when was the printing press invented?

The printing press, in the form invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Europe, dates to around the early 1440s, with a fully developed, commercially usable press operating by about 1450 in Mainz, Germany.

Quick Scoop

• Gutenberg began work on his new kind of press in the late 1430s, with evidence of a press under construction in Strasbourg in 1439.

• Historians usually say “around 1440” for the invention of the movable-type printing press in Germany.

• By roughly 1450, Gutenberg had a functioning press that could be used for commercial printing, kicking off the so‑called “Printing Revolution.”

Earlier printing traditions

Long before Gutenberg, there were older forms of printing:

• Woodblock printing was used in China many centuries earlier, with printed materials known from at least 868 CE.

• Movable type had also been developed in East Asia (China and Korea) well before the 15th century, though Gutenberg’s design was the first to mechanize printing this way in Europe.

Simple takeaway

If someone asks “When was the printing press invented?”, the usual historical answer (especially in a European context) is: around 1440, with Gutenberg’s press fully in use by about 1450.

TL;DR: Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press was invented around 1440 and operating commercially by about 1450, building on much older printing methods from East Asia.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.