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It is often said that Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printed book with his Bible. In fact the Chinese had been printing books for centuries. The characters were all carved out of wood and then inked and pressed onto the paper. This is called block printing and was first used for printing on cloth. The Chinese characters were carved onto separate blocks of wood so they could be moved around or re-arranged to form the text. This is called moveable type. The first metal moveable type was invented in Korea in 1230AD. These are all the elements that were need to produce books. It just needed to be made affordable through mechanisation.

 

 

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