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printing

  (prĭn'tĭng) pronunciation
n.
  1. The art, process, or business of producing printed material by means of inked type and a printing press or by similar means.
    1. The act of one that prints.
    2. Matter that is printed.
  2. All the copies of a publication, such as a book, that are printed at one time.
  3. Written characters not connected to one another and resembling those appearing in print.

 
 

A process in which an image is reproduced on a surface, such as paper. There are five general classes of printing processes: relief printing, which includes letterpress and flexography; planographic printing, which includes offset lithography, screenless lithography, collotype, and waterless printing; intaglio, which includes gravure, steel-die, and copper-plate engraving; stencil and screen printing; and electronic printing, which includes electrostatic, magnetographic, ion or electron deposition, and ink-jet printing.

In relief printing, the printing element consists of a raised surface of type, lines, and dots that are inked. Printing is done by transferring the ink directly from the image surface to the paper. The nonprinting areas are below the printing surface.

In planographic printing, the printing areas of the plate are on the same plane as the nonprinting areas. Lithographic printing is accomplished by using the principle that grease and water do not mix. Early lithography was done by using a grease crayon or greasy ink to draw letters, symbols, and pictures in reverse on a porous stone. The surface of the stone was then sponged with a solution of gum arabic in water to render the nonprinting portions receptive to moisture but repellent to greasy ink, and the printing portions receptive to grease and repellent to moisture. This process is still used as a fine-arts medium for making lithographic prints from drawings or lettering done manually on the stone and printed on a handpress.

Commercial lithography uses thin metal plates made photomechanically or digitally and mounted on a press that has means for inking and dampening the plates and prints indirectly by a method commonly known as offset. The inked image on the plate is first transferred to an intermediate rubber-covered blanket cylinder, which then transfers the image to the paper. Relief and intaglio printing can also be printed by the offset principle. Because almost all lithography is printed by the offset principle, the term offset has become synonymous with lithography. Another planographic process is waterless printing, which uses temperature-controlled offset lithographic presses and special silicone-coated plates that can be printed without dampening. Collotype and screenless printing are planographic processes that print illustrations without the need of halftone images.

Intaglio printing, also known as gravure printing, is accomplished by cutting or engraving and etching various sizes or depths of minute cells (or wells) below the surface of a plate or cylinder to form the images. The cells are flooded and loaded with ink, the excess ink is scraped off the surface of the plate by a doctor blade, and the ink left in the cells is transferred to the substrate. The depth and size of each cell determine the amount of ink that is transferred to the printed surface. The nature of the process permits a heavy laydown of ink, which accounts for the rich, saturated colors typical of the gravure process.

In stencil and screen printing, also known as porous printing, ink is brushed or squeezed through a stencil image on a fine screen onto paper or other surface such as metal, glass, or textile. The screen holds the image area, which may carry either pictorial or typographic material. Although this process accounts for a comparatively small part of the total volume of printing, mechanization has made it more useful commercially. Because of the heavy laydown of ink, strong colors can be obtained by this process, making it suitable for posters and signs as well as fine art.

Conventional printing processes use printing plates and presses to produce quantities of the same image. Electronic printing processes use digital imaging systems that produce an image in each cycle of the imaging device. The images can be the same or can be changed from cycle to cycle. Electronic printing is especially suited to printed products requiring variable information such as utility bills, personalized mail, insurance policies, and customized books.

Electrostatic or electrophotographic printing is similar to photocopying. The processes use a photoconductor that is charged, exposed by lasers, and imaged with dry powder or liquid toners. They are used extensively for on-demand printing. Color electrophotographic printing systems are used for short-run variable and on-demand printing. Magnetographic printing is similar to electrophotographic printing except that magnetic toners are used. It is used for single- and spot-color short-run and on-demand printing.

In ion or electron deposition printing, a latent image is formed by ions or electrons on a heated dielectric coated cylinder, toned with a magnetic toner, and transferred and fixed to paper under pressure. The system is used for on-demand variable short-run single- or spot-color printing.

Ink-jet printing uses jets of ink droplets controlled by computer signals to print variable information. It is used extensively in packaging, and in mailing and distribution of magazines and catalogs. Color ink-jet is used for color proofing and short-run printed displays and billboards.

