The idea of using raised blocks of wood to create an impression on a
substrate (initially clay) derived from seals (used in impressing
signatures). (The Chinese word for "print" is the same as that for
"seal.") In the second century C.E., classical texts were stamped into
stone; around the fifth century, ink was applied to the blocks. The
earliest known printed book is the "Diamond Sutra," printed by Wang
Chieh in C.E. 868. Many other books, most in roll form but one in the
cut-sheet form we are familiar with today, were found that date from
around the same time. Shortly thereafter, the idea of printing was
adopted by religious adherents to promote their doctrines, and prayers,
hymns, and other ecclesiastical materials were widely duplicated and
disseminated. The other primary use of printing, dating from around 969
or earlier, was the production of playing cards. In the tenth century,
the emperor agreed to (and financed) the printing of the Chinese
classics, which led to a widespread revival of learning and education
during the time of the Sung Dynasty (known as the Sung Renaissance).
Also in the tenth century, printing was enthusiastically applied to the
production of paper currency, which had the effect of introducing to
China the concept of inflation.
The invention of block printing had a dramatic effect on Chinese culture
and the democratization of knowledge; by 972, five thousand volumes of
the Buddhist canon had been printed, and hundreds of volumes of Dynastic
histories appeared soon thereafter, followed by encyclopedias,
dictionaries, as well as compilations and anthologies of literature.
There was, in a word, a riot of scholarship. The downside, however, is
that due to a prohibition on the use of printing for commercial (i.e.,
money-making) purposes, all printed texts were given away gratis by the
government. This helped stifle the further development of printing
technology; moveable, metal type, created in Korea, had a brief
popularity, then died away. The prevalence of moveable type could have
been effected by the adoption of a simplified, twenty-four character
alphabet devised by King Sajong of Korea, but interest in things Chinese
(rather than Korean) prevented this. Typesetting (as we now know it)
only became popular in China after Gutenberg's invention and the
principles and techniques of Eastern typography were introduced by
missionaries, after having first been carried from Korea to Europe,
probably by Arab traders. What goes around comes around.
In Europe, there is evidence (albeit inconclusive) that printing
utilizing moveable type was first practiced in the 1430s in Haarlem,
Holland, by Laurens Coster. If that was the case, it didn't catch on, as
the next recorded Dutch use of the technology was in 1470, when German
printers set up a press in Utrecht.
The birth of the printing press in Europe can be traced back to the
demand for religious indulgences. Following the ebbing of the Black
Death in the late fourteenth century, there was a great economic boom,
and general sense of revelry in Europe. As a result of all the
"moralistic infractions" going on at the time, there was a great need
for indulgences (basically, religious documents absolving sinners of
their sins). Indulgences (for which there was big money for those
providing and writing them) could be obtained at any of a variety of
religious shrines and popular pilgrimage spots throughout Europe. Also
to be obtained at these pilgrim "conventions" were any number of
religious artifacts—trinkets, special mirrors with which one was
supposed to catch the image of oneself standing before the shrine, and
other sorts of "souvenirs." Makers and sellers of these items pursued
their craft with a vigor and determination similar to that employed by
carnival or fair hawkers of today. One particular maker of these
artifacts had borrowed a significant amount of money from his business
partners to invest in the manufacture and selling of these items at a
big pilgrim convention in Aachen in the mid-1400s. Unfortunately, in
1439, he discovered to his horror that he got the year of the festival
wrong and missed it. Heavily in debt to his partners, he assured them
that he had been secretly working on something else that was likely to
be a goldmine (literally). He was a goldsmith from Mainz, Germany, born
Johann Gensfleisch (the German word for "gooseflesh"); understandably,
he preferred to use his mother's maiden name, Gutenberg. Although he
wasn't the first person in Europe to print from moveable type, he was
the first to make it practical, and devised the metal punch, metal
matrix to receive the punched—or engraved—metal letters, numbers, and
punctuation marks, and a mold to hold the appropriate metal characters
in a line for printing. (The printing press itself was essentially a
modified press used in papermaking.) In 1450, Gutenberg mortgaged his
printing press to a goldsmith named Johann Fust. The first things that
were printed—dating from 1454, or perhaps even as early as 1451—were
indulgences. In 1455, Gutenberg, who had not yet repaid his mortgage to
Fust, was sued. Unable to pay, Gutenberg's press was confiscated by
Fust, and the printing work was carried on by Peter Schöffer,
Gutenberg's typesetter. (Actually, it is believed by many that the
important developments of moveable type were devised by Schöffer.) In
1456, Gutenberg borrowed more money and set up another printing press,
on which he produced the first printed book—the "Gutenberg Bible." The
spread of printing was accelerated by Adolf of Nassau's 1462 invasion of
Mainz. The printers, fleeing the city, spread the art throughout
Europe. As for Gutenberg, he ended up in Eltville, set up another press,
and, after several years of unending financial crises, died in 1468.
