Labs / History
The Printing Press
On the left, a scriptorium of monks copies books one page at a time while printing presses stamp identical pages by the hundred. Add presses, set the working day, and run the years forward — then watch the price of a book collapse and the share of people who can read climb across the chart on the right. Drag anywhere on the chart to inspect a single year.
Year 1450Books/yr 0Price 400 flLiteracy 6%
What to try
- With zero presses, how far does literacy ever climb in 150 years of hand-copying alone?
- Add one press, then ten. How many monks' worth of books does a single press replace in a year?
- Why does the price per book fall so sharply the moment presses start outnumbering the scribes' output?
- Slide paper cost up and down. Can cheap paper alone push literacy up, or do you also need the presses running?
- Which comes first — a flood of cheap books, or the rise in reading? Drag along the chart to compare the two curves year by year.