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It was about the middle of the 15th century that printing from movable wooden blocks was first introduced in the of Mainz in Germany. Caxton set up the first printing press in England in 1477. Metal types were introduced later, up to the end of the 18th century, the printing presses were worked by hand. The steam printing press came the 19th century. The great modern presses, which can turn out thousands of copies of a newspaper in an hour, as different from Caxton's first primitive wooden-block hand-press, as the modern locomotive is compared to the small crude "Rocket" by George Stephenson.
The importance of the invention of the printing press can scarcely be exaggerated. Perhaps no invention has brought such changes in human society as the invention of the printing press that led at once to the rapid multiplication books and the cheapening of their price. Formerly, every book had to be laboriously copied out by hand, a slow tedious process. It might take a scribe a year to produce one copy. Consequently, books were very scarce and very , and only the rich could afford to possess any. Consequently, thousands of copies of a book can be in a week, and as a consequence, they can be sold very cheaply. The poorest man can now buy a little of masterpieces for a few dollars.
This multiplication and cheapening of books have made universal education possible. Knowledge, which was once the possession of a select few, is now the free inheritance of all. Any man who can read (and in a like England, even the poorest workman can read) now has the "open sesame" to the literature and of the world.
And the printing press has made the newspaper possible, but it would be difficult to estimate the extent of the of the press in forming and educating public opinion.