You likely learned in school that Johannes Gutenberg was responsible for inventing the printing press leading to a revolutionary spread of information across Europe. Religion fractured, governments were overthrown, and the arts flourished. While Gutenberg was responsible for developing the movable type printing press in Europe, printing had been happening across Asia and Africa for centuries! China’s Ming Dynasty saw the first movable type printing press that the world had ever seen. By 1161, the Song Dynasty was using the process to print paper money, and the movable type printing press had been developed and used in Korea by the 1200s.…