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Within the time of the introduction of the Printing press, many things changed in society. Before the printing press, there was a large gap between the rich and poor. This was partly because of the exclusivity of knowledge. The production of books was expensive prose, the books were made by hand by monks, this took a long time. This led to a high price on books that lead to only the rich being able to get. The less privileged in society were mostly illiterate, as they never learned to read as they did not have anything to read. This led to them being more susceptible to be manipulated by people in power.(Dodd, 2006, p.15). 

The Gutenberg press was not the first printing press, but it is the one that people give credit to have created the movable printing press. This is not necessarily true, as there was made a printing press in 868 China (Palermo, 2014)( Ø. Høie, 2018). They used wooden blocks to assemble text, this was not movable type according to Palermo. There was even a remanence of printing in China as far back as to the 3rd century according to McFadden, the difference is that this initial way of printing was done on fabric and not paper. These inventions are often overlooked when people are talking about the printing press.

The Chinese printing press took a long time to catch on in Asia, this is a huge contrast to how it was incorporated in Europe. There had also been printing presses in Europe, so it could not just be based on the fact that the Asian language is more complex than the European lettering systems. Neither of these forms of printing would be done on such a large scale. (Eskilsen, 2007)

Gutenberg is said to be inspired by the European way of printing called the xylographic method.  He took the concept of the xylographic method but applied a mechanism to transfer ink from movable type to the paper.  The xylographic method is based on relief printing, as everything not needed would be cut out, and then be proceeded to be printed as a whole page. This is where the Gutenberg press is different as it is movable like the Chinese press, but it is made out of metal, so it can withstand a lot more wear and tear.

At this point in Europe, the cholic church had a lot of power, this included the production of the first book. The Gutenberg Bible