Printed Books Existed Nearly 600 Years Before Gutenberg’s Bible

It is a little-known, but undisputed, historical fact that Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. Though the Gutenberg Bible was certainly the first mass-produced printed work, it was hardly the first printed book—nor was it even the first made using movable type. Chinese and Korean inventors had been producing printed books for centuries before Gutenberg was born.

There are examples of woodblock printing going back almost 1800 years, but the earliest woodblock-printed book that we can reliably date is the Chinese book, Diamond Sutra, created in 868. You can see it on display now at the British Library.

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Source: io9