ABSTRACT
The urban environment was fundamental to the development of printing from the outset, since it was in towns that the necessary combination of technical and entrepreneurial competencies were located, and where a growing demand for printed texts was to be found. The operation of censorship and control is a constant theme in the history of print culture. Changes in print culture have usually been driven by technical innovation. The print shop became the unavoidable staging post for the transmission of text from its creator to the consumer. It was a long-standing aspiration to find a way of actually writing mechanically which would permit the author to produce his or her own printed text, and the invention of the typewriter made this possible for the first time. It created a whole new kind of printed matter, produced in offices by new types of workers, almost exclusively female.
