A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The mechanical systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw-presses used to press cloth, grapes, etc. and possibly prints.

Gutenberg was the first in Western Europe to develop a printing press. During the Renaissance era, printing methods based on Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly throughout first Europe and then the rest of the world. It eventually replaced most versions of block printing, making it the most used format of modern movable type, until being superseded by the advent of offset printing.

The overall invention of Gutenberg's printing method depended for some of its elements upon a diffusion of technologies from China (East Asia), primarily the Chinese inventions and innovations of paper, in addition to a growing demand by the general European public for the lower cost paper books, instead of the exorbitantly expensive parchment books. By 1424, Cambridge University library owned only 122 books—each of which had a value equal to a farm or vineyard. The demand for these books was driven by rising literacy amongst the middle class and students in Western Europe.

At this time, the Renaissance was still in its early stages and the populace was gradually removing the monopoly the clergy had held on literacy.

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