The story of the printing press is the story of cultural transmission. Invented in 1440 in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg, it revolutionized book production by introducing movable type. It replaced hand-copying, prone to errors, with movable metal type, allowing mass production of books for the first time in human history.

Over the next few centuries, the printing press went on to standardize writing like never before, including spelling and punctuation. Prior to the printing press, writing evolved spaces starting around 800 CE. By the invention of the printing press, we had punctuation pretty similar to today’s standard. About halfway, at the time of the Magna Carta in 1215, we still had mostly uppercase with spaces between words and an occasional period. Punctuation and spelling mostly standardized starting in the 1300s for the next century, just in time for the printing press.