Spread in the 15th century. Starting from Mainz, printing began in 271 locations within a few decades.
European book printing production approx. 1450–1800
The global expansion of book printing with movable type was a process that began with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1450 and lasted until the introduction of book printing in all parts of the world in the 19th century. Genealogically, Gutenberg's printing press represents the archetype of modern printing with movable type; practically all of today's print products can be traced back to a single source: Gutenberg's printing press.
The following is a selection from: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4th ed., 1888–1890, entry "Book printing art (spread of invention)". Most of the information comes from this entry, unless supported by other sources.
Johann was granted a monopoly on printing with movable type for five years by the Senate, but he died a short time later. In 1469, Speyer produced the first Latin printing of the “ Historiae naturalis libri XXXVII ”.
First printing of sheet music with movable letters.
In the 15th century, printing plants were set up in 77 Italian cities. At the end of the following century there were 151 different places in Italy that had printed at least once, of which 130 (86%) were north of Rome. Over the course of the two centuries, a total of 2,894 book printers were active in Italy, of which only 216 were active in southern Italy. About 60% of the country's printing plants were in six cities (Venice, Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna and Florence), with the concentration of printers in Venice particularly high (about 30%).
The printing presses were particularly active in the service of the Calvinist cause after the city became a stronghold of Calvinism in Hungary during the Reformation .
Unstable political conditions in the country forced many printers to change location several times, so that in the course of the 16th century. 20 printing works in 30 different locations were active.
The oldest printed work in Poland is the Latin Calendarium Cracoviense (Cracow calendar), a one-page astronomical almanac for the year 1474. Although Straube remained active in Cracow until 1477, printing in Cracow and Poland was only finally established after 1503. In 1491 Schweipolt Fiol from Franconia printed the first book in Cyrillic .
The first edition of the Trojan Chronicle is dated 1468, but a handwritten copy was found with the same date. Therefore, most researchers tend to date later. Since 1486 , printing in Latin was also used in Brno and a little later in Olomouc .
The first prints in England are a Indulgence dated December 13, 1476 (date handwritten) and the Dicts or Sayings , completed November 18, 1477. Between 1472 and 1476, Caxton had already published some English-language works on the continent.
Von Ghemen printed in Copenhagen from 1493 to 1495 and from 1505 to 1510. In the meantime he was active in Leiden in the Netherlands. For 200 years, the printing of books in Denmark was largely restricted to Copenhagen by government policy.
The first book printed in the country was the Hebrew Pentateuch , printed by the Jew Samuel Gacon in southern Portugal after fleeing the Inquisition from Spain .
According to the German scientist Horch, the Sacramental is the first book printed in Portuguese and not Ludolphus de Saxonias Livro de Vita Christi of 1495 as previously assumed.
Baumgarten came from southern Germany and opened a print shop in Danzig. Like many printers back then, he went on a professional journey. - Weinreich came from a long-established Danzig family. In 1523 he opened a printing house in Königsberg, but kept in touch with Danzig and other places. - Rhode published the Narratio Prima .
Albrecht of Brandenburg-Prussia set up a printing house in Königsberg from 1519. Johann Weinreich has been a printer working here since 1523. - The purchase of books by the book trade was still widespread for a long time. Lübeck in particular , the capital of the Hanseatic League, supplied books to the entire Baltic region. It was not until 1549 that the book printer Weinrauch received competition in Königsberg from Hans Lufft, who came from Wittenberg and brought all his printing equipment with him. Hans Daubmann joined them even later.
Until the early 19th century, the printing house could not develop due to political conditions (e.g. Ottoman rule); Serbian books and magazines were mainly printed in Venice and Vienna.
By the reference year 1501, i.e. the year of publication when a print ceases to be considered an incunabulum , printing works were set up in 236 different European cities. It is estimated that 20 million books were printed in Europe for a population of perhaps 70 million people during this period.
Until the reign of Peter I , letterpress printing in Russia was limited to the Moscow printing company founded by Fyodorov. In the 18th century, annual book production rose from 147 titles in 1724 to 435 (1787), but its development was hampered by state censorship and widespread illiteracy.
Juan Pablos from Brescia (on behalf of Hans Cromberger from Seville)
Between 1539 and 1600, printing presses produced 300 editions and in the following century the number of titles rose to 2007. In the 16th century, more than 31% of the books produced on site were in native Indian languages, mostly religious texts or grammars and dictionaries of American Indian languages . In the 17th century their share fell to 3% of total book production.
On June 29, 1855, the Protestant missionary Kleinschmidt brought out 300 copies of Luther's catechism in the Khoekhoegowab , which are the first printed works in this language. However, unrest seems to have put an end to further publishing activities. The printing press was found to be functional in 1868, but it is unknown whether printing was resumed at that time.
First press for printing in Arabic set up in the Ottoman Empire, against strong opposition from copyists and, in some cases, Muslim religious scholars . The printing works remained in operation until 1742 and only published non-religious works, a total of seventeen in number.
1779
Constantinople
Ottoman Empire
James Mario Matra (British)
Unsuccessful attempt to resume printing
Due to religious objections, Sultan Bayezid II banned printing in Arabic in the Ottoman Empire in 1483 on the penalty of death. Only by the Jewish (1515 Saloniki , 1554 Adrianople , 1552 Belgrade , 1658 Smyrna ) as well as the Greek and Armenian communities was printing in the respective alphabets. In 1727 Sultan Ahmed III. his permission to set up the first printing press with Arabic letters, which published some secular works in Ottoman (the printing of religious scriptures was still prohibited).