All the individual printing processes use a sequence of procedures. There are two types of processes in use: plate and plateless. The plate processes are the conventional printing processes—letterpress, flexography, lithography, gravure, screen printing, and others—which use a plate or other type of image carrier such as a cylinder or screen, and a printing press on which the image carrier is mounted, ink is applied, and the image is transferred to paper or other substrate. The plateless processes are the electronic or digital printing processes—electrophotographic, magnetographic, ion or electron deposition, and ink-jet—in which the images are produced digitally by lasers or other devices using special toners or inks.

The sequence of steps in both processes is prepress, press or print, and postpress. The prepress and postpress operations are similar for both processes: that is, the design, preparation, and assembly of images for reproduction, the finishing operations to give the final product such as a leaflet, book, or package, and their distribution, are essentially the same. The two differ in the means used to convert the imaging information into the imaged page, sheet, or board that must be converted to the final printed product for distribution.

The prepress operations for the conventional plate processes have consisted of typesetting, layout and design, process photography, image assembly, and platemaking. These were traditionally manual, labor-intensive operations, but electronics and computers have gradually replaced many manual operations. Phototypesetting and electronic scanning were the first computerized systems to replace manual operations. These were followed by other digital systems. The phototypesetter became the imagesetter. Page layout was accomplished by computer software programs. The scanner was enhanced by color electronic prepress systems. Personal computers developed into desktop publishing systems that emulated color electronic prepress systems, and imagesetters produced films for platemaking.

The conventional printing systems require plates. These plates are traditionally made from photographic negatives or positives. The availability of imagesetters that could produce the films for plates spurred the development of high-speed printing plates that could be exposed by lasers directly in the imagesetter. Also, the introduction of high-speed imagesetters with large memory capacity encouraged the development of digital printing systems that give printed products directly without the use of printing plates or presses.

Each conventional printing process has specific requirements for its printing plates or image carriers. The printing press unit has a cylinder for mounting the plate; an inking system to feed ink to the plate; and on an offset lithographic press, a cylinder covered with a rubber blanket to which the image is transferred from the plate and which transfers the image to the paper feeding over an impression cylinder. The press has a means for feeding paper or other substrate into the printing units, and a delivery device for collecting the printed sheets. The press has as many printing units as the number of colors that it can print (a four-color press has four printing units).

Digital printing uses different printing engines, depending on the process. Electrophotographic printing systems are like high-speed copiers, with a photoconductor-coated cylinder, means for charging the photoconductor, a device for laser exposure of the image on the photoconductor, and means for toning and fixing the image on the substrate. Ink-jet printing systems use an engine for ejecting selected droplets of dyed inks through small orifices in glass or stainless steel nozzles onto paper or other substrate.

After the sheets are printed, most must be put through some finishing operations to make a functional product. Sheets for books or booklets must be folded, collated, bound into covers, and stacked. They must also be prepared for distribution to the customer.


 
Thesaurus: printing

noun

  1. The act or process of publishing printed matter: issue, publication, publishing. See words.
  2. The entire number of copies of a publication printed from a single typesetting: impression. See words.

 

The printing of music, because it involves a variety of symbols, some of which need to be presented as if superimposed, developed more slowly than the printing of literary material. The earliest printed music came in liturgical books, in the 1470s; most early examples show staff lines in red with notes printed in black. These were produced by two impressions from blocks of wood (or occasionally metal) cut in relief. The use of wood or metal blocks continued in the early 16th century, and was occasionally used much later, even into the 19th century. The first music to be printed in America, the Bay Psalm Book (Boston,1698) was printed from woodblocks.

In 1501 Ottaviano Petrucci, working in Venice, printed the first mensural music. His Harmonice musices odhecaton A, 96 pieces for three or four voices, was printed from movable type. His printing method involved three (later two) impressions, for the staves, for the notes and for the text. The first music printed by single impression was a short item produced by John Rastell in London, c 1526, but it was Pierre Attaingnant of Paris, publisher of many books of chansons from 1527-8 onwards, who set the example in single-impression printing. The single-impression process involved casting each note, its stem and a fragment from the staff-lines on the same unit of type. Notes at this period were lozenge-shaped or square, with centred stems; during the 16th century engravers designed round notes (corresponding with contemporary calligraphy) but these were not universally used until the late 17th century. Music printing from movable type remained in use during much of the 17th century and the 18th, and persisted in some kinds of publication into the 19th and even the 20th, by which time the fragmentary staff-lines and uneven beaming of much of the early and inferior work had given way to music of a clear and smooth appearance.

