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The History of Printing

Britsin's weathertro. Wdsor Bfopu THE Daily Neias es ES STAND READ His HISTORY OF IVAIS FIZZLING ALL GERM PRINT FBUED w ew Allies Must Reorani To Beat Rynd. New Strategic Situation Dic l ad. In Army Grobine ON KMCHE, R roing of the leadine N al trap ugy Ger Did you know that it took almost two years to produce Shakespeare's first folio (36 plays), or that King Arthur was one the first books to be printed in English? Here we explore the history of the printing press and how literature became widely available around the world. FIRST KNOWN PRINTED BOOK THE DIAMOND SUTRA – 868 AD This It is a 16 foot scroll of sheets of paper glued together at the edges. Chinese book from the T'ang Dynasty was found in a cave in Dunhuang in 1899. The printing quality of the piece is very high, so we can assume that it had many predecessors -this one is simply the earliest surviving book to be found. CHINESE MOVABLE TYPE A PRECURSOR TO GUTENBERG As far back as the 11th century, Problems: printing was attempted in China by carving letters from baked clay. The Difficult and time consuming. Once the clay was carved away, the block could not be edited. blocks would then be covered in ink and pressed against paper. People made Problems: characters that Chinese characters were they could very detailed, so type setting was highly complex. The clay was too brittle and move, so they could reuse them. These fragile to use as a printing worked a press. lot like stamps. JOHANNES GUTENBERG It is believed that Johannes Gutenberg first experimented with wooden block printing in the 1430s. He wanted to bring books to the common people and he chose to break the printing down into individual letters as opposed to words, sentences, or whole pages. This allowed the individual letters to be moved and reordered for different pages. The only problem was the low clarity of the prints. Gutenberg, previously a goldsmith and an accomplished metallurgist, then began to work with metal instead. GUTENBERG'S METAL TYPE The metal used to make Reverse impressions the typeface letters consisted of an alloy of lead, tin and antimony. of punctuation marks and letters were cast in metal. A compositor could assemble 2,000 They assembled on wooden frames, called formes, by a skilled compositor. characters or letters in an hour. This is the same as 33 letters per minute! A computer can arrange the same number of letters/characters in roughly two seconds. THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOK William Caxton, an English writer, merchant and diplomat, discovered the German printing industry whilst traveling through Europe and decided to print an English book. The first English book was printed in Bruges and was a translation of a French story called 'Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye'. Caxton also printed: 'Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres' (Sayings of the Philosophers). An edition of Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'. Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur' - The stories of King Arthur, Merlin and The Knights of the Round Table. The first English Translation of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'. 'The Golden Legend' by Jacobus de Voragine - which contains the story of St George. LITHOGRAPHY PRINTING Lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder. The main advantage was that the paper used in lithography was much cheaper than the paper used by Gutenberg's letterpress. HOW DOES IT WORK? 1 Gum Arabic + Nitric acid It is then treated with a small The printing plate (originally amount of acid and gum arabic. limestone) is marked with greasy oil. Excess grease is removed from The acid fixes the greasy images into the stone and desensitises the stone and rosin is applied to protect the greasy image on the stone. the other areas from receiving ink. Gum arabic is hydrophilic, meaning that anywhere it coats is more receptive to water. 3 4 Paper is then pressed against the The plate is dampened with cold water and the lithography ink is plate using rollers. A mirror image of the plate is pressed onto the paper. applied. It coheres to the greasy area of the plate and is repelled from the sections coated with water. OFFSET PRINTING A newer form of lithography, known as offset printing, was developed in 1903 by Ira Washington Rubel and is still used today. Rubel discovered this new process of printing when his own lithograph press. When he failed to insert a piece of paper, the plate imprinted on the side of the rubber cylinder. When he then inserted a piece of paper, he discovered that the print from the rubber cylinder was of a higher quality than that of the printing stone. By the 1950s, offset printing was the most popular method of commercial printing. It is still used today for many commercial books, catalogues, newspapers and magazines. PRINTING TODAY Today's print technology has been made possible through a whole host of changes to the process, but computers and digital printing have been the most important developments. Today, it is estimated that more words are printed every second than were printed in every year during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The rise of the computer truly meant the end for the letterpress. There was nothing that could be done with a letterpress that couldn't be done quicker, cheaper and easier with a computer. DIGITAL PRINTING There are many types of digital printing, such as thermal transfer printers, dye sublimation printers and electrographic printers. But the two main types of digital printer used are Laser Printers and Inkjet Printers. LASER PRINTERS Laser Printers use static electricity as a sort of temporary glue of negative charge to a drum. Laser printers apply positively charged toner in the form of a fine black powder. Opposite charges attract and the positively charged toner adheres to the parts of the drum that are negatively charged. The paper is then given a stronger negative charge than the drum and rolled under it. The toner is more attracted to the paper due to the stronger charge and it is transferred onto the paper. INKJET PRINTERS The dots are Inkjet printers work by placing small dots of ink onto a page, making very small, at between 50 and 60 microns in diameter. up the desired text of the image. This is smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The dots can be combined together to produce different colours, creating photo-quality prints. 3D PRINTERS Chuck Hall, the inventor of the 3D printer, was inducted into the inventors hall of fame in March 2014. 3D printing isn't printing the way we have previously understood it. It is a complex system of layering plastic on top of plastic, building up an entire 3D structure. It can also use food material or metal to print exactly what you want. 12 11 1 10 2 -9 3- .8 4. It's even claimed that 3D printers will be able to print human organs in the future. This could potentially revolutionise medicine. SOURCES www.folger.edu/Content/Teach-and-Learn/Shakespeare-for-Kids/Discover-Our- Collection/Breaking-News/Cool-Printing-Facts.cfm www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories. asp?groupid=19548HistoryID=ab78 www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenbergbible/process/ www.ehow.com/list_6631529_advantages-lithographic-printing.html IET WISH FOR DIRECT M RERSIAN ISSUE Beinried By Russ itisroops"- Bevin

The History of Printing

shared by MediaworksUK on May 17
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An exploration into the history of the printing press and how literature became widely available around the world.

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History
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