Renaissance Europe · 1450-1500

Gutenberg and the printing press

In Mainz, a metalworker combines movable metal type, oil-based ink and a press. Within fifty years printers work in more than two hundred towns. Students watch printing spread across the map and ask what changes when books become cheap.

Teach it live New Open on the map
Length
45 minutes
Ages
10–13
On the map
3 steps, AD 1450 to AD 1490
Live lesson
7 rounds, 3 on the map
Worksheet
Two A4 pages, with Classroom
You need
A projector; phones for live

Live lesson · new in Classroom

Teach it live. The class answers on their phones.

Put the board on the projector. Students join with a six-digit code, no account needed, and tap the map: where was the frontier, where did the grain come from. Their pins drop in together when you reveal, and the closest student takes the round.

€19 per month: every lesson live, every worksheet, cancel anytime. Rome at its height runs live for free.

A live lesson on the projector: the class's pins on the map around Alexandria, the closest students listed beside it A student's phone: the question and a map to tap
7 rounds
3 places to find on the map, quiz questions, a class vote and a one-line answer.
About 15 minutes
Run it as the map step, or to open the discussion. You move on with the space bar.
A report
Every answer, per student and per round, to read back or print after the lesson.
1

Introduction

5 min

Read aloud

In Mainz, a metalworker combines movable metal type, oil-based ink and a press. Within fifty years printers work in more than two hundred towns. Students watch printing spread across the map and ask what changes when books become cheap.

By the end of the lesson, students can

  • Explain what was new about Gutenberg's way of printing around 1450.
  • Use the printing press spread to name five towns that had a press by 1500.
  • Give two ways cheap printed books changed religion, science or politics.
2

Explore the map

12 min

Project the map, or let students follow on their own devices. Each step opens the map at the right year and place.

a

AD 1450

Mainz on the Rhine

Open the map in 1450 and find Mainz on the river Rhine, west of Frankfurt. Which large empire is Mainz part of? Turn on Historical Events and look for the Gutenberg marker.

Open this view on the map
b

AD 1450

Watch printing spread

Open Data layers, turn on Spreads and choose the printing press. Play it from 1450 to 1500. In which direction does printing travel first, and which regions get it last?

Open this view on the map
c

AD 1490

Venice, capital of print

Zoom in on Venice in 1490. By 1500 it had more printers than any other city. Look at its position on the map: why was a port city a good place to make and sell books?

Open this view on the map
3

Class discussion

14 min

Pick two or three. They run from what happened to why it mattered.

  1. Before printing, how were books made, and who could afford them?
  2. Gutenberg did not invent printing itself. What did he combine that made his method so fast?
  3. Printing spread mostly along rivers and trade routes. Why would that be?
  4. Rulers and churches soon tried to control what was printed. Why were they worried?
  5. Is the internet a second printing revolution? Give one similarity and one difference.
4

Game round

9 min

Play a round of Rule History as Sejong the Great. In 1443 he created Hangul, a simple alphabet for Korean, and Korean printers had used metal type long before Gutenberg. Discuss: which spreads knowledge faster, an easy alphabet or a fast press?

Open Rule History
5

Worksheet

5 min

This worksheet comes with Classroom

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