Movable type, however, was inadequate for some kinds of music, particularly keyboard music with rapid notes and chords and florid instrumental or vocal lines. The closest analogy to the hand of the copyist was the hand of the engraver, wielding a steel point on a copper plate. Engraving (‘intaglio’) had been used for printing in the 15th century and was adapted to music in the 1530s, though only for lute tablature; for mensural music it was used late in the 16th century, notably by Simone Verovio of Rome, in music for voices or keyboard or lute. The technique was quickly taken up in England and the Low Countries and, in the late 17th century, in France and Germany. The process involves taking a metal plate (copper or, later, pewter), planning the layout in detail, then marking the staff-lines, the note-heads, the stems and various symbols (clefs, accidentals etc), either by scoring with a steel point (sometimes acid was used for deeper etching) or by using a series of punches; traditions differed between periods, countries and individual workshops. The music could then be printed direct from the plate on a press. At the beginning of the 18th century, Paris, London and Amsterdam were the largest centres of music publishing; later in the century and in the 19th, Vienna and particularly Leipzig became increasingly important.

In 1796 a process called lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder. This is based on the principle that a surface (originally of stone, but many other substances were used) could be prepared in such a way that some parts of it would accept a greasy ink and others would not; the image of music could be inscribed on such a surface and it could then be used for the printing of further copies. This offset process has remained the basis for music printing, though today the ‘stone’ is normally prepared photographically. The process of origination of the image, however, is still needed, and engraving remains one of the principal methods; others in use today include transfers (‘Notaset’), stencils, music typewriters and various computer-based systems.



 

Process for reproducing text and illustrations, traditionally by applying ink to paper under pressure, but today including various other methods. In modern commercial printing, three basic techniques are used. Letterpress printing relies on mechanical pressure to transfer a raised inked image to the surface to be printed. Gravure printing transfers ink from recessed cells of varying depths. In offset printing the printing and nonprinting areas of the plate differ not in height but in wettability.

For more information on printing, visit Britannica.com.

 
Architecture: printing

Forming a permanent impression in a semihardened paint film as a result of pressure from an object placed on it.


 
means of producing reproductions of written material or images in multiple copies. There are four traditional types of printing: relief printing (with which this article is mainly concerned), intaglio, lithography, and screen process printing. Relief printing encompasses type, stereotype, electrotype, and letterpress. Flexographic printing is a form of rotary letterpress printing using flexible rubber plates and rapid-drying inks.

For an account of type design, see type; typography. See also book; bookbinding.

Relief Printing

Early History

The story of the invention of printing and of its early days is told in the article type. In the 15th cent. the art spread, directly and indirectly, from Mainz to many parts of Europe. It was brought to England in 1476 by William Caxton; to the New World in 1539 by Juan Pablos, who set up his press in Mexico City.

Mechanization

The first papermaking machine producing a continuous roll of paper and capable of delivering sheets in specific sizes—the Fourdrinier machine—was installed in London in 1803. Steam power was successfully applied to the printing press in 1810 by Friedrich Koenig, a German. The invention did not improve the quality of the product but greatly increased the output of the machine. In Koenig's press, the type bed remained flat as in hand presses, but the paper was pressed on the type by a cylinder. The Adams power press was invented by an American, Isaac Adams, in 1827.

In 1846 and 1847, Richard March Hoe designed a rotary press in which stereotype plates were for the first time arranged in a true cylinder. In 1866 a press known later as the Walter press was patented in England; in this press the printing surfaces were not types but stereotype plates curved to form parts of cylinders. The invention of ways of making paper in sheets of any desired length, so that paper could be fed to cylinder presses from rolls, assisted in increasing the speed of printing. Machines for folding newspapers were incorporated with the power cylinder press.

