The emergence of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century coincided with the final blossoming of the ancient earth-centered view of the universe. Early books preserving and spreading this knowledge, based on ideas of the Greeks put forward more than 1000 years earlier. These books were mainly published in Latin, the common language of educated Europeans, but some in Arabic indicate the major role played by Islamic astronomers in the Middle Ages.
Ptolemy, 2nd cent.Almagestu[m] Cl. Ptolemei : Pheludiensis Alexandrini astronomo[rum] principis ...
Venetijs : ... ductu Petri Liechtenstein ... ex officina eiusdem litteraria, 1515 Die. 10. Ja.
Ptolemy's Almagest, written about 145 AD, presented the ancient world's most successful model of an earth-centered universe. Ptolemy's work provided accurate enough predictions of the positions of the planets to remain the accepted scientific model of the heavens for more than a thousand years.