The printing press was invented in Germany, but in the 1400s it truly flourished in Italy. The Italians in the second half of the fifteenth century embraced this new technology and became what we might call ‘the people of the printed book’. In the 1400s more books were printed (and no doubt read) in Italy than anywhere else in Europe. The form taken by the printed book was largely shaped by printers in Italy in the 1460s and 1470s, many of them expatriate Germans. In their typefaces and layouts, these printers catered for the tastes of the Italian scholars who had fostered the period of creative investigation that we call the Renaissance.
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