ABSTRACT
Today’s digital media have transformed the lives of people across much of the world. Digitized images, text and sound mean that we have new ways of accessing what we want to learn about or enjoy, and the range of things we can know about has expanded. Yet the book you are reading is testament to the long reach of another technology that had a similarly transformative effect in the early modern period: print. The printing press was one of three inventions – alongside gunpowder and the compass (‘Politics and Government’ in Part V; ‘Expanding Horizons’ in Part IV) – that seemed to revolutionize society. The politician, intellectual and essayist Francis Bacon claimed that ‘these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world’ (Bacon 1620, Bk. I, cxxix). In this chapter we will consider Bacon’s claim in relation to the invention, development and significance of printing and its role in two broader developments: first, the ‘communications revolution’ of the early modern period and, second, the intellectual, religious and cultural changes of the Renaissance, the Reformation and Enlightenment.
