Hellenistic printing press.

What if Archimedes of Syracuse,or Ctesibius of Alexandria or another Hellenistic genius had invented the printing press (and the paper) in III century AD?
 
You'll need the Greeks to invent books similar to Roman codices before a printing press can be truly useful. While scrolls made of papyrus served the region well enough at the time, they do not tend to last much more than a few decades before degrading. Attempting to directly print letters onto the scroll by machine would probably end up destroying it with how fragile they were.
 
You'll need the Greeks to invent books similar to Roman codices before a printing press can be truly useful. While scrolls made of papyrus served the region well enough at the time, they do not tend to last much more than a few decades before degrading. Attempting to directly print letters onto the scroll by machine would probably end up destroying it with how fragile they were.
What about parchment?
 
What about parchment?

Parchment could work, but it would need to be of high quality (similar to vellum) for the ink of the press to properly dry, which would make it prohibitively expensive and would limit the books copied by the press to be those of great importance. Gutenberg used vellum alongside paper for early printing needs, but this was also compounded by his introduction of an oil-based ink that was much more durable than the water-based ink of the past.
 
I read a long time ago a timeline (in Spanish) where in Roman Alexandria someone named "Hero of Syracuse" created the Printing press and there was a boom of libraries through the Roman empire and the high literacy rate allowed a Romanization of the Goths and other germanic tribes eventually restoring the Western Roman Empire and reunifying with Byzantium by 10th century BC.

If anyone wants to read it, here it is
http://axxon.com.ar/rev/138/c-138Uficcion1.htm
 
You'll need the Greeks to invent books similar to Roman codices before a printing press can be truly useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Pergamum

Parchment

The word "parchment" is derived from Pergamum (via the Latin pergamenum and the French parchemin). Pergamum was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period.[8] The city so dominated the trade that a legend later arose that said that parchment had been invented in Pergamon to replace the use of papyrus, which had become monopolized by the rival city of Alexandria. This however is a myth; parchment had been in use in Anatolia and elsewhere long before the rise of Pergamon.[9] Parchment reduced the Roman Empire’s dependency on Egyptian papyrus and allowed for the increased dissemination of knowledge throughout Europe and Asia. The introduction of parchment also greatly expanded the holdings of the Library of Pergamum.
 
I wonder if demand for printed text would have been similar to 16th Century Europe?

Difficult to say, because we're not really sure how widespread literacy (and hence potential demand for books) was. Though the fact that Roman monuments often had writing on them does suggest that at least a significant minority had some reading abilities. And of course, when Christianity comes around you'll have plenty of Bibles to print.

Alternatively, maybe the printing press could get going for some more niche uses where accuracy was important. E.g., if you had a monarch giving orders to one of his governors, or two kings concluding a treaty, or a law, or a business contract, copies of the relevant text could be printed out to make sure that all parties had access to the exact same wording without any copying errors. This could get the printing press in widespread use, with book-printing as a later, secondary development.
 
Difficult to say, because we're not really sure how widespread literacy (and hence potential demand for books) was. Though the fact that Roman monuments often had writing on them does suggest that at least a significant minority had some reading abilities. And of course, when Christianity comes around you'll have plenty of Bibles to print.

Alternatively, maybe the printing press could get going for some more niche uses where accuracy was important. E.g., if you had a monarch giving orders to one of his governors, or two kings concluding a treaty, or a law, or a business contract, copies of the relevant text could be printed out to make sure that all parties had access to the exact same wording without any copying errors. This could get the printing press in widespread use, with book-printing as a later, secondary development.
It would certainly help along a professional bureaucracy.
 
Some people say that there was a kind if printing a thousand years before Alexander, namely the Phaistos disc. As it was made of stone, would it be practical to use stone for printing.
 
The Phaistos disc is made out of fired clay, with the punches used to make the imprinted symbols apparently made out of bronze (or so I gather from reports of the impressions being examined through a microscope, looking at the characteristic wear patterns transferred from the punches).

The existence of these punches must have meant that there was a significant demand for fired clay documents, otherwise they would not have been worth the bother of making them.
 
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