1. Gutenberg didn't invent movable type in 1439.
2. Most printing until the early 1800s wasn't letterpress printing.
But otherwise π― π€£
2. Most printing until the early 1800s wasn't letterpress printing.
But otherwise π― π€£
1. Gutenberg didn't invent movable type, the technology had been in use centuries earlier in China and Korea. And even in a purely European context, there's no convincing evidence at all that he'd perfected - or even experimented with - movable type technology as early as 1439.
2. While there are no firm comparative statistics, it's highly likely that the total volume of woodblock printing produced in Asia from the 15th to the early 18th centuries - in China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and Japan - exceeded the volume of letterpress printing in the West.
The Wikipedia article on Gutenberg is btw poorly written and relies on inadequate or outdated sources. Here's a succinct summary of what's known (and what's not known) from the 1439 documents, from Janet Ing's "Johan Gutenberg and his Bible - A Historical Study" (New York, 1988).
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