But its precursors — movable-type presses, windup text-producing automata, prosthetic writing devices for the disabled, document duplicators like the "polygraph" used by Thomas Jefferson — were as much a product of the Enlightenment as the notion that society should become an administered utopia, with individuals adjusting themselves to its immutable norms.
But paper, and its adjacent innovations from writing to inventions like the printing press, movable type, and the modern industrial model is a broad subject, and the book becomes a march through human history, from Sumerian clay tablets to today's giant, automated paper mills.
"Amazon has done more to liberate readers and writers than any other entity since Johannes Gutenberg refined the movable type printing press", the petition continues, adding that "Amazon is growing overall readership while liberating the voices of countless writers, adding to the diversity of literature".
Self-published authors Hugh Howey, J.A. Konrath, Barry Eisler and others have asked readers not to boycott Amazon, because the company "has done more to liberate readers and writers than any other entity since Johannes Gutenberg refined the movable type printing press".
There are two wonderful collections of children's books and even a full-scale recreation of a movable type printing press you can examine when you enter the library.
Within 30 years of his invention, the movable-type printing press was in use throughout Europe.
Felix Mendelssohn wrote his Hymn of Praise to mark the 400th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable-type printing press.
A particularly unsettling parallel with the current moment lies in a previous revolution in information technology, the coming of the movable-type printing press to Europe in the 15th century.
The pragmatic advantages of alphabetic writing systems over the pictographic became apparent twice in the past millennium: after the invention of the movable-type printing press in the 15th century and again with the development of information processing by electronic means since the mid-1940s.
Caxton's apprentice Wynkyn de Worde, who operated England's movable-type printing press in the churchyard, and is buried there, and it has links from Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens right up to Clement Freud, whose funeral was held there in 2009.
