History of Printing

History of Printing

Four Important Periods in the History of the Book. 

1. 7th to 13th Century: The age of religious "manuscript" book production. Books in this period are entirely constructed by hand and are largely religious texts whose creation is meant as an act of worship.
2. 13th to 15th Century: The secularization of book production. Books are beginning to be produced that do not serve as objects of worship, but that try to explain something about the observable world. The difficulty with the spread of such knowledge is that production is still taking place via pre-print - manuscript - methods.                                                                

        The production of secular books is driven by two things:

• The rise of universities in Europe, spreading from Italy.
• The return of the crusaders in the 13th century, who bring with them a text from Byzantium. These books, written during the Greek and Roman periods in history, focus on this-world concerns. 

     3. 15th to 16th Century: The first printed books. These are print versions of traditional works like the Bible, books of hours prayer books and religious calendars.

   4. 6th to 17th Century: New information is put into books that have important consequences in European life and society. 

Block Printing in China   

                                                                   Wooden Blocks

Printing is one of the four great inventions of Ancient China. This technology made an extreme contribution to books and records production. It speeds up the documentation of human history. However, many of the records had been worn out under dictatorship, wars, and disasters. Woodblock printing on paper, whereby individual sheets were pressed against wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them were first recorded in China in the Tang Dynasty, although as a method for printing patterns on cloth the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and from Egypt to the 6th or 7th centuries. In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money also the copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money, nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty, people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal official documents; the typical example of this kind of movable copper block printing is a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215.

Block Printing in Europe     

Block printing came to Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onwards.       

History of Printing in East Asia and Clay Movable Types  

                                                                   Clay Movable Types

Movable type printing was first invented in 1041 by Bi Sheng in China. Sheng used clay type, which broke easily, but Wang Zhen later carved a more durable type from wood. Movable type, though known in China, was not extensively used there until the European-style printing press was introduced in relatively recent times. East Asian printing technology may possibly have diffused into Europe through the trade routes from China through India or the Arabic world, although there is no evidence. The lack of known intermediaries and profound technical differences in detail indicate that Gutenberg's invention of movable type was done independently.   

History of Printing in In Europe and Gutenberg's Movable Types    

Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing technology in 1440, with which the classical age of printing began. Also, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented with him in Mainz. Genealogically, all modern movable type printing can be traced back to a single source, Gutenberg's printing press which he derived from the design of long known agricultural presses. East Asian style movable type printing, which was based on laborious manual rubbing and which had been scarcely used, practically died out after the introduction of European style printing in the 19th century. Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously used water-based inks. Having worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. Gutenberg was also the first to make his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. It proved to be producing durable type for production of quality printed books and proved to be more suitable for printing than the clay, wooden or bronze types used in East Asia. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1628 and helped establish the Cambridge Press.

Story Of Father Of Printing (Johann Gutenberg)

                                                           Johann Gutenberg

Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing technology in 1440, with which the classical age of printing began. Also, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented with him in Mainz. Gutenberg was trying to invent a method of printing. He didn't have very much money left, but he would not give up. He continued to work on the great project. While he was a teenager working at his town's mint; the place where money was made, he got the idea for creating books by machine. Up until this time all the books had to be copied by hand. It was very slow, and it took a long, long time to make one book. After the book was written, they would take a metal punch and spell out the letters for the title on the front of the leather cover. Maybe this gave Gutenberg the idea for metal letters to write the words on the pages of the book. His work at the mint helped him in making the metal letters for printing. The letters had to be the same height to look right. Also at the mint, he worked with a stamp press used to make government seals. He used this knowledge to help him make a printing press. It is believed that the first item ever printed on the printing press was a German poem. Before the printing of the Bible, he established good business printing school books of Latin grammar. It is assumed he had two workshops, one for printing the Bible and another for all other print jobs. When he needed money he went to John Fust, a moneylender. He got the money to buy the material to make 46,000 pieces of movable type. He also hired 16 workers. He was able to print the first Bible, the Gutenberg Bible. Then, Fust, his moneylender accused Gutenberg of stealing some of the money. They went to court and Fust won. Gutenberg had to turn over the Bible printing workshop and half of all the printed Bibles. Fust also took Gutenberg's co-worker with him. All this was quite a blow to him. Some of the first copies still exist today. They are among the world's greatest treasures. The method he invented for printing remained unchanged for many years. In his later life, he was honored with the title of Hofmann which means "gentleman of the court". He was given a small pension and some yearly grain and wine. He died a highly respected person.

Early Printing Houses

Early printing houses near the time of Gutenberg were run by "master printers." These printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution. Some other aspects of these printing houses were:  

• Printshop apprentices: Apprentices, usually between the ages of 15 and 20, worked for master printers. Apprentices were not required to be literate, and literacy rates at the time were very low, in comparison to today. Apprentices prepared ink, dampened sheets of paper, and assisted at the press. 
• Journeyman printers: After completing their apprenticeships, journeyman so called from the French "journée" for day printers were free to move employers. This facilitated the spread of printing to areas that were less print-centered.
• Compositors: Those who set the type for printing. 
• Pressmen: the person who worked in the press. This was physically labor-intensive.

The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the Dance of Death by Matthias Huss. This image depicts a compositor standing at a compositor's case being grabbed by a skeleton. The case is raised to facilitate his work. The image also shows a pressman being grabbed by a skeleton. At the right of the printing house, a bookshop is shown.