History of Communication

Since the beginning of time, people have had the need to communicate with one

and other. The most common type of communication is speech, but you could not talk to

someone who lived 20 miles away. Then written language was developed, people marked

symbols on paper, stone, or whatever was available. Then hundreds of years passed, and

people who wanted to share their ideas with people had to do allot of writing, until

someone thought to make a writing machine. This machine is called the printing press.

Gutenberg's invention of the printing press is widely thought of as the origin of

mass communication-- it marked Western culture's first viable method of disseminating

ideas and information from a single source to a large and far-ranging audience. The story of

print is a long and complax one. It may be too much to claim that print was the single

cause of the massive social, political and psychological changes it is associated with.

However, print did wield enormous influence on every aspect of European culture. Some

historians suggest that print was instrumental in bringing about all the major shifts in

science, religion, politics and the modes of thought that are commonly associated with

modern Western culture.

Gutenberg foresaw enormous profit-making potential for a printing press that used

movable metal type. Despite their rapid growth in numbers, secular scribes simply could

not keep up with the commercial demand for books. Gutenberg also saw strong maket

potential in selling indulgences, the slips of paper offering written dispensation from sin

that the Church sold to fund crusades, new buildings and other projects devoted to

expanding its dominance. In fact, press runs of 200,000 indulgences at a time were

common soon after the handwritten versions became obsolete.

There were many different innovations since the first hand operated printing press.

The Stanhope press, which was widely used for many years, still used a