AP ICET 2025 7th May 2025 Shift 1

Question Numbers : (126 to 130)
Read the following passages and choose the correct answers for the questions 126 to 130.
The earliest known book was printed in China in the year 868 and metal type was in use in Korea at the beginning of the fifteenth century, but it was in Germany around the year 1450 that a printing press using moveable metal type was invented. Capitalism turned printing from an invention into an industry. Right from the start, book printing and publishing were organized on capitalist lines. The biggest sixteenth-century printer, Plantain of Antwerp, had twenty-four printing presses and employed more than hundred workers. Only a small fraction of the population was literate, but the production of books grew at an extraordinary speed. By 1500, some 20 million volumes had already been printed (Febvre and Martin 1976). The immediate effect of printing was to increase the circulation of works that were already popular in a handwritten form, while less popular works went out of circulation. Publishers were interested only in books that would sell fairly quickly in sufficient numbers to cover the costs of production and make a profit. Thus, while printing enormously increased access to books by making cheap, high-volume production possible, it also reduced choice.