[History: Technology] The Machine That Freed the Human Mind: Gutenberg's Printing Press, 1440
Around 1440, a goldsmith in Mainz, Germany combined a metal alloy, an oil-based ink, and a repurposed screw press into a machine that would shatter the monopoly on knowledge held by the powerful for all of recorded history. Before Johannes Gutenberg, Europe had perhaps a few tens of thousands of books in total. Within fifty years of his invention, there were more than twenty million. The world that existed before the printing press, and the world that came after it, are barely recognizable as the same civilization.
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