The movable type press was invented by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, based on wine presses. That was the forerunner of mass communication.
Technical means such as writing, parchment, and paper already contributed a great deal to the reproducibility and retention of symbolic forms, but the crucial step was the invention of the printing press that allowed reproduction at speed and scale never seen before. Mechanization led to the first mass production of books in history, which were previously manuscripts, expensive and in small quantity, were printed in less time, in large quantities and at a lower cost. In the Renaissance, a single mobile press could produce 3,600 pages a day, compared to the forty copies manually made by a registrar.
