Class 10 Print Culture and the Modern World: cheat sheet

Key ideas

• The earliest printing was by hand in China, Japan and Korea, rubbing paper on inked woodblocks.
• Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s, modelled on the olive press, with metal letters.
• Print made books cheaper and more plentiful and created a reading public; pedlars sold cheap chapbooks.
• Some feared print: rulers worried about rebellious ideas, and Erasmus about a glut of books.
• Print spread the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers and a culture of debate; Mercier called the press a powerful engine of progress.
• In the 19th century Hoe’s cylindrical press printed 8,000 sheets an hour and offset presses printed in colour.
• In India, print reached Goa in the mid-16th century; women like Rashsundari Debi wrote about their lives, and the Vernacular Press Act brought censorship.

Remember

Watch out

• Saying Gutenberg invented printing: hand printing came first in East Asia.
• Mixing up chapbooks (cheap pocket books) and almanacs (yearly guides to the sun, moon and tides).
• Getting “how many times faster” upside down: divide the faster rate by the slower one.

Worked example

The Gutenberg press printed 250 sheets an hour and Hoe’s press 8,000. (a) How many times faster was Hoe’s press? (b) How many more sheets would it print in 17 hours? (c) How did faster printing change reading?

Working: 8,000 ÷ 250; 17 × (8,000 − 250)

Answer: (a) 32 times (b) 131,750 more (c) Books and newspapers became cheaper and more plentiful, so many more people could read.

Practise Print Culture and the Modern World

Revise with this page, then practise: every Print Culture and the Modern World sheet in the app is new, with an answer key and working.

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