30 March 2009 | Uncategorized | bob

Modern printing is generally believed to have begun in the 15^th century with Gutenberg’s