Blog

A brief history of printing…

Updated on 21/12/2019, Dubai Printing

Click here for your next design and print project in Dubai

Here is a short video on the history of printing.

 

and an Infographic courtesy of visualistan.com too…

 

Dubai Printing

A Brief History Of Printing

Dubai Printing

BRIEF HISTORY OF  PRINTING PRESS

The birth of printing goes back to China in the year 593, when playing for the first time in many forms, drawings and texts with the help of printed characters carved on tablets of wood (woodcut). The invention is due to Buddhist monks, that permeated the sizes of color and print them on silk or paper rags. Though the first book printed (a Buddhist sutra with pictures) from the year 868. This need arises out of print books scholarly disputes about authenticity of ancient texts, deciding to play thereafter etching culturally important texts for popular dissemination. The movable type printing, and with them, typesetting, are due to the Chinese alchemist Pi Cheng (1040.) This conjugate years of tradition with the heritage woodcuts gained during more than two thousand years of printing techniques with stamps, creating standard types that could be manufactured in series. Signs created corresponding to whole words. Were made from clay on negative molds and then baked. Once finished they joined on a metal frame composing sentences, united with adhesive putty, and procedíaa printing. With typesetting came a print mode faster and more flexible than the woodcut. Thereafter, the culture was able to reach all layers of society.

These techniques came to the West much later. The Dutchman Laurens Coster (S. XIV) will be the first to use wooden movable type, although universally considered the printing press inventor Johannes Gutenberg (S. XV), for his creation of movable type in molten lead, much more resistant (typography). Gutenberg was aware of the difficulty of printing with carved wooden páginasenteras and devised a more rational way of printing, based on movable type. Thus, in 1437 commissioned a turner of Mainz, Konrad Sasbach, construction of printing and he created the molds for the points lead fundidode, later joined one by one, forming the words embossed on the call galley-ended so you can print them on paper. In 1447 managed to print a small calendar and in 1451 a grammar of Latin, although his masterpiece would be a Bible. Since his death, 1468, his invention spread gradually throughout Europe, and remained practically unchanged until the early twentieth century.

Within the history of printing, however, techniques have been happening and varying over time. Thus, the first remains found the technique of gravure dating from 1446 and belonging to a German master who recorded on copper plates using a chisel.

Dubai Printing

Once covered with ink, it was retained within the lines of the recorded image while the rest of the ink disappearing when cleaning the plate. Then impresiónse conducted on wet paper and with the help of a press. These techniques would be enhanced in 1878 by the Austrian Karl Klietsch, using the application of cylinder (rotogravure).
In 1710, two inventions have given a great impetus to the techniques of printing:

– The by Jakob Christof Le Blon, who discovers the Tricomi (reproduction of color images from three basic red, blue and yellow)
– The Dutchman’s J. Van der Mey, who invented, in collaboration with the German preacher Johann Müller, stereotyping. This process will allow mass reproduction, quick and inexpensive forms of relief printing plates of lead-based.

In 1796, the Austrian Alois Senefelder inventing the printing technique called lithography. This is the first flat printing. This technique is used to support limestone plates that absorb oily substances and water, but they are not mixed together. If drawing or writing on the stone with a greasy color and then the surface is moistened with water, it will penetrate the stone only in those places not covered by the lines written. If fat is applied after printing ink on the stone, wet areas do not accept it, while is attached to the rest of the plate, and can proceed to printing.
S
ubsequently, in 1826, Alois patentaría lithography in color, making a simplified technique for which until then could only be carried out hand. Although this technique would be enhanced in 1867 by C. Tessie du Motay with photolithography, following the investigations of the chemical properties of a queue of chromate under the action of light on research that had previously taken William Henry Fox Talbot (1832) and Alphonse Louis Poitevin (1855).

In 1822, after the French Ballanche Simon conceived the idea of building an automatic machine to compose texts, American William Church manages to build the first machine of this type, the compositor. The idea was to mechanize and maximum ease the complicated task manually composing lead type font, one by one, forming the full text, as was done since Gutenberg. Anyway, the fact that the machine did commit certain mistakes which are not imposed universally. It was not until the invention of the linotype in 1884.

Dubai Printing

By 1846, English Smart invented a rotary lithographic printing, in which the entire process is automated except for the inlet (supply) and outlet (withdrawal) of papel.Surge and the first offset printing machine.

Although 1 845 Richard Hoe (U.S.) had already obtained a patent for the first modern rotary. The great demand in this period of long lengths of existing newspapers, exceeding even the production of books, made possible the success of the presses.

Thus, in 1848 the London newspaper The Times is operated for the first time this quick rotary machine was perfected tipo. Esta by Applegath and Edward Augustus Cooper, English engineers, siguienddo the principle of the machine invented by Hoe, but still working only single sheets of paper. Some years later, in 1851, the British builder T. Nelson finally able to develop a rotary printing on continuous rolls of paper and, later, in 1863, the American inventor William A. Bullock obtained a patent for the first rotary press for printing books on continuous paper, a model for subsequent presses. From this point, given some problems that will be corrected years later. They are, for example, caused bottlenecks at the stages of cutting and folding of printed materials, as well as the slow task of the composition of the texts at hand. It will be in 1884 when Ottmar Mergenthaler machine achieves the latter process with the linotype.

Continuing with the chronological progression, there were some attempts such as the Black English, who in 1850 invented an automatic folding machine capable of folding in the eighth two thousand sheets per hour, to be fitted with folding and cutting. It is important to mention Johnson and Atkinson British technicians, who in 1853 succeeded in building a complete machine fusion printed characters, which was capazde produce up to 30,000 characters a day. This is particularly important because from the instrument manual developed by Gutenberg to fuse types, this technique had hardly changed.

For its part, the photographer in 1859 Rue inglésWarren of developing a new procedure that allows for printing books draw plates made of glue and glycerin. This technique, called hectografía, will soon become standard procedure normally used to print short runs.

Dubai Printing

In 1881, the Munich Georg Meisenbach, obtained a patent relating to a photographic process known as autotipia impression, based on rotogravure techniques and the properties they purchased certain resins travésde the action of light on them (pale, darkened …). Although it is considered the inventor of the scientific autotipia británicoWilliam Henry Fox Talbot, in 1852. In 1890 Max Levy introduced several improvements, achieving a higher quality images (frames thinner).

In 1884, highlights an important milestone in the history of printing, invented the linotype machine by Ottmar Mergenthaler German watchmaker, based on fully automated composition of texts. The innovation was the possibility to write one by one the lines of text using a keyboard, composing instead of going letter by letter with their lead type by hand. Thus, once the membership of a line, it melted the negative impression mold with liquid lead,
obtaining a lead seal for printing.

In 1904 the technique of lithography, and in general and the print world, Come in a peak with the development of offset printing, used today. The offset was developed by two independent technicians. On the one hand the German Caspar Hermann and on the other printer Ira W. Rubel. Although Hermann who obtained their method from the historical tradition of lithography, also gave Rubel with the invention but in a casual, after failure of one of its workers in a rotation.

Currently, desktop publishing, with the addition of computers to the many facets and stages of editing, has been a revolution with unforeseen consequences in this field. An open window to freedom of editing the already close 21st century (Internet, CD-ROM, multimedia, document editing from your own home or workplace, etc.)

Dubai Printing

 

© Copyright - www.a3uae.com