The Printing Press

Imagine a world with only a few books. Long, long ago, stories were like sleepy little secrets because making a book took a very long time. A person had to copy every single word and every single picture by hand with a feather pen. This is the story of a wonderful machine called the Printing Press. Before this machine, making a book was slow work. It was like trying to draw your favorite big, green dinosaur one hundred times. It took many, many months, and so books were very rare and special.

Then, a clever man named Johannes Gutenberg had a big, bright idea. He wanted everyone to be able to read stories. He thought and thought about how to make books faster. He decided to make little blocks out of shiny metal. Each block had a letter on it, like a tiny letter stamp. He had a block for A, a block for B, and all the way to Z. He would line up the little letter blocks to spell out words. Then he would line up the words to make a whole page. He rolled dark, sticky ink over the letters and then pressed a clean sheet of paper on top. PRESS! When he lifted the paper, a perfect page was made. He could do it again and again, making lots of pages very fast.

Because of the amazing printing press, stories and ideas could be shared with everyone. It was not just for a few people anymore. Suddenly, there were books everywhere. Stories could travel to new towns and new homes. That first printing press is the great-great-grandparent of all the wonderful books we have today. Every picture book, storybook, and coloring book you love is here because of that big, bright idea. The printing press helped stories fly all over the world, right into your hands.