Johannes Gutenberg wouldn’t have known how he would change the world when, in 1450, he invented his technique for producing books on mass. Just 50 years after its introduction, Europeans formed 1700 print workshops and printed 13 million books. In the early 1500s, European colonisers exported the printing press to the New World and, later that century, to the Far East. Book production increased to 80 million between 1501 and 1550 and more than 138 million from 1551 to 1600. A manuscript was once worth as much as a farm. By the 1530s, a pamphlet cost the same as a loaf of bread. With material to read, the literacy rate triple in Great Britain, and with these sweeping changes, growth and innovation took off. European cities with the printing press grew 60% faster than those without it.