Typesetting

Not until the late 19th cent. were typesetting machines invented. The Linotype machine, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in Baltimore in 1884, produced a metal slug corresponding to a single line of type as set by hand in printing. It was first put into operation at the New York Tribune in 1886. Operated from a keyboard like that of a typewriter, the machine assembled brass matrices into a line, cast the line, and distributed the matrices. The Intertype machine was substantially similar to the Linotype machine, and the matrices made by either machine could be used in the other.

The third principal typesetting machine is the Monotype, patented by Tolbert Lanston in 1887 and first produced commercially in 1897. The Monotype makes each character separately, assembling the characters as in hand composition, for which the Monotype characters can be used. Before electronic composition, monotype had an advantage in setting certain kinds of copy, e.g., mathematical and scientific material, where special symbols or other problems may be involved.

Intaglio

In intaglio printing, such as the etching and the steel engraving, the design to be printed is lower than the surface of the plate, which is wiped clean before each impression, leaving the incised design filled with ink, which the paper receives. In gravure intaglio printing, tone is produced by varying the thickness of the ink of the printing surface through depressions of varying depth; minute points constitute the clean surface that keeps the paper from being pressed into the depressions. In photogravure the gravure plate is made by a photographic process. Rotogravure is photogravure adapted for printing by a rotary or cylinder press.

Lithography

The third kind of printing, lithography, also known as planographic printing, was devised by Aloys Senefelder. Flat stones were the first lithographic plates and are still used, although a variety of thin metal, plastic, and paper plates are now also employed. A drawing is made on the plate with greasy ink or crayon, and water is then applied to the plate. When the plate is inked for printing, the greasy parts accept the ink and the wet parts do not. Preparing a printing surface so that ink will adhere only to parts of it is basic in all planographic printing.

Collotype, also called photogelatin, is a lithographic process that uses a gelatin-faced plate to achieve the tonal distribution obtained through screen dots in engraving. It is chiefly used in the reproduction of fine illustrations or of scientific subject matter requiring accuracy of detail.

Photolithography, offset, litho-offset, and offset lithography are synonyms in commercial printing for the most widely used form of planographic printing, based on a modification of the lithographic press featuring a rubber-covered cylinder between the printing cylinder and the impression cylinder. The plate cylinder transfers the image to the rubber blanket cylinder, which in turn offsets it on the paper carried by the impression cylinder. Offset and other forms of planographic printing, through many technical refinements, make possible increased production speeds, improved quality in the reproduction of fine tones, and a substantial reduction in the number of impressions required to reproduce full-color copy.

Screen Process

The fourth traditional type of printing, screen process, includes silk screen and has special applications in the printing industry. Silk screen printing is a form of stencil printing, i.e., printing where the ink is applied to the back of the image carrier and pushed through porous or open areas. The image is on a piece of silk stretched on a frame and backed by a rubber squeegee containing ink. The nonprinting areas on the silk screen are blocked out, and the ink is pushed through the porous areas corresponding to the design; the process is widely used for posters and for printing on glass, plastics, and textured surfaces. Mimeographing is another commercial application of stencil printing.

Illustrations and Color Printing

In three kinds of printing—relief, intaglio, and planographic—illustrations are often produced by the halftone process, in which a plate is made by photographing through glass marked with a network of fine lines (see also photoengraving). A usual form of color printing is by the Ben Day, or Benday, process, invented by New York printer Benjamin Day, which utilizes celluloid sheets to achieve proper shading and color. Printing in colors is sometimes done, as excellently in Japan, by applying inks of different colors by hand to the printing surface, but usually a separate printing surface is used for each ink.

In full-color printing four standard colors are used—yellow, cyan (a hue between blue and green), magenta, and black—the first three being the complementary colors of blue, red, and green. Other colors are produced by printing one color over another, as green by printing cyan on yellow. Black is used to print the text accompanying the illustration, and it is often used as a fourth color in the illustration itself to add strength and detail.

Modern Innovations

In recent years the use of photographic processes has expanded greatly, and the development of electronic devices, as well as other technological advances, has introduced a new era in the evolution of printing. The development of typewriters and personal computers capable of delivering justified and proportionally spaced copy has made possible the production of camera-ready books and has met the demands for several special types of printing.

