Cities of the page

The rapid spread of the printing press, after its invention by Gutenberg around 1450, still stands as one of history's most remarkable examples of technological transformation. Jeremiah Dittmar, an American University professor who has been studying the economic consequences of the early diffusion of printing technology, provides a striking visual representation of the print explosion, showing how, over just 50 years, printing presses spread from a single city - Gutenberg's Mainz - to more than 200 cities throughout Europe: What makes the diffusion of printing so remarkable is not just that it began in the late Middle Ages, when news,...