How much faster were the printing presses than hand writing?

Question

How many times faster were the printing presses, which gave Europe an advantage over other continents in term of access to knowledge, compared to copying of books by hand?

Answer 1

Undoubtedly, it took considerable time to produce a book using the early printing presses in 15th and 16th century Europe. Small rectangular pieces of lead with the relief of a letter on one end - either upper or lower cases - were produced by the printer and his assistants in the printer's shop. These individual letters would then have to be arranged within a frame to be able to produce the text on a single page for a book (or a pamphlet). Individually, each frame would be fixed beneath the 'Press' (a square or rectangular wooden board lowered by a screw manually operated by a handle). Ink was applied to the letter reliefs contained within the frame, a blank sheet of paper was then laid on top of the frame and the 'Press' was used to press the sheet of paper against the letters in the frame so that the ink on these letters left an imprint on the blank sheet of paper.

The production of books by the process of copying the text by hand also took considerable time. It should be remembered that this was a very different process compared with you or I copying something by hand. With great care, the scribe would produce each letter as if it were a tiny work of art (which they were!) It would not be unusual for a scribe to take a year or more to produce a copy of a book. This, of course, meant that the person for whom the scribe was producing the copy would have to pay the scribe wages for a year or more. Thus the reason for the enormous cost of a single book during the Middle Ages, which, in turn, generally limited the ownership of books to high ranking members of the clergy, members of the nobility, and wealthy merchants (note, this didn't mean that literacy was also limited to these sections of society - on the contrary, by the 14th century even the average English peasant was functionally literate).

Here's the great difference between hand copying books and producing books with a printing press. Once a frame containing the letters for producing a single page for a book was created in the printer's shop, the number of copies of that page that could be produced was only limited to the supplies of ink and sheets of paper that were available. Whereas a scribe worked to produce a single page for a book, a printer would produce as many copies of a single page as necessary for producing the intended number of copies of a particular book. In other words, whereas a scribe worked to produce a single copy of a book, a printer worked to produce any number of copies of a book.

This is what radically reduced the cost of a single book beginning in late-15th century Europe, thus allowing for a more widespread distribution of knowledge (and propaganda). This follows the economic concept of 'Economy of Size' in which the greater the total number of an item being produced lowers the cost of production - and therefore the price - of each individual item.