The Effects of the Printing PressMany years ago books were hard to find. When you got one you had to be rich to own one because they cost a fortune or you were of great power in the Catholic Church. Destroying one was a big problem for the masses because it took a long time to make and was difficult to replace. It was a time when all things read were written by hand. It would be mind-blowing to try to imagine a time when there were no printers of some kind or technology for copying a document. Think about it for a moment, we've all had a time when we needed a printer and there wasn't one around. We all had cards expiring and needed a last minute touch up. It's true, those times are hard, I know. Can you imagine living in a time when there were no printers to make copies or print your work? Of course, in the early 1400s there weren't that many essays to turn in. However, there were still books and news to spread. The reason books cost up to a thousand dollars before the invention of the printing press is because writers had to write every copy. There were many mistakes made and errors found in handwritten books. They were not as easily corrected as they are today. There has been so much time and effort put into writing manuscripts and books. There were few copies of any kind of writing anywhere. Centuries ago, the Catholic churches decided what would be published. This was their way of censoring what was written. During the Hussite Wars in the early 1400s, the churches ordered nearly 200 manuscripts burned, all of which were handwritten and would have been difficult to replace since the churches would not lend the use of the sc...... half of the paper ...... resident? We probably wouldn't have anywhere near the number of voters showing up at the polls to vote for president because they wouldn't know who they were voting for. Would we have such enhanced transportation? Would we have computers and cell phones? It might be possible, but I think it would have been introduced at a much slower pace. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these events and inventions would never have been invented without the printing press. What I'm saying is that printing has helped speed up the process of knowledge and made us better able to understand how to create things. The printing press is an amazing technological tool that simplified the distribution of news and information, paved the way for learning and literacy, and helped writers make copies of their works in a much easier way than rewriting every word by hand..