c. 1450 CE · European press development · Europe · Technology
Gutenberg’s work combined movable metal type and press production in mid-fifteenth-century Europe. Earlier East Asian woodblock and movable-type traditions form part of the wider printing story.
Atlas dossier · Renaissance & ReformationFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Jikji’s surviving second volume was printed with metal type in Korea in 1377. Gutenberg’s Bible followed in Mainz around 1455. Comparing these surviving books establishes a chronology; it does not by itself prove a direct transfer of the same workshop system from one place to the other.
University of Utah: From Jikji to Gutenberg ↗Erasmus’s 1516 Greek New Testament and Luther’s 1522 German New Testament show different ways that scholarship and print changed access to Biblical texts. Translation also preceded these editions. Presses worked through skilled labour, publishers, readers and religious controversy; a machine alone did not produce the Reformation.
Musée protestant: Humanism and Bible translations ↗Silent pan-and-zoom motion derivative of the Printing press in Europe reconstruction; not archival footage.
Primary Atlas editorial reconstruction for Printing press in Europe.
World History in Pictures · Public site artwork. This record does not grant third-party republication rights.
How Atlas classifies this artwork →
Detail crop from the same Printing press in Europe reconstruction; not an independent historical record.
World History in Pictures · Same editorial artwork package
How Atlas classifies this artwork →
Context crop from the same Printing press in Europe reconstruction; not an independent historical record.
World History in Pictures · Same editorial artwork package
How Atlas classifies this artwork →Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
Elsewhere in the world
1492–1700 CE · Atlantic transformation; consequences continued · GlobalColumbian Exchange and Indigenous catastropheAtlantic crossings moved crops, animals, pathogens and people between hemispheres while invasion, epidemic disease, enslavement and forced labour devastated many Indigenous societies.
1492–c. 1770 CE · selected colonial survey · AmericasEuropean voyages and conquest in the AmericasAtlantic voyages intensified connections among Europe, Africa and the Americas and were followed by Iberian and later European invasion, settlement, missionary systems and extraction.
c. 1501–1866 CE · voyage survey; resistance continued · GlobalAtlantic slave trade and resistanceEuropean and American traders forcibly transported more than twelve million captive Africans across the Atlantic; resistance by Africans and their descendants took many forms throughout slavery and abolition.
Jikji and the longer history of printing →
The screw printing press: pressure, type and repeated pages →