line was locked into place). Using movable type and a printing press allowed the monk to make multiple copies of each page quickly and accurately, at least compared to the earlier method of hand copying manuscripts (the word manuscript is Latin for “handwritten”). Movable type also allowed the actual metal type sets to be reused for the next page or next book. Prior to this, all printing was done with individually carved wood or stone blocks.

Evidence suggests that both Eastern and Western cultures were on this technological trajectory independently, yet at roughly the same time. Why is the invention of the printing press considered a transformational human technology? Because it was printing that allowed knowledge to be mass-produced, transported over distance, and stored over time. It truly was a civilization creator.

Some 75 years later in 1455, Johann Gutenberg published 180 copies of the Bible in Mainz, Germany. As in Korea, it was the creation of moveable type (with each letter being cast into a small piece of metal, which could then be arranged to build words, sentences and pages) that was the key to creating the first “mass production” of the written word. And for the next 200 years, printing presses and their stories began to fill the libraries of the royal, the rich, and the powerful around the world. But it wasn’t until the forces of industrialization began pushing cities into being that the printed word made the jump from the elite to the masses.