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📖 Inventing the Printing Press

7th Grade reading comprehension · History · Read the passage, then circle the best answer.

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Before the 1450s, books in Europe were copied by hand. A single Bible could take a scribe more than a year to finish, so books were rare and expensive.

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, developed a printing press that used movable metal type. Individual letters could be arranged into pages, inked and pressed onto paper, then rearranged for the next page.

The results were dramatic. Within fifty years, millions of books had been printed across Europe. Ideas in science, religion and politics spread faster than ever before.

Historians often call the printing press one of the most important inventions in history, because it made knowledge available to far more people.

Words to know: scribe: a person who copied documents by hand · movable type: single letters that can be arranged and rearranged to print text

  1. Why were books rare before the 1450s?
    1. Paper was not invented.
    2. They were copied slowly by hand.
    3. People did not like reading.
  2. What made Gutenberg’s press special?
    1. It printed in color.
    2. It used movable metal type.
    3. It was powered by electricity.
  3. What was one effect of the printing press?
    1. Books became more expensive.
    2. Fewer people could read.
    3. Ideas spread faster across Europe.
  4. What is the author’s main point?
    1. Gutenberg was a goldsmith.
    2. Scribes were slow.
    3. The printing press greatly widened access to knowledge.
✂ Answer key: fold or cut along the line

1. B (detail)   2. B (detail)   3. C (cause and effect)   4. C (main idea)

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