A printing press is a mechanical evice for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg in ca. 1439. Although both woodblock printing and movable type printing technologies were already developed in ancient China and later Korea in East Asia a few hundred years prior, they did not use a press like that of Gutenberg. Printing methods based on Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly throughout first Europe and then the rest of the world. It eventually replaced most versions of block printing, making it the most used format of modern movable type As a method of creating reproductions for mass consumption, the printing press has been superseded by the advent of offset printing.