What Kinds of Books Were Printed by the First Printing Press in the Americas? A 1568 printing press.

At the left in the foreground, a "puller" removes a print ed sheet from the press. The "beater" to his right is inking the forme. In the b ackground, compositors are setting type. Source: Wikipedia In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg completed his famous "Gutenberg Bible," the first bo ok printed using movable type. By the year 1500, roughly 2,500 European cities had movable-type printing presse s. By 1540, one of those presses had made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to Nort h America and was printing materials for the Spanish Viceroy in Mexico. A hundred years later, printing came to British North America. The continent has had printing ever since. The First Press The first printing press in North America arrived in Mexico sometime in the 1530 s. Archbishop Zummaraga of Mexico had been ordering catechisms in the native lan guages from Seville, Spain. To save the cost and trouble of shipping, he and the Spanish Viceroy arranged for a printer and a press to be sent from Seville to M exico City. The press was operated as a branch office of Juan Cromberger's print ing house, one of the largest houses in Spain. Source: Internet Archive What it Printed The primary purpose of the printing press was evangelism of the indigenous peopl e. The press printed bilingual catechisms with the text in Spanish or Latin on o ne side of the page and in a native language such as Nahuatl or Tarascan on the other side. It also printed primers and breviaries for the church in Mexico and proclamations and notices for the government. The oldest extant work from this p ress is the "Manual de Adultos," a baptismal manual, which is dated 1540.