Everything about Printing Presses totally explained
» For the invention and technology of movable type, see Movable type.
A
printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The systems involved were first assembled in
Germany by the
goldsmith Johann Gutenberg in ca. 1439. Although both
woodblock printing and
movable type printing technologies were already developed in
ancient China and later
Korea in
East Asia a few hundred years prior, they didn't use a press like that of Gutenberg. Printing methods based on Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly throughout first
Europe and then the rest of the world. It eventually replaced most versions of block printing, making it the most used format of modern
movable type As a method of creating reproductions for mass consumption, the printing press has been superseded by the advent of
offset printing.
History
The overall invention of Gutenberg's printing method depended for some of its elements upon a diffusion of technologies from
East Asia—
paper,
woodblock printing, and possibly
Bi Sheng's
movable type printing technology—in addition to a growing demand by the general
European public for the lower cost
paper books, instead of the exorbitantly expensive
parchment books.
Gutenberg's Press
Johannes Gutenberg's work on the printing press began in approximately
1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehan—a man he'd previously instructed in gem-cutting—and Andreas Heilmann, owner of a paper mill.
Having previously worked as a professional
goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he'd learned as a craftsman. He was the first to make type from an
alloy of
lead,
tin, and
antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books and proved to be more suitable for printing than the
clay,
wooden or
bronze types invented in East Asia. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention, a special matrix enabling the quick and precise moulding of new type blocks from a uniform template.
Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based
ink which was more durable than the previously used water-based inks. As printing material he used both
vellum and
paper, the latter having been introduced in
Europe a few centuries earlier from
China by way of the
Arabs.
In the
Gutenberg Bible, Gutenberg made a trial of coloured printing for a few of the page headings, present only in some copies. A later work, the
Mainz Psalter of 1453, presumably designed by Gutenberg but published under the imprint of his successors
Johann Fust and
Peter Schöffer, had elaborate red and blue printed initials.
Life magazine called the Printing Press the greatest invention in the last 1000 years. It is important to note that it was the alphabet that made the success of the printing press possible. See
Online Video: "The Code of da Vinci"
for a discussion of the role of the Alphabet in the emergence of printing. See the
Online Video: "The Renaissance Computer"for a discussion of the historic consequences of printing.
Historical Impact
Printing as developed in East Asia didn't make use of a printing press as in Gutenberg's case. Although the invention of
movable type in
China and
Korea preceded Gutenberg's printing press, the impact of
East Asian movable type printing presses wasn't as influential as it was in
Western European society. This was likely due to the enormous amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of
porcelain tablets, or in the case of
Korea,
metal tablets, required by the use of written
Chinese characters. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of
books, on subjects ranging from
Confucian Classics to
science and
mathematics, were printed using the older technology of
woodblock printing, creating the world's first
print culture..
In contrast, the impact of Gutenberg's printing press in
Europe was comparable to the development of
writing, the invention of the
alphabet or the
Internet, as far as its effects on society. Just as writing didn't replace speaking, printing didn't achieve a position of total dominance. Handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced, and the different graphic modes of communication continued to influence each other.
The printing press was also a factor in the establishment of a community of
scientists who could easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the
scientific revolution. Because of the printing press,
authorship became more meaningful and profitable. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before, the author was less important, since a copy of
Aristotle made in Paris wouldn't be exactly identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author was entirely lost.
Because the printing process ensured that the same information fell on the same pages, page numbering, tables of contents, and indices became common, though they previously hadn't been unknown. The process of reading was also changed, gradually changing over several centuries from oral readings to silent, private reading. The wider availability of printed materials also led to a drastic rise in the adult literacy rate throughout Europe.
Within fifty or sixty years of the invention of the printing press, the entire classical canon had been reprinted and widely promulgated throughout Europe (Eisenstein, 1969; 52). Now that more people had access to knowledge both new and old, more people could discuss these works. Furthermore, now that book production was a more commercial enterprise, the first
copyright laws were passed to protect what we now would call
intellectual property rights. A second outgrowth of this popularization of knowledge was the decline of Latin as the language of most published works, to be replaced by the vernacular language of each area, increasing the variety of published works. Paradoxically, the printing word also helped to unify and standardize the spelling and syntax of these vernaculars, in effect 'decreasing' their variability. This rise in importance of national languages as opposed to pan-European Latin is cited as one of the causes of the rise of
nationalism in Europe.
The art of book printing
For years, book printing was considered a true art form.
Typesetting, or the placement of the characters on the page, including the use of
ligatures, was passed down from master to apprentice. In Germany, the art of typesetting was termed the "black art," in allusion to the ink-covered printers. The Black Art Press & Print in Baltimore, MD adopted their name for this reason. It has largely been replaced by computer typesetting programs, which make it easy to get similar results more quickly and with less physical labor. Some practitioners continue to print books the way Gutenberg did. For example, there's a yearly convention of traditional book printers in
Mainz, Germany.
Some theorists, such as
McLuhan,
Eisenstein,
Kittler, and
Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from printing, removing the role of the image from society. Other authors stress that printed works themselves are a visual medium. Certainly, modern developments in printing have revitalized the role of illustrations.
The Industrial Revolution
The Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying and still was largely unchanged in the eras of
John Baskerville and
Giambattista Bodoni—over 300 years later. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had constructed a press completely from cast iron, reducing the force required by 90% while doubling the size of the printed area.
While Stanhope's "mechanical theory" had improved the efficiency of the press, it still was only capable of 250 sheets per hour.
German printer
Friedrich Koenig would be the first to design a non-manpowered machine—using steam.
Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig soon met Thomas Bensley and secured financial support for his project in 1807.
Patented in 1810, Koenig had designed a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine."
The first production trial of this model occurred in April 1811. He produced his machine with assistance from German engineer
Andreas Friedrich Bauer.
Koenig and Bauer sold two of their first models to
The Times in
London in
1814, capable of 1,100 impressions per hour. The first edition so printed was on
November 28 1814. They went on to perfect the early model so that it could print on both sides of a sheet at once. This began the long process of making
newspapers available to a mass audience (which in turn helped spread literacy), and from the 1820s changed the nature of
book production, forcing a greater standardization in titles and other
metadata. Their company
Koenig & Bauer AG is still one of the world's largest manufacturers of printing presses today.
Later on in the middle of the 19th century the
rotary printing press (invented in 1833 in the
United States by
Richard M. Hoe) allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.
Also, in the middle of the 19th century, there was a separate development of
jobbing presses, small presses capable of printing small-format pieces such as
billheads, letterheads, business cards, and envelopes. Jobbing presses were capable of quick set-up (average
makeready time for a small job was under 15 minutes) and quick production (even on treadle-powered jobbing presses it was considered normal to get 1,000 impressions per hour [iph] with one pressman, with speeds of 1,500 iph often attained on simple envelope work).
Job printing emerged as a reasonably cost-effective duplicating solution for commerce at this time.
Later inventions in this field include the following:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Printing Presses'.
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