Repsonse #3 (Lecture on the invention of the printing press)

Moveable type printing press

Ok, I'm almost certain that pretty much everyone will do this one, but here's my two cents. I think the printing press was one of the most important inventions of all time. If I didn't have books, what would I do with myself? Go outside and socialize? I think not. Not only do I personally thank Mr. Johannes Gutenberg (a.k.a swagenberg) for this fabulous invention, so do millions of other people every day. Probably. If he had not come up with the moveable type printing press where would we be today? Probably not even in Kentucky. (Maps, remember?). Only the richest of us would be literate and the rest of us would just be out of luck.

The printing press is extremely important for reasons I will now list:

my favorite book

• It helped the spread of literacy by making books more easily accessible and affordable.
• It helped education  become more widespread, and the now more readily available books could be used as teaching aides.
• If the printing press hadn't been invented we would all probably be catholic, because there would have been no protestant reformation, and no founding of other religions.
• The printing press helped in the spread of political ideas because the people could write things about their king/leader that could lead to him being kicked out (although people used to get arrested for libel and slander a lot more back then than they do now).
• It helped people start to discover new places because maps could be copied, and there were no errors (unless the person drawing it by hand when they explored made a mistake) because the printing press made an exact copy.
• Books are a huge part of mostly everyone's lives (and if they are not currently a large part of your life you should change that immediately, because books rock).
• Books help give people different views on things, expand our horizons, entertain us, and if you read a book instead of watching TV, you are exercising your brain and getting an awesome story
• So basically, I really think that the human race would be extremely undeveloped as an entirety, and most of our civilizations would not even exist if the printing press had not been invented (that's a lot of credit to give to one guy)

And that, dear friends, is why the printing press is one of (if not THE) most important invention of all time.