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Freedom of Information: The Printing Press

How did we find out about the Declaration of Independence? It was printed. Today we have e-book readers. But until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1430s, few knew how to read, and books had to be inscribed by hand, a process that was both time consuming and made books prohibitively expensive. With the printing press, we had wider access to printed information and literacy became common. Without Thomas Paine's and other pamphleteers' access to the printing press, the American Revolution and democracy itself is unthinkable and impossible.