Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word stationery comes from the medieval term for a stationer, a bookseller who operated from a fixed location rather than traveling as a peddler. Stationers' shops, typically situated near universities, were places where books were bound, copied, and published between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Stationery refers specifically to materials written on, such as sheets, pads, envelopes, and paper for printing. Fasteners, writing instruments, machines, and containers sold by stationers are classified as office supplies, not stationery.
The Stationers' Company held a monopoly over the publishing industry in England and was responsible for copyright regulations. It grew out of the medieval tradition of stationers operating fixed shops near universities.
Thermographic printing applies a wet ink to paper, then dusts it with a powdered polymer. The excess powder is removed, and the paper is heated to near combustion, bonding the ink and polymer into a raised print surface that resembles engraving at lower cost.
Embossing uses mated dies to press paper into a three-dimensional shape without ink, leaving a raised impression visible on both sides of the sheet. Engraving cuts a design into a polished metal plate, which is then pressed into paper under substantial pressure to produce a slightly raised, ink-filled surface.
Woodblock printing is the earliest form of printing on record. Letterpress, which presses words and designs onto the page using movable plates, remained the primary method of printing until the 19th century.