The printing press is a mechanical printing device for making copies of identical text on multiple sheets of paper. Movable type, which allowed individual characters to be arranged to form words, was invented in China by Bi Sheng between 1041 to 1048. The use of movable type to mass produce printed works was popularized by a German goldsmith and eventual printer, Johannes Gutenberg, in the 1440s. While there are several local claims for the invention of the printing press in other parts of Europe, including Laurens Janszoon Coster in the Netherlands and Panfilo Castaldi in Italy, Gutenberg is credited by most scholars with the invention of the printing press.

Movable type allowed for much more flexible processes than hand copying or block printing. It was invented in 1041 by Bi Sheng in China. Sheng used clay type, which broke easily, but Wang Zhen later carved more durable type from wood. Eventually, invention of movable type metal printing press came about in 1234 during the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea by Chwe Yun-Ui. Examples of this metal type are on display in the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The oldest extant movable metal printing press book is the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377.

Since there are thousands of Chinese characters, the benefit of the technique was not as large as with alphabetic based languages, which typically are made up of fewer than 50 characters. Still, the movable type printing press spurred scholarly pursuits in Song China and facilitated more creative modes of printing. Nevertheless, movable type was not extensively used in China until the European-style printing press was introduced in relatively recent times.

Johann Gutenberg is credited with inventing the first printing press. Gutenberg is also credited with the first use of a soy-based ink. He printed on both vellum and paper, the latter having been introduced in Europe somewhat earlier from China by way of the Arabs, who had a paper mill in operation in Baghdad as early as 794.

Before inventing the printing press in the 1440s, Gutenberg had worked as a goldsmith. The skills and knowledge of metals that he learned as a craftsman were crucial to the later invention of the printing press. Gutenberg made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality prints.

In Europe, books were copied mainly in monasteries, or (from the 13th century) in commercial scriptoria, where scribes wrote them out by hand. Books were therefore a scarce resource. While it might take someone a year or more to hand copy a Bible, with the Gutenberg printing press it was possible to create several hundred copies a year, with two or three people who could read (and proofread), and a few people to support the effort. Each sheet still had to be fed manually, which limited the reproduction speed; and the type had to be set manually for each new page, which limited the number of different pages created per day. Books produced in this period, between the first work of Johann Gutenberg and the year 1500, are collectively referred to as incunabula.

The rise of printed works was not immediately popular. Not only did the papal court contemplate making the printing press an industry requiring a license from the Catholic Church (an idea rejected in the end), but as early as the 15th century some nobles refused to have printed books in their libraries, thinking that to do so would sully their valuable hand copied manuscripts. Similar resistance was later encountered in much of the Islamic world, where calligraphic traditions were extremely important, and also in the Far East.

Despite this resistance, Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly, and within thirty years of its invention in 1453, many towns and cities across Europe had a functional printing press. Johann Heynlin, for example, introduced the first printing press to Paris in 1470. The city of Tübingen saw its first printed work, a commentary by Paul Scriptoris, in 1498. It has been suggested that this rapid expansion shows not only a higher level of industry (fueled by the high-quality European paper mills that had been opening over the previous century) than expected, but also a significantly higher level of literacy than has often been estimated.

The first printing press in a Muslim territory opened in Andalusia in the 1480s. This printing press was run by a family of Jewish merchants who printed texts with the Hebrew script. After the reconquista in the 1490s, the printing press was moved from Granada to Istanbul (a popular destination for thousands of Andalusian Jews).

The discovery and establishment of the printing of books with movable type marks a paradigm shift in the way information was transferred in Europe. The impact of the printing press is comparable to the development of language, and the invention of the alphabet, as far as its effects on the society. It is, however, important to note that there has been much recent doubt about the dominance of print. Handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced, and the influence of the printed word on oral communication meant that no one form of communication could dominate.

They also led to the establishment of a community of scientists (previously scientists were mostly isolated) who could easily communicate their discoveries, bringing on the scientific revolution. Also, although early texts were printed in Latin, books were soon produced in common European vernacular, leading to the decline of the Latin language.

Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before, the author was less important, since a copy of Aristotle made in Paris might not be identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author was entirely lost.

Because the printing press ensured that the same information fell on the same pages, page numbering, tables of contents, and indices became common. The process of reading was also changed, gradually changing from oral readings to silent, private reading. This gradually raised the literacy level as well, revolutionizing education.

It can also be argued that the printing press changed the way Europeans thought. With the older illuminated manuscripts, the emphasis was on the images and the beauty of the page. Early printed works emphasized principally the text and the line of argument. In the sciences, the introduction of the printing press marked a move from the medieval language of metaphors to the adoption of the scientific method.

In general, knowledge came closer to the hands of the people, since printed books could be sold for a fraction of the cost of illuminated manuscripts. There were also more copies of each book available, so that more people could discuss them. Within 50-60 years, the entire library of "classical" knowledge had been printed on the new presses (Eisenstein, 1969; 52). The spread of works also led to the creation of copies by other parties than the original author, leading to the formulation of copyright laws. Furthermore, as the books spread into the hands of the people, Latin was gradually replaced by the national languages. This development was one of the keys to the creation of modern nations.

Some theorists, such as McLuhan, Eisenstein, Kittler, and Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from the printing press, removing the role of the image from society. Other authors stress that printed works themselves are a visual medium.