WI: The printing press invented in Ancient Greece?

[Legofan4]

It would not surprise me if more works have been lost than published.

It depends on how you define published because until around 200 years ago only a few were able to read and write in the first place. They didnt have the 99% literacy of today where everyone at some point has had to write something. Today there are tens of thousands of pieces of new literature written everyday and placed online for all to see. I bet in the ancient world there was not even 1 million people across the world at any one time who could read and write.

 

[Wendell]

It depends on how you define published because until around 200 years ago only a few were able to read and write in the first place. They didnt have the 99% literacy of today where everyone at some point has had to write something. Today there are tens of thousands of pieces of new literature written everyday and placed online for all to see. I bet in the ancient world there was not even 1 million people across the world at any one time who could read and write.

Probably, but how many of those who could put out multiple works?

 

[juanml82]

One of the biggest problems is how you make the technology commercially viable.

In 1500s Europe there was one simple text you can mass print (the bible) and everyone wants to read, keep in mind that the majority of the population would be illiterate, what kind of things would you use the printing press -for-?

The problem is that the very nature of the printing press favors copying the same thing over and over again, how you really do the same with government documents like you could with one static text?

There is a simple answer to that.

Porn. Using engraving for mass production. It's not quite the moving type printing press, but the technology is similar and it can help finance, improve and develop text printing.

 

[Cash]

Printing came after paper though, right? So even if supply ended up increasing to meet printing's sdemand, paper was still a big step over parchment.

Papermaking was an artisanal product for centuries as it slowly expanded out of China and into the Islamic Middle East and North Africa before appearing in Moslem Iberia. The first small water-powered papermill geared to an "industrial" level of production was built in Portugal in 1411.

Printing and large-scale paper production were sort of contemporaneous in Europe. From The Robert E. Williams Museum of Papermaking:

Early paper was at first disfavored by the Christian world as a manifestation of Moslem culture, and a 1221 decree from Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared all official documents written on paper to be invalid. (The interests of wealthy European landowners in sheep and cattle for parchment and vellum may also have exerted some influence.) The rise of the printing press in the mid 1400's, however, soon changed European attitudes toward paper.

So it's somewhat chicken and egg, in Europe at least, but there's no doubt that the invention of the printing press had an enormous impact on paper demand.