Gutenberg’s invention was not the idea of printing — that was centuries old in East Asia — but a manufacturing system for an alphabet of a few dozen letters. Drag the year and watch presses appear across Europe. Then set a book against one scribe and one press, and see the number that turned a regional Italian scholarly movement into a European one.
The dialdrag or press play
1440Before printing. A book is a manuscript.
14401500 · the incunabula end1560
500
50 — a cautious first run1,500 — a Venetian house
4
2 — careful book hand9 — fast cursive
Towns with a press
Schematic outline; a sample of about thirty-five towns stands in for the whole. Positions and first-press dates are approximate.
What that year looks likelive
Towns with a press
0
across Europe
Editions printed since 1450
0
distinct titles, order of magnitude
Cost of a book to a reader
100
index, 1450 = 100
Priced in labourer’s wages
52 wks
for one Bible
One scribe, by hand—
Every copy is a fresh act of labour — and every copy introduces new errors, so the texts drift apart.
One press, one setting of type—
Composition happens once; after that the cost is paper, ink and pulling the bar. Errors are duplicated exactly — but so are corrections, and errata sheets appear.
Treat the totals as orders of magnitude, not measurements. Surviving records list roughly 28,000 to 30,000 distinct editions printed before 1501, but the number of copies depends heavily on assumptions about print runs, which is exactly what the slider above is letting you assume.