Perhaps the most revolutionary innovation has been the introduction of photocomposition machines for setting type by photographic means. Two of these are analogous in principle to the Monotype and Intertype casting machines and have been produced by the respective companies under the trademarks of Monophoto and Intertype Fotosetter. The Linofilm is a phototypesetting machine developed by the Linotype Corporation. The Photon machine, invented by the Frenchmen René Higonnet and Louis Moyroud, using an electric typewriter connected with a computer and a photographing unit, is noteworthy. Almost exclusively electronic, it can deliver justified type on film in a wide variety of styles at extraordinary speed.

Today photocomposition has been adopted in lithography, gravure, and letterpress printing, and its use, together with other electronic techniques, has revolutionized the printing industry (see optical sensing). In recent years some newspapers have started to use pagination systems, in which newspapers are electronically composed by computer, output to a negative, and a plate is made of the negative.

Many reproduction processes other than those cited above have also been developed. Xerography, or electrostatic printing, has been widely adopted for photocopying; it is also the basis of the laser printer, one type of computer printer. It is also an effective means of producing master plates for offset printing. One xerographic device is used for making full-size reprints of out-of-print books from microfilm. Other duplicating processes of commercial importance are the Multigraph, which operates on the letterpress principle; the Multilith, basically a small offset press; the Ditto, a duplicator using a special fluid to remove ink from the master plate and transfer it to the paper; and the well-known photostat process.

Bibliography

An excellent selected bibliography is H. Lehmann-Haupt, One Hundred Books about Bookmaking (1949). See W. Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word (1970); L. Febvre and H.-J. Martin, The Coming of the Book (1976); E. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979).


 
Word Tutor: printing
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: The writing of separate letters in words and sentences. Also: To publish on paper.

pronunciation The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is. — Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937)

 
Wikipedia: printing
The folder of newspaper web offset printing press
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The folder of newspaper web offset printing press
Color_printing_separations0.jpg

This article is part of the series on:

History of printing

Technologies
Phaistos Disc (1850–1400 BCE)
Woodblock printing (200 CE)
Movable type (1040)
Printing press (1439)
Rotary press (1843)
Intaglio (printmaking)
Lithography (1796)
Chromolithography (1837)
Offset press
Screen-printing (1907)
Flexography
Thermal printer
Photocopier (1960s)
Laser printer (1969)
Dot matrix printer (1970)
Inkjet printer
Dye-sublimation printer
Digital press (1993)
3D printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing.

History

Main article: History of printing

Block printing

Main article: Woodblock printing

Block printing in China

Woodblock printing on paper, whereby individual sheets were pressed against wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them, was 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[1], and from Egypt to the 6th or 7th centuries.[2]

In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese writer named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book "Yuan Xian San Ji" that the woodblock was used to print Buddhist scripture during the Zhenguan years (627~649 A.D.). The oldest known surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture in Chinese of Wu Zetian period (684~705 A.D.); discovered in Tubofan, Xinjiang province, China in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo, Japan. The oldest surviving documented printed book, a copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, is dated 848 AD, and a recent excavation at a Korean pagoda may have unearthed an even earlier Buddhist text dating to AD 750-751.[3][4] In the modern Chinese historiography, printing is considered one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.

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.[2]

Around the mid-century, block-books, woodcut books with both text and images, usually carved in the same block, emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed with movable type. These were all short heavily illustrated works, the bestsellers of the day, repeated in many different block-book versions: the Ars moriendi and the Biblia pauperum were the most common. There is still some controversy among scholars as to whether their introduction preceded or, the majority view, followed the introduction of movable type, with the range of estimated dates being between about 1440-1460.[5]

The volume of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China dealing with Paper and printing has a chapter that suggests that "European block printers must not only have seen Chinese samples, but perhaps had been taught by missionaries or others who had learned these un-European methods from Chinese printers during their residence in China.", but he also admitted that the "only evidence of European printing transmitted from China is a lack of counterevidence".[6] However, paper itself was needed for the printing process and this came to Europe via trade with the Arabs from China. Historians acknowledge that paper indeed came from China without which printing would have been impossible, however, there is less direct evidence of the influence of printing technology from Asia and it's influence on European printing technology. [7]

Movable type printing

Main article: Movable type

Movable type allowed for much more flexible processes than hand copying or block printing.

