Earliest possible movable-type printing press

[Vera Strawberry]

Around the year 1440 CE, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, and it would not be an exaggeration to say the world was never the same. This momentous invention gave the world mass communication, which in turn gave the world everything from the Protestant Reformation to journalism as we understand it today.

Could something like Gutenberg's printing press have been invented earlier? If so, how much earlier? What effects might its earlier advent have had on the world?

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

You need literacy, metallurgy, and something cheap flat and uniform to print on. Akkadian cuneiform, lead type, clay tablets?

[ Although it might be easier to just inscribe a master tablet, bake it dry, carefully pour lead into it, then use that as a plate for pressing into blank clay tablets ]

 

[Pesterfield]

Do you need metallurgy?
Woodblock printing was done in China, so individual wood block letters should work.

 

[riggerrob]

Literacy?
Literacy?
You think that you need literacy before you can invent printing presses?
Perhaps 5 percent of Europeans were literate before Gutenberg invented moveable type.
Prior to Gutenberg, only small handfuls of churchmen and scholars were literate. The average nobleman still needed to hire secretaries to read and write his mail.
When Gutenberg lowered the price of books, then it became cost-effective for more commoners to learn how to read and write. Gutenberg's lower prices encouraged many Protestant denominations to teach their flock how to read the Bible on their own. This caused unemployment for too many Catholic priests. Literacy became a "needed" skill when the industrial revolution arrived during the 18th century.