A great leap forward in human communication happened in the fifteenth century. Johannes Gutenberg (yoh-HAH-nuhs GOOT-uhn-burg) of Germany introduced the printing press. It used moveable type. The printing press brought the first real books into the world. Soon more and more people wanted to read books. Literacy rates rose quickly. Within 100 years after Gutenberg's invention, more than half of all the adults in Europe could read and write. European printers made many improvements to the printing press. They began printing newspapers in the mid-1600s. How do the details in the excerpt support a main idea of the text?
