Well, in Western Europe.
Printing Presses have been around for much much much longer in China. About 1300 years longer ... and the method they used was much simpler than the initial Gutenberg style presses and successfully competed with Western style presses in China until all woodblock printing was suppressed by government fiat after the 1911 revolution for reasons of 'modernity' (hell, knowing how inherently corrupt the KMT were, they probably received kickbacks from owners of the newstyle presses to suppress the competition, as like as not).
They also used moveable type from about 1000 AD or so in China and at least the late 14th century in Korea, though neither methods were widespread because of the cost of the thousands of ceramic (or metal) ideograms necessary.
Phil
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