The printing press is one of the most important and influential pieces of technology to ever be invented. So many major historic event owe their existence to the printing press. I cannot imagine where we would be without the invention printing.
The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450 in Italy. The device allowed writings to be constructed with wooden blocks with letters arranged in rows to make sentences. Ink is put onto the lettered blocks and pressed against a sheet of paper. This can be repeated as many times as needed as long as there is enough ink. Before printing, people had to rely on scribes and people dedicated to the busywork of copying texts. This brings many disadvantages. First, the sheer amount of time it takes to write. For example, making a full copy of the Bible would have taken over fifteen months for scribes to complete. These slow times also meant the slow transportation of information and communication. Another disadvantage would be just human error. Hand writing an entire book, people are bound to make little mistakes and slip ups.
The printing press mitigates all these issues. Where a scribe was able to write around forty pages of text a day on average, a single printing press could make anywhere from 1600 to 3600 pages per day. Why was this so significant? First would be the reduced amount of required labor. Scribes were no longer necessary and could go into other workforces. Next would be the increased speed of sharing ideas. When wanting to communicate with a large body of people, there were very limited options before the printing press. But printing allowed people to share their ideas with thousands of people in a very short amount of time since a pamphlet could just be copied over and over.
This brought opportunities for new kinds of social events to take place. The most prominent example would be the Protestant Reformation spearheaded by Martin Luther in 1517. The printing press was a major asset to spreading grievances with the Catholic church and a call to action to reform. And of course, the Protestant Reformation caused other major event to happen, like England severing connections to the church.
Sources:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P8014.pdf
https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Economic-History/dittmar-090928.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/summary/Reformation-Timeline
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