In East Asia

For a description of

  • the oldest surviving metal type
  • early books printed with such metal type
  • the oldest surviving movable metal print book printed in Korea in 1377,
  • the Korean font casting process as recorded by Song Hyon in the 15th c., and
  • problems due to the nature of the Chinese language
see History of typography in East Asia

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 by 1298 AD, and developed a complex system of revolving tables and number-association with written Chinese characters that made typesetting and printing more efficient.

"Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters", the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris.
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"Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters", the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris.

The transition from wood type to metal type occurred during the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea and is credited to Chae Yun-ui (채윤의). Records indicate that by 1234, books were being printed in Korea with movable metal type, though the earliest surviving text is from 1377. In China metal movable type was not pioneered until the work of the printer Hua Sui in 1490 AD. Movable type was widely used in China in both wooden and metal type printing, yet the European-style printing press introduced to China in relatively recent times greatly increased the efficiency and speed of printing.

East Asian printing technology may possibly have diffused into Europe through the trade routes from China through India or the Arabic world. There is no actual evidence that Gutenberg may have known of the Korean processes for movable type. However, some authors admit this possibility,[8] and argue that movable metal type had been an active enterprise in Korea since 1234 and there was communication between West and East.

In Europe

Main article: Movable type

Johannes Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing technology around 1439[9] and in just over a decade, 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 15th 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, 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 used in East Asia. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention, a special matrix wherewith the moulding of new movable types with an unprecedented precision at short notice became feasible. Within a year after his B42, Gutenberg also published the first coloured prints.

Gutenberg's invention of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production leading to the spread of knowledge. Rapidly, printing spread from Germany by emigrating German printers, but also by foreign apprentices returning home. A printing press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. In 1473 Kasper Straube published the Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474 in Kraków. Dirk Martens set up a printing press in Aalst (Flanders) in 1473. He printed a book about the two lovers of Enea Piccolomini who became pope Pius II.In 1476 a printing press was set up in England by William Caxton. Belarusian Francysk Skaryna printed the first book in Slavic language on August 6, 1517. The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. The first printing press in Southeast Asia was set up in the Philippines by the Spanish in 1593. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1638, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.

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 master printing houses became the cultural centre for literati such as Erasmus.

  • Print shop 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. An apprentice who wished to learn to become a compositor had to learn Latin and spend time under the supervision of a journeyman.
  • 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-centred.
  • Compositors: Those who set the type for printing.
  • Pressmen: the person who worked the press. This was physically labour intensive.

The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the Dance of Death by Matthias Huss, at Lyon, 1499. 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.

Financial aspects

Court records from the city of Mainz document that Johannes Fust was, for some time, Gutenberg's financial backer.

By the sixteenth century jobs associated with printing were becoming increasingly specialized. Structures supporting publishers were more and more complex, leading to this division of labour. In Europe between 1500 and 1700 the role of the Master Printer was dying out and giving way to the bookseller—publisher. Printing during this period had a stronger commercial imperative than previously. Risks associated with the industry however were substantial, although dependent on the nature of the publication.

Bookseller publishers negotiated at trade fairs and at print shops. Jobbing work appeared in which printers did menial tasks in the beginning of their careers to support themselves.

1500–1700: Publishers developed several new methods of funding projects.

  1. Cooperative associations/publication syndicates—a number of individuals shared the risks associated with printing and shared in the profit. This was pioneered by the French.[citation needed]
  2. Subscription publishing—pioneered by the English in the early 17th century.[citation needed] A prospectus for a publication was drawn up by a publisher to raise funding. The prospectus was given to potential buyers who signed up for a copy. If there were not enough subscriptions the publication did not go ahead. Lists of subscribers were included in the books as endorsements. If enough people subscribed a reprint might occur. Some authors used subscription publication to bypass the publisher entirely.
  3. Installment publishing—books were issued in parts until a complete book had been issued. This was not necessarily done with a fixed time period. It was an effective method of spreading cost over a period of time. It also allowed earlier returns on investment to help cover production costs of subsequent installments.

