If you're reading this — and you are — thank a printing press.
Even if you're browsing online and think an inkless/paperless experience has no ties, think again.
In fact, a mid-1400s press and its ensuing print culture have helped shape much of our lives.
Before passing this off as a rallying cry for what naysayers label as sagging print industries, consider how Johannes Gutenberg's creation of a printing press using moveable metal type served as a catalyst for revolutions in industry, education, science, religion, language, nationalism and more.
All from a device transferring lettering and images onto paper by pressurized contact with an inked surface.
Using paper and wooden and clay blocks, printing in the Far East dated centuries earlier; the first known "book" — China's "Diamond Sutra" — was printed in 868.
In Western Europe before Gutenberg, most publications were handwritten religious manuscripts, laboriously penned on parchment or vellum by Roman Catholic monks or other religious orders, written in the church's Latin and collected in monasteries.
What little printing was done — often for decoration or illustration — typically employed engraved blocks, with wood and clay susceptible to weathering and damage.
By 1440, Gutenberg had developed a printing machine with mechanisms modeled after wine and olive presses. The key element: moveable metal type.
Using an alloy of tin, lead and antimony and a series of molds and punches, the German craftsman created single-character type that could be used over and over in composing words, sentences and entire documents.
Not so much an invention as it was a refined aggregation of previous printing technologies, Gutenberg's press also benefitted from Europe's blossoming use of paper and oil-based inks.
After printing religious materials for 10 years, the printing of 200 copies of the two-volume Gutenberg Bible served as a starting point for mass production of books.
Production was arduous and the Bible's cost high — the equivalent of a clerk's wages for three years. But it was a far cry from the 20 years previously required for a monk to transcribe a Bible manuscript.
The exploding print culture quickly overshadowed oral and written cultures, and the 1500s began with print shops in 2,500 European cities and some 20 million books in 35,000 titles and an accompanying increase in literacy and personal libraries.
The prominence of presses and public publications led to better communication, increased information and enhanced education. Scientists — particularly in botany and astronomy — benefitted from shared scholarship. Anxious audiences awaited new tales and new maps from explorers discovering faraway lands and the latest literary works from a burgeoning array of writers.
Bibles and other such publications in the public's hands meant the Catholic Church no longer controlled the writing, reading and collecting of religious materials, helping the Protestant Reformation of Luther, Calvin and others take root in the mid-1500s.
Publications in local languages rather than the dominant Latin resulted in increased nationalism and the creation of new kingdoms and countries.
Such was the case with the British colonies in America and the ensuing American Revolution and formation of the United States. The colonies' first newspaper, Publick Occurrences, started in 1690, with the continent's first paper mills soon to follow and a proliferation of printers and newspapers through the 1700s.
The era's dilemma for printers was whether to be a "loyalist" and follow the British government's licensing and stamp-act decrees or to be part of a patriot press promoting independence. Both sides faced pressure and economic and physical threats.
Publications helped connect the 13 distinct colonies with the sharing of information and ideas, not only through newspapers — such as the Pennsylvania Gazette from printer-statesman Benjamin Franklin — but also tracts like "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine and others penned by revolutionaries such as James Otis and John Dickinson.
The era's greatest example of the power of disseminating printed information came as copies of the Declaration of Independence — made both by hand and by press — were read publicly and printed in newspapers across the 13 colonies.
Printing presses played a major role in Utah's early years —also prominently in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints several decades before the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.
The Book of Mormon ?— a historical, sacred record of ancient American inhabitants, written on golden plates and translated by Joseph Smith — was first published in 1829-30 by E.B. Grandin in Palmyra, N.Y., his Peter Smith Press providing then-state-of-the-art printing in the frontiers of western New York.
Regarded by the church as holy scripture, the book's name gave the church's faithful its early "Mormon" nickname that — for bitter or for better — has endured for nearly two centuries.
Another planned church publication, the Book of Commandments — the precursor to the Doctrine and Covenants — drew early persecution. In 1833, a mob broke into William W. Phelps' log home in Independence, Mo., and destroyed the press and most of the printed pages.
Once in Salt Lake City, Mormon pioneers used a preliminary press designed by Salt Lake Temple architect Truman O. Angell to print currency. Later, a Ramage printing press purchased by Phelps and delivered by wagon from Philadelphia was used on June 15, 1850, to print all 220 inaugural copies of the Deseret News, since billed as "The Mountain West's First Newspaper."
Presses remained essentially the same until a rapid-fire succession of improvements in the 1800s — iron frames; rotary, web offset and four-color presses; and type and linotype composing machinery. By 1899, top presses printed and folded 90,000 four-page papers in an hour.
In the 1900s came offset lithography, phototypesetting, teletypesetting, digital production and eventually computerized laser printing.
Now, anyone with a computer, printer and desktop-publishing skills can create a myriad of print and electronic publication possibilities.
Print has helped spawn the next culture: computers.
Chances are the next time you change a font face, size or style or print a document with a mouse click, you won't think of Gutenberg.
But what you're doing in mere seconds is a — pardon the pun — type of his revolutionary work.
E-mail: taylor@desnews.com