Profound Impact. A communications revolution took place in the mid fifteenth century. Few technological innovations had as dramatic an influence on the communication of ideas as the introduction of movable type. Thousands of identical pages could be produced in the fraction of the time that it took a scribe to hand copy a manuscript. As works published on presses replaced handcopied books, the prices of books fell dramatically. The successes of the Protestant Reformation hinged in large part on the ability to circulate printed religious and political ideas widely and inexpensively. Printing changed written communication, created a new role for the author, restructured communities of readers, provided new notions of libraries and the preservation of knowledge, fostered cross-cultural exchanges of ideas, and influenced the local knowledge of uneducated Europeans. The world of the uneducated masses altered when the functionally literate villager gained a...