سؤال اليوم — اختبار STEP

Read the passage and answer the question. (1) Before the fifteenth century, books in Europe were copied by hand, usually by monks or professional scribes. A single book could take months to produce, so books were expensive and rare, and most people never owned one. (2) Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg, a metalworker in the German city of Mainz, began developing a new way of printing. His system used small metal blocks, each carrying a single letter, which could be arranged into lines of text, inked and pressed onto paper. After a page was printed, the letters could be taken apart and reused for the next page. Gutenberg also created an oil-based ink that stuck well to metal and adapted a press similar to those used for making wine. (3) Gutenberg was not the first to print with movable type. Chinese printers had used movable pieces made of baked clay in the eleventh century, and Korean printers produced a book with metal type in 1377. However, written Chinese uses thousands of different characters, which made movable type less practical there. European languages, with their small alphabets, were much better suited to the technique. (4) The effects of Gutenberg's invention were enormous. By 1500, printing presses were operating in more than two hundred European cities, and millions of books had been printed. As books became cheaper, more people learned to read. Scientists could share their discoveries quickly and accurately, and ideas spread across borders faster than ever before. (5) Some historians compare the printing press to the internet. Both, they argue, changed not only how information was shared but also who had access to it. Question: What can be inferred about books in Europe before Gutenberg?