How did printing machines give books to everyone?

Think of a book you love and hold it close to your nose. Can you smell the paper and feel the smooth pages under your fingers? Today, books sit on shelves at home, at school and in the library.

Long ago in Europe, most families had no books at all. So how did printing machines give books to everyone? Let's go back in time and find out.

Back then, a scribe, which means a person who copies books by hand, made every new book. The scribe sat at a desk and wrote each word with a pen and ink. Writing it all out by hand was the only way to make one more copy.

A scribe needed many months to copy one thick book, page after page, word after word. That slow work meant there were very few books in all of Europe.

Because each book took so much work, books cost a lot of money. Only kings, churches and rich families could buy them.

Then, almost six hundred years ago, printers in Europe started using a new machine called the printing press. It worked with movable type, which means little metal letters that a printer can move around. Each tiny letter sat on the end of a metal block, like a stamp.

The printer picked out the letters one by one and lined them up into words and rows. The letters faced backwards, so they would print the right way round, just like a stamp. Soon the movable type filled a whole page. What do you think the printer did next to get those words onto paper?

The printer dabbed sticky ink over the letters and laid a clean sheet of paper on top. Then the printer pulled a big handle, and the press squeezed the paper down hard. Lift the sheet, and there was the whole page, printed all at once!

Next, the printer inked the same movable type again, laid down a new sheet, and pressed again. In one day, the printers made hundreds of copies of a page. In that same day, a scribe finished only a few pages by hand.

Making each book now took far less work and time. So printers sold their books for much less money than a book copied by hand. Families who never had a book before could now buy one.

Printers carried their books to shops in town after town. Over many years, books spread far and wide, and ordinary people of every kind could own them, read them and share them.

Instead of a scribe copying every word by hand, printers set movable type into whole pages and pressed them onto paper again and again. That made books quick and cheap to make, so ordinary families could finally buy books of their own.

In the busy print shop, the printer lifts one more sheet off the press, its fresh ink shining. The printer lays it on the tall pile of pages, ready to become a book for a family who never owned one before.