The world's oldest surviving letterpress printing machine is on display at a museum in Belgium.
The world's two oldest printing presses | Museum Plantin-Moretus
https://museumplantinmoretus.be/en/worlds-two-oldest-printing-presses
Movable type printing originated in China, and it is said that typesetting using movable type was already being practiced in the 11th century. Later, in the 13th century, movable type printing spread to the Korean Peninsula and Japan, but in the Chinese character cultural sphere, due to the large number of characters and its unsuitability for cursive script, woodblock printing , which uses a single plate to create the printing plate, became more widespread.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, is credited with the first movable type printing around 1445, and due to the limited number of letters in the alphabet, it spread rapidly to surrounding regions.
The Plantin-Moretus House, Workshop, and Museum complex in Antwerp has its origins in the workshop of Christophe Plantin, a 16th-century Belgian publisher. At that time, Antwerp, along with Venice and Paris, was a major center of publishing, and Plantin is said to have produced over 1,500 publications in his lifetime.
Around 1575, when Printemps was alive, his workshop had at least 16 printing presses in operation and employed 56 people, making it the largest printing workshop in the world at the time.
by LUCID
These printing presses could produce as many as 1,250 printed documents per day using double-sided printing, meaning the average daily workday for printers was about 14 hours. However, since printers were paid based on their output, they were likely motivated to work long hours.
As of the time of writing, seven letterpress printing presses are preserved, five of which are still operational. Two printing presses, made around 1600, are currently inactive, but these are the oldest surviving printing presses in the world.
by Ans Brys
The oldest known printing press, located in the Plantin-Moretus house, workshop, and museum complex, has also been a topic of discussion on the social news site Hacker News.
The two oldest printing presses | Hacker News
According to a user who visited the Plantin-Moretus House, Workshop, and Museum complex in 2023, visitors to the museum can actually operate a printing press, apply ink to the typesetting, turn the crank, and take home their finished prints.
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