One goldsmith's invention put books in millions of hands within decades

Before the 1450s, a single hand-copied Bible could take a scribe over a year to produce. Johannes Gutenberg's movable-type press, combined with oil-based ink and a wine-press mechanism, let workshops print hundreds of copies in the same time. Within 50 years, an estimated 20 million books had been printed across Europe.

— Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change — 1980
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