Today, printing is very different from the process used in Gutenberg's workshop. By modern standards, Gutenberg's printing process may seem slow and tedious; compositors put type together by hand, and a skilled compositor could assemble 2,000 characters or letters in an hour. A computer can arrange the same number of characters in about two seconds. Today, more words are being printed every second than were printed every year during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

What changed? Why aren't we still using Gutenberg's press? Until the nineteenth century, printers completed each step of printing by hand, just as they did in Gutenberg's printshop. As technology evolved, inventors adapted these new technologies to revolutionize printing. Steam engines and, later, electrical engines were incorporated into the design of printing presses. In the 1970s, computers were integrated into the printing process.