Printing

Submitted by Sebastien Zorn (United States), Jul 22, 2022 at 08:57

"The innovation that Johannes Gutenberg is said to have created was small metal pieces with raised backwards letters, arranged in a frame, coated with ink, and pressed to a piece of paper, which allowed books to be printed more quickly. But Choe Yun-ui did that — and he did it 150 years before Gutenberg was even born."

https://kottke.org/19/07/the-korean-invention-of-the-printing-press-almost-200-years-before-gutenberg

"The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around AD 1040 in China." -moveable type Wikipedia

"Printing in East Asia originated from the Han dynasty (220 BCE – 206 CE) in China, evolving from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone ..." History of Printing in East Asia/Wikipedia

So, availability of books can't be the answer.

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