It took him 20 years to develop his printing press idea

The printing machine of Johannes Gutenberg, Europe's first commercial printer, is without a doubt his most important invention. However, it took him 20 years of hard effort and labor to complete his printing press. It isn't a phenomenon that will happen overnight.

Since his early years as a goldsmith, Gutenberg had been experimenting with various printing techniques and had made some success by 1450. A wine press he designed for his father-in-law, which used the notion of pressure to extract more juice from grapes, was believed to have influenced him.

Gutenberg's desire to establish a machine that could generate numerous similar pieces quickly prompted him to develop a movable kind of printing capable of producing texts quickly. As a result, the first type of printing machine would be faster than block printing because one person could work on multiple projects at once.

Even though Johannes Gutenberg was not the first to invent moveable types, he perfected the technology of mass-producing them and pushed the use of oil-based ink in printing.