The earliest printing known was in 8th century China and Korea. Whole pages carved on flat wooden blocks were used. Covered with a carbon-based ink, they were pressed onto sheets of paper.
The second stage was to use separate characters by wood carving or casting. This was done in 11th century China and Korea. It failed to be really successful, because of the structure of the Chinese written language, shared at the time by Korea, which had thousands of characters. Because of this, the method was not significantly better than copying by scribes.
Printing was reinvented in 15th century Europe. Development was slow until Johannes Gutenberg made several improvements. In the following century print became the main means of communication between people who wished to record knowledge. With an alphabetic system of writing, print was much more economical than copying, and permitted many times as many copies to be available for readers. This revolution in information technology helped all aspects of life in Europe, at a time when Europe was becoming the dominant region of the world.

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