As societies grew more literate, the demand for manuscripts flourished, but a scribe could produce only one copy at a time. What has been called the second information communications revolution began in Germany in 1455, when Johannes Gutenberg printed a Bible on a press that used movable type. More than 200 years before Gutenberg, the Chinese had invented a printing press that used wood type, and the Chinese also are credited with perfecting a copper press in 1445. But Gutenberg’s innovation was to line up individual metal letters that he could ink and then press onto paper to produce copies. Unlike the wood or copper presses, the metal letters could be reused to produce new pages of text, which made the process much cheaper. The Gutenberg Bible, a duplicate of the Latin original, is considered the first book printed by movable type (47 copies still survive today, 555 years later). As other countries adopted Gutenberg’s press, the price for Bibles plummeted. In 1470, the cost of a French, mechanically printed Bible was one-fifth the cost of a hand-printed Bible.