It is probably small consolation to Gutenberg that the printing press
had an infinitely profound effect on European culture, and was in fact
the goldmine he had promised it would be (for everyone but him, alas).
At the time, however, there was enough demand for such a process in
Europe that someone was likely to have invented it. (The Plague had
killed off many of the scribes, and those who were left were expensive.)
The speed at which the printing press spread throughout Europe was
lightning-fast; within fifty years there were over 200 presses operating
in Europe, and eight million books printed. The effect of the printing
press was profound; William Caxton's introduction of the press into
England in the 1460s resulted in not only the professional career of
Geoffrey Chaucer, but also the standardization of the English language
(in other countries, other vernaculars became standardized as well;
printers must have realized that the bulk of the book-buying public
didn't know Latin). The Protestant Reformation was accelerated by the
use of printing; Martin Luther had used printing to disseminate his
problems with the Catholic church. The printing and consequent
rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts resulted in the
Renaissance. The literacy rate of the European population soared, as
more people had access to books, which were far more inexpensive than
books produced by scribes. (Interestingly, great advances in the
manufacture and availability of eyeglasses appeared shortly before the
printing press.) Whereas before printing, knowledge and learning were
the privilege of a rare few (such as monks and university scribes), many
people now had access to it. Writers who had previously been unable to
get their work disseminated (scribes, in particular monks, would
frequently fail to copy manuscripts they felt were heretical, and many
manuscripts that came their way were erased and the paper "recycled")
could flourish.
The earliest printers were only interested in reproducing texts cheaply
and quickly, and had also wanted to preserve the look of the older
handwritten manuscripts. Soon, however, printers such as Johann and
Wendelin da Spira, Nicolas Jenson, and many others began to design
distinctive "typefaces" specifically for book printing, called "roman"
typefaces. The great Venetian printer Aldus Manutius not only printed
the first "pocket editions" but also pioneered the use of italic type
(as a means of fitting more characters per page and thus making the
books cheaper to produce; eventually, italics came to be used merely for
emphasis or titles; see Type).
The next four hundred years consisted of improvements on and
mechanization of the typesetting and printing processes. Type was
inserted character-by-character into a composing stick, which comprised a
line of type. The characters from the composing stick were then
transferred en masse to a metal or wooden tray called a galley. After
the galley was proofed, it was broken down into pages, and running
heads, folios, etc., were added. Each page of type was then locked up,
to be sent for platemaking or to the pressroom if the material was going
to be printed directly from type. Presses at that time were flat-bed,
or platen, presses in which the type was locked onto a flat platen and
the substrate was pressed over it, either sheet by sheet, or, later, by a
rotating cylinder. In 1725, Scottish printer William Ged invented a
process for making plates from locked-up type. It was refined and
officially named stereotyping
shortly afterward by Firmin Didot. In stereotyping, locked-up type is
covered with a wet paper or mat, and pressure applied to stamp the
impression of the type in the mat. The paper or mat is allowed to dry.
The mat is then removed, and placed in a casting machine, where molten
metal is added to cast an entire page of type as a single plate.
Adapted From http://printwiki.org/Printing
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