Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Are you using the word "prinitng press" in a non-standard way? Gutenberg invented the printing press (which includes movabla type) which made it possiböe to cheaply reproduce studd. Of course there were machine for reproducing things before (like the screw press) but they were not as efficient.
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As far as I have read they had movable type (of course in Chinese you don't have an alphabet, you need several thousand different characters that can be exchanged as needed --- you could probably get away with 2-3000 of the most common). Printed newspapers circulated in China as early as the 9th century AD. So cheap printing was available much earlier than in the west. Though calligraphy is still considered an important art form to this day.