Around 1450 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg combined movable metal type, an oil-based ink and a converted screw press to make the mechanical printing of books practical for the first time in Europe. The technology spread rapidly along trade routes, reaching Italy, France, the Low Countries and beyond; by 1500 roughly 1,000 print shops across Europe had issued an estimated 8–20 million copies of so-called incunabula. This collapsed the cost and time of reproducing texts, which had previously been copied by hand. Printed matter ranged from Bibles and classical texts to almanacs, pamphlets and municipal documents.
It standardised and accelerated the circulation of knowledge, allowing architectural treatises, surveying manuals, maps and civic ordinances to travel between cities and carry planning and design ideas across borders.
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