Printing

• 1. Ancient Origins And East Asian Roots

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  A cylinder seal from antiquity pressed ink onto clay to create a repeating pattern. This technique predates paper by millennia and established the first method for mass reproducing images. The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on stone tablets during the sixth century. A type of mechanical woodblock printing on paper started during the seventh century in Tang dynasty China. Nara Japan printed the Hyakumantō Darani en masse around 770 and distributed them to temples throughout the country. In Korea, an example of woodblock printing from the eighth century was discovered in 1966 inside a pagoda repaired in 751. By the ninth century, printing on paper had taken off across East Asia. The first completely surviving printed book is the Diamond Sutra of 868 uncovered from Dunhuang. A skilled printer could print up to 2,000 double-page sheets per day using these early methods.

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• 2. The Gutenberg Revolution In Europe

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  Johannes Gutenberg introduced the first movable-type printing system in Europe around 1450. He advanced innovations in casting type based on a matrix and hand mould. Gutenberg used an oil-based ink and created a softer and more absorbent paper for his press. He cast his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, antimony, copper and bismuth. This same alloy remains in use today for metal type production. Gutenberg started work on his printing press around 1436 in partnership with Andreas Dritzehen. Andreas Heilmann owned a paper mill that supplied materials for the project. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible established the superiority of movable type for Western languages. The printing press rapidly spread across Europe leading up to the Renaissance. Time Life magazine ranked Gutenberg's innovations as the most important invention of the second millennium in 1997. A&E Network voted Johannes Gutenberg Man of the Millennium in 1999.

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• 3. Industrialization Of The Press

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  Richard M. Hoe invented the steam-powered rotary printing press in 1843 in the United States. His original design operated at up to 2,000 revolutions per hour where each revolution deposited four page images. This gave the press a throughput of 8,000 pages per hour. By 1891, The New York World and Philadelphia Item were operating presses producing either 90,000 or 48,000 sheets per hour. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper. Continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace than hand-operated models. William Bullock significantly improved rotary drum printing later in the nineteenth century. Sheetfed offset, rotogravure, and flexographic printing are multiple types of rotary technologies still used today. The table lists maximum numbers of pages which various press designs could print per hour. Hand-operated presses managed around 200 impressions while Koenig presses reached 2,400 by 1818.

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• 4. Social And Religious Transformations

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  Samuel Hartlib wrote in 1641 that the art of printing would spread knowledge so common people would not be governed by oppression. In the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Selim I issued a decree in 1515 under which the practice of printing was punishable by death. Ibrahim Muteferrika established the first press for printing in Arabic in the Ottoman Empire against opposition from calligraphers. It operated until 1742 producing altogether seventeen works all concerned with non-religious utilitarian matters. Hebrew language printers were banned from printing guilds in some Germanic states. Hebrew printing flourished in Italy beginning in 1470 in Rome then spreading to other cities including Bari and Pisa. Elizabeth Eisenstein identifies two long-term effects of the invention of printing on society. She claims that print created a sustained and uniform reference for knowledge allowing comparisons of incompatible views. Asa Briggs and Peter Burke identify five kinds of reading that developed in relation to the introduction of print. Critical reading emerged as people formed their own opinions on texts available to the general population.

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• 5. Modern Digital And 3D Technologies

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  By 2005 digital printing accounted for approximately nine percent of the 45 trillion pages printed annually around the world. Inkjet technology sprays ink onto paper to create desired images using bubble-jet or piezoelectric methods. Laser printing uses xerography where a charged image is written pixel by pixel using a laser beam. Professional digital presses such as the Xerox iGen3 use toner particles while the HP Indigo series uses liquid ink. The InfoPrint 5000 is a full-color continuous forms inkjet drop-on-demand printing system handling variable data. In the 1980s three-dimensional printing techniques were considered suitable only for production of functional prototypes. Fused deposition modeling uses a continuous filament of thermoplastic material as the most common process today. One key advantage of additive manufacturing is the ability to produce very complex shapes including hollow parts with internal truss structures. Precision repeatability and material range have increased to the point that some processes are viable as industrial-production technology. Small format printing handles up to ledger size sheets while wide format covers rolls up to 914mm in width.

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