The first presses were brought in from Europe and America by Western priests for their missionary work. The oldest known example, an Albion press, was installed in the Portuguese colony of Macao and later brought to Canton and Ningbo .
The first printing press was imported from Japan for the publication of Korea's first Korean language newspaper, Hansong Sunbo . After the press was destroyed by conservatives, Inoue returned from Japan with a new one and now started publishing the newspaper under the name Hansong Chubo . In 1885, 1888 and 1891 western missionaries also opened printing works in Seoul. Korea's very first printing press seems to have been set up by the Japanese in the contract port of Pusan as early as 1881 to print the country's first newspaper, the bilingual Chosen shinpo .
Albert A. Altman: Korea's First Newspaper: The Japanese Chosen shinpo . In: The Journal of Asian Studies . tape43 , no.4 , August 1984, pp.685-696 .
Klaus Appel: The beginnings of letterpress printing in Russia in the literary national language . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape62 , 1987, pp.95-103 .
Normann F. Blake: Dating the First Books Printed in English. In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape1978 , 1978, pp.43-50 .
Gedeon Borsa: Printing places in Italy before 1601 . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape1976 , 1976, pp.311-314 .
Gedeon Borsa: printer in Italy before 1601 . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape1977 , 1977, pp.166-169 .
Gedeon Borsa: The vernacular prints in the 15th and 16th centuries in Hungary . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape62 , 1987, pp.104-108 .
Richard Clogg: “An Attempt to Revive Turkish Printing in Istanbul in 1779”, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies , Vol. 10, No. 1 (1979), pp. 67-70
Erik Dal: Books in Danish before 1600 . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape62 , 1987, pp.37-46 .
Konrad Haebler : The German book printer of the 15th century abroad. Munich 1924.
Rosemarie Erika Horch: On the question of the first book printed in Portuguese . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape62 , 1987, pp.125-134 .
Gudrun Kvaran: The beginnings of printing in Iceland and the Icelandic Bible of 1584 . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape72 , 1997, pp.140-147 .
Melvin McGovern: Early Western Presses in Korea . In: Korea Journal . 1967, p.21-23 .
Walter Moritz: The beginnings of letterpress printing in South West Africa / Namibia . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape1979 , 1979, pp.269-276 .
William J. Watson: "İbrāhīm Müteferriḳa and Turkish Incunabula", in: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Vol. 88, No. 3 (1968), pp. 435-441
Wieslaw Wydra: The first texts printed in Polish, 1475-1520 . In: Gutenberg yearbook . tape62 , 1987, pp.88-94 .
↑ Krzysztof Migoń: Early Book Printing in Poland (XVth-XVIIth Centuries) as a Mirror of Ethnic, Denominational and Cultural Conditions , World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, August 1-9, 2003, Berlin (PDF) ( Memento from November 5, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
↑ See also Gottfried Mälzer: Würzburg as a city of books. In: Karl H. Pressler (Ed.): From the Antiquariat. Volume 8, 1990 (= Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel - Frankfurter Ausgabe. No. 70, August 31, 1990), pp. A 317 - A 329, here: p. A 320.
↑ Helmut Schippel: The beginnings of inventor protection in Venice . In: Uta Lindgren (Ed.): European technology in the Middle Ages. 800 to 1400. Tradition and innovation . 4th edition. Mann, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7861-1748-9 , pp.540f .
↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Hensley C. Woodbridge, Lawrence S. Thompson: Printing in Colonial Spanish America. Whitson Publishing, Troy / NY 1976, quoted in: Hortensia Calvo: The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America. In: Book History. Vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277-305 (278)
^ Magdalena Chocano Mena: Colonial Printing and Metropolitan Books: Printed Texts and the Shaping of Scholarly Culture in New Spain. 1539-1700. In: Colonial Latin American Historical Review 6, No. 1, 1997, pp. 71-72, cited in: Hortensia Calvo: The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America. In: Book History. Vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277-305 (296)
↑ Magdalena Chocano Mena: Colonial Printing and Metropolitan Books: Printed Texts and the Shaping of Scholarly Culture in New Spain: 1539-1700. In: Colonial Latin American Historical Review 6, No. 1, 1997, pp. 73 and 76, cited in: Hortensia Calvo: The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America. In: Book History. Vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277-305 (279)
↑ Pedro Guibovich: The Printing Press in Colonial Peru: Production Process and Literary Categories in Lima, 1584-1699. In: Colonial Latin American Review 10, No. 2, 2001, p. 173, quoted in: Hortensia Calvo: The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America. In: Book History. Vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277-305 (296)
^ Rubén Darío : La Literatura en Centro-América . In: Revista de artes y letras . tape11 , 1887, ZDB -ID 1103449-X , p.589–597 , here p. 591 (Spanish, url = http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-86857.html - La imprenta estaba entonces en sus principios por aquellos lugares. Desde la publicación del primer libro centro-americano, un Tratado sobre el cultivo del añil, impreso con tinta azul.).
↑ a b Christopher A. Reed: Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937 , University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 2005, ISBN 0-7748-1041-6 , pp. 25–87 (69)