The Mechanick Exercises, by Joseph Moxon, in London, 1683, was said to be the first publication done in installments. [citation needed]

Publishing trade organizations allowed publishers to organize business concerns collectively. Systems of self-regulation occurred in these arrangements. For example, if one publisher did something to irritate other publishers he would be controlled by peer pressure. Such systems are known as cartels, and are in most countries now considered to be in restraint of trade. These arrangements helped deal with labour unrest among journeymen, who faced difficult working conditions. Brotherhoods predated unions, without the formal regulations now associated with unions.

In most cases, publishers bought the copyright in a work from the author, and made some arrangement about the possible profits. This required a substantial amount of capital in addition to the capital for the physical equipment and staff. Alternatively, an author who had sufficient money would sometimes keep the copyright himself, and simply pay the printer for the production of the book. For further developments, see main article:copyright

Modern printing technology

Across the world, over 45 trillion pages (2005 figure) are printed annually.[10] In 2006 there were approximately 30,700 printing companies in the United States, accounting for $112 billion, according to the 2006 U.S. Industry & Market Outlook by Barnes Reports. Print jobs that move through the Internet made up 12.5% of the total U.S. Printing market last year, according to research firm InfoTrend/CAP Ventures.

Books and newspapers are printed today using the technique of offset lithography. Other common techniques include:

  • flexography used for packaging, labels, newspapers
  • relief print, (mainly used for catalogues),
  • screen printing from T-shirts to floor tiles
  • rotogravure mainly used for magazines and packaging,
  • inkjet used typically to print a small number of books or packaging, and also to print a variety of materials from high quality papers simulate offset printing, to floor tiles; Inkjet is also used to apply mailing addresses to direct mail pieces
  • hot wax dye transfer
  • laser printing mainly used in offices and for transactional printing (bills, bank documents). Laser printing is commonly used by direct mail companies to create variable data letters or coupons, for example.
  • pad printing for applying a flat image on a curved substrate.

Gravure

Gravure printing is an intaglio printing technique, where the image to be printed is made up of small depressions in the surface of the printing plate. The cells are filled with ink and the excess is scraped off the surface, then a rubber-covered roller presses paper onto the surface of the plate and into contact with the ink in the cells. The printing plates are usually made from copper and may be produced by digital engraving or laser etching.

Gravure printing is used for long, high-quality print runs such as magazines, mail-order catalogues, packaging, and printing onto fabric and wallpaper. It is also used for printing postage stamps and decorative plastic laminates, such as kitchen worktops.

Digital printing

Digital printing accounts for approximately 9% of the 45 trillion pages printed (2005 figure) around the world.[10]

Printing at home or in an office or engineering environment is subdivided into:

  • small format (up to ledger size paper sheets), as used in business offices and libraries
  • wide format (up to 3' or 914mm wide rolls of paper), as used in drafting and design establishments.

Some of the more common printing technologies are

  • line printing—where pre-formed characters are applied to the paper by lines
  • daisy wheel—where pre-formed characters are applied individually
  • dot-matrix—which produces arbitrary patterns of dots with an array of printing studs
  • heat transfer—like early fax machines or modern receipt printers that apply heat to special paper, which turns black to form the printed image
  • blueprint—and related chemical technologies
  • inkjet—including bubble-jet—where ink is sprayed onto the paper to create the desired image
  • laser—where toner consisting primarily of polymer with pigment of the desired colours is melted and applied directly to the paper to create the desired image.

Vendors typically stress the total cost to operate the equipment, involving complex calculations that include all cost factors involved in the operation as well as the capital equipment costs, amortization, etc. For the most part, toner systems beat inkjet in the long run, whereas inkjets are less expensive in the initial purchase price.

Professional digital printing (using toner) primarily uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid ink to the substrate it is printed on. Digital print quality has steadily improved from early color and black & white copiers to sophisticated colour digital presses like the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress and the HP Indigo Digital Press series. The iGen3 and Nexpress use toner particles and the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are made for small runs and variable data, and rival offset in quality. Digital offset presses are called direct imaging presses; although these receive computer files and automatically turn them into print-ready plates, they cannot insert variable data.

Small press and fanzines generally use digital printing or more rarely xerography. Prior to the introduction of cheap photocopying the use of machines such as the spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph was common.

