How the printing press made its mark

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When Johannes Gutenberg pioneered the printing press almost six hundred years ago, he found a way to mass produce the printed word at a rate never seen before. But how exactly did Gutenberg’s creation work? And what was actually new about it? Publisher Michael Bhaskar and scholar Cristina Dondi describe a process that made its mark on history. Photo: Circa 1455, A page from the Mazarin Bible, the first notable book printed in Europe by the Gutenberg press. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)