How Did The Printing Press Influence Exploration

INTRODUCTION

The printing press was invented in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg taking the place of the scribal medium and helping to push society from medieval to early modern. And while the printing press did just that it also helped to influence exploration and reformation. Both were greatly impacted by the printing press but…which one was impacted more? We were given the opportunity to choose what we thought was more impactful in class. In this essay I will support my claim of why the printing press had a bigger influence on exploration than it did with reformation. The printing press impacted exploration in ways like: Making maps more accessible to explorers, influencing other explorers by letting them read on other explorers'

By the 1500s there were over 200 printing presses in Europe this made map printing easier and more accessible to explorers, it sped up the exchange of information and also inspired them. This ties into my next two reasons as to why the printing press had a greater influence on Exploration. With Columbus' discovery of Hispaiola many explorers felt inspired to explore as they knew very little of the world outside of their villages. The letter Columbus wrote to the king of Spain spread quickly to places like Barcelona, Paris, and even Germany in the year 1493 because of how accessible the printing press had made the letter. The printing press changed the way maps were viewed and created. Klaudios Ptolemaios, or Ptolemy, was a second-century geographer and astronomer from Alexandria, Egypt He wrote the Geographia, which to us is known as Geography. His discovery was the first known atlas. Geographia provided directions for accurately representing the earth in maps, including a method for portraying the globe on a flat sheet of paper known as a map projection. These are only a few points I have in this essay, I will expand on

In document A of the DBQ we were given it states that during the 16th century (1500s) there were more than 200 printing presses all over Europe. This compared to the late 15th century (1471) where there were only 15 is a drastic difference. With the spread of the printing press came more printing, making the cost of books drop as less labor was put into making them. Literacy levels also increased as books were more accessible to people everywhere. The same could be said about maps. They became affordable and accessible as more and more people got their hands on them, the more and more people felt inspired by them and their want to explore grew. It influenced them by letting them read on other explorers' experiences. Columbus' letter to the king of Spain supports this. In document D an insert from columbus letter is given to us, this letter was later to be published in 1493 all over europe being translated into languages like spanish, french, and german. People felt inspired to discover and explore by his descriptions of open land and broad healthy rivers. When they realized there could be economic benefits for