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas" , 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0 7141 1447 2
  2. ^ a b An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Arthur M. Hind,p , Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0
  3. ^ [1]
  4. ^ [2].
  5. ^ Master E.S., Alan Shestack, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967
  6. ^ Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). "part one, vol.5", in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China,: Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  7. ^ http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/literature/printing.htm
  8. ^ Thomas Christensen (2007). Did East Asian Printing Traditions Influence the European Renaissance?. Arts of Asia Magazine (to appear). Retrieved on 2006-10-18.
  9. ^ Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. (pp 58–69)
  10. ^ a b "When 2% Leads to a Major Industry Shift" Patrick Scaglia, August 30, 2007.

Further reading

  • Saunders, Gill; Miles, Rosie (2006-05-01). Prints Now: Directions and Definitions. Victoria and Albert Museum. ISBN 1-85177-480-7. 
  • Nesbitt, Alexander (1957). The History and Technique of Lettering. Dover Books. 
  • Steinberg, S.H. (1996). Five Hundred Years of Printing. London and Newcastle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press. 
  • Tam, Pui-Wing The New Paper Trail, The Wall Street Journal Online, February 13, 2006 Pg.R8
  • Woong-Jin-Wee-In-Jun-Gi #11 Jang Young Sil by Baek Sauk Gi. Copyright 1987 Woongjin Publishing Co., Ltd. Pg. 61.

On the effects of Gutenberg's printing

  • Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press, September 1980, Paperback, 832 pages, ISBN 0-521-29955-1
  • Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) Univ. of Toronto Press (1st ed.); reissued by Routledge & Kegan Paul ISBN 0-7100-1818-5.

Early printers manuals

The classic manual of early hand-press technology is
  • Moxon, Joseph (1683-84), Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (ed. Herbert Davies & Harry Carter. New York: Dover Publications, 1962, reprint ed.)
A somewhat later one, showing 18th century developments is
  • Stower, Caleb (1808), The Printer's Grammar (London: Gregg Press, 1965, reprint ed.)

 
Translations: Printing

Dansk (Danish)
n. - trykning, bogtrykkerkunst, oplag, kopiering

idioms:

  • printing house    trykkeri
  • printing press    trykpresse
  • printing shop    trykkeri

Nederlands (Dutch)
druk, boekdrukkunst, druktechniek, drukken

Français (French)
n. - (Art, Ind, Imprim) imprimerie, impression, tirage

idioms:

  • printing house    imprimerie
  • printing press    presse (typographique)
  • printing shop    imprimerie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Drucken, Auflage, Druckschrift

idioms:

  • printing house    Druckerei
  • printing press    Druckerpresse
  • printing shop    Druckerei

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - τυπογραφία, εκτύπωση, τυπογραφική εμφάνιση, τύπωμα

idioms:

  • printing house    τυπογραφείο
  • printing press    τυπογραφικό πιεστήριο
  • printing shop    τυπογραφείο

Italiano (Italian)
edizione, stampa

idioms:

  • printing house    tipografia
  • printing press    tipografia
  • printing shop    tipografia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - impressão

idioms:

  • printing house    editora, gráfica
  • printing press    imprensa
  • printing shop    gráfica

Русский (Russian)
печатное издание, печатание

idioms:

  • printing house    типография
  • printing press    типографский пресс
  • printing shop    типография

Español (Spanish)
n. - edición, tipografía

idioms:

  • printing house    imprenta
  • printing press    prensa
  • printing shop    imprenta, taller tipográfico

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - tryckning, tryck

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
印刷, 印花, 印刷术

idioms:

  • printing house    印刷厂
  • printing press    印刷机, 印刷厂
  • printing shop    印刷所

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 印刷, 印花, 印刷術

idioms:

  • printing house    印刷廠
  • printing press    印刷機, 印刷廠
  • printing shop    印刷所

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 인쇄, 인쇄물

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 印刷, 印刷物, 型付け, 焼付け, 活字体で書いた文字, 版

idioms:

  • printing house    印刷所
  • printing press    印刷機
  • printing shop    印刷屋

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) طبعه, ورق الطباعه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הדפסה, מהדורה, אותיות דפוס, דפוס‬


 
 

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