One-liners — Print Culture and the Modern World
Chapter 5 · Class 10 History
Key Facts (20) — One-liner Revision
Mentor-curated facts for last-mile revision. Each line is exam-grade — dates, names, and turning points you can quickly memorise.
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Hand-printing on woodblocks began in China from AD 594; the imperial state was the largest producer of printed material.
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The Diamond Sutra, printed in AD 868, is the world's oldest dated printed book — Buddhist text with woodcut illustrations.
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Buddhist missionaries from China carried hand-printing to Japan around AD 768-770.
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Korea's Jikji, printed in the late 14th century, is among the oldest books printed using movable metal type.
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The Tripitaka Koreana — Buddhist scriptures engraved on about 80,000 woodblocks — was UNESCO-inscribed in 2007.
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Marco Polo brought knowledge of woodblock printing back to Italy in 1295 after his China travels.
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Johann Gutenberg perfected the movable-type printing press at Strasbourg by 1448; the first book printed was the Bible.
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Gutenberg's press produced about 180 Bibles in three years; the press could print 250 sheets per side per hour.
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Between 1450 and 1550 printing presses were set up in most European countries; the second half of the 15th century saw 20 million printed copies.
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Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses (1517) and his German New Testament fed the Protestant Reformation through print.
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The Roman Catholic Church began maintaining its Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.
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Menocchio, a sixteenth-century Italian miller, was executed by the Inquisition for his unorthodox readings of the Bible.
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Louise-Sebastien Mercier called the press "the most powerful engine of progress" in eighteenth-century France.
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Richard M. Hoe of New York perfected the power-driven cylindrical press, capable of 8,000 sheets per hour.
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James Augustus Hickey began the Bengal Gazette in 1780 — India's first English weekly.
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Rammohun Roy launched Sambad Kaumudi in 1821; the Hindu orthodoxy responded with Samachar Chandrika.
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The first Tamil book was printed at Cochin in 1579; the first Malayalam book in 1713.
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The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, used cheap lithographic presses to circulate fatwas.
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Rashsundari Debi's Amar Jiban (1876) was the first full-length autobiography published in Bengali.
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The Vernacular Press Act of 1878, modelled on Irish Press Laws, gave the colonial government sweeping powers to censor Indian-language newspapers.