Gutenberg Revolution Essay

Introduction
The invention of the printing presses, also known as the 'Gutenberg Revolution,' had far-reaching social, economic, and cultural implications. It was a landmark in the human civilisation history, which linked together communications and communities. When printing presses were invented, the dissemination of information that transformed economic, social, and political structures was revolutionised. Up to the invention of Gutenberg in 1450, European cultures were mainly scribal or oral cultures (Burke and Briggs, 2005). Bartenders, pulpit ministers, and town criers were able to disseminate news or information. For instance, town criers broadcast police regulations, royal edicts and crucial community events like treaties of alliance or peace, births, war news, and marriages of princes. The invention of Gutenberg shattered the mediaeval world and brought about modernism. It completely transformed the structural and social framework of life in Western Europe. In addition, it reconnected the region in novel ways that influenced contemporary patterns. With the invention, it was possible for all including ordinary people to access information that influenced the way they lived. Large uneducated masses could now access knowledge easier and quicker. The noble classes were skeptical at first about the new cheap print press texts they had more preference for their expensive, carefully handwritten texts. Cheaper materials implied that luxury and grandeur went down drastically. Nonetheless, the production and consumption of printed texts became a norm within a very short time, and many print shops were set up throughout Western Europe despite the fact that Gutenberg wanted to keep his technology a secret. While some scholars argue that the early printing press was the main factor that triggered a print media revolution, my argument is that the invention was an agent or mediator of change instead of a catalyst of revolution.
Winston (2005) says that in the West, the 'invention' of printing was inspired by the East or by other unknown Europeans. Every element needed was to all intents and purposes lying around even if knowledge came from the East, then it too must have arrived the previous century. There was simply no technological reason, in the form of a fundamental breakthrough without which it could not be made to work, to account for the emergence of printing from movable type in the 1440s. On the other hand, its simultaneous appearance in widely distanced towns within years of each other does speak to a shared set of social pressures, a level of demand for written texts that the old scriptorium system could not meet.
Gutenberg's invention provided the ground upon which modern popular literature, science, history emerged. Similarly, the nation-state emerged, bringing about everything by which people can define modernity (Redner, 2013). The invention of the early print acted as the engine behind cultural, societal, industrial, and familial changes that culminated in the scientific revolution, the Reformation, and the Renaissance. Some of the changes that the invention of the early press were the ability to produce cheap literature and reproduce documents with no error. It also made it possible to preserve