Last week we shared Surprising American Printing Facts to help celebrate America’s Independence Day. Now we’ve compiled surprising world printing facts to give you a glimpse of printing’s wild history around the globe!

Historical Printing Facts

• The oldest printed book on record is the Buddhist Diamond-Sutra, believed to be created in 869 AD.
• Before the invention of paper, it took hundreds of calfskins and sheepskins to create one copy of the Bible.
• Johannes Gutenberg (recognized father of mechanical printing) printed over 150 bibles in his life. However, the location of only 49 is known.
• Originally, Typefaces and fonts were created by hand and (usually) named after the printer who invented them. For Example, French printer, Claude Garamond, has a font still used today.

Printing World History Facts

• The Black Death played a surprisingly important role in the evolution of printing. After the plague, a surplus of unneeded, worn clothes led to the invention of “rag paper” which was less expensive than parchment made from sheepskin or vellum made from calfskin.
• The Black Death also pushed inventors to create a better printing press because the deaths of hundreds of Western European monks who transcribed bibles meant an alarming decrease in bookmakers.
• The invention of the printing press made the Scientific Revolution possible. Now that notes could be printed and read correctly (rather than misread or miscopied) scientists could share and build off of each other’s information.
• Printed propaganda was first used by politicians in the Renaissance. This method of sharing new ideas was more visible, accessible, and reliable than word-of-mouth.
• In 1534 it was notorious King Henry VIII who promoted England’s printing by funding Cambridge University Press. Now Cambridge is the world’s oldest printing operation, and still publishes over 2,000 titles a year that are distributed to more than 200 countries!
• In 1534, more than 100 years before America, Mexico had a working printing press. America didn’t develop it’s own press until the Glover family arrived in Cambridge, MA from England in 1639.
• Einstein praised printing because the accessible, updated editions gave students modern, accurate knowledge that could surpass not only their instructors, but the wisdom of ancients.

Modern (and Crazy!) Printing Facts

• The Incredible Hulk was originally gray, but because of a printing error, Hulk’s skin was a different color in each copy of the debut issue. When Hulk’s creator, Stan Lee, saw the green hulk in some issues, he decided he liked it better, and the accidental color became the standard.
• 3D printers can print a wild variety of objects, such as jewelry, clothing, food, and houses!
• J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books each printed copies in the millions, but the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows broke all printing records around the world with an initial print run of 12 million copies.
• According to Guinness World Book of Records, the world’s smallest printed book is only 0.0291 X 0.0295. This 22-page, Japanese picture book of mostly flowers requires a magnifying glass to read.
• The largest printed catalog on record is over 2.5 inches thick! With 2,656 pages, Aviall Services’ Product and Catalog Book weighs 7.4 lbs.
• In Monto Chicago, 2005, Chef Homaro Cantu began printing sushi on a Canon i560 inkjet printer using edible ink. Some pay as much as $240 to sample his creations.

We hope you’ve enjoyed these fantastic, random, and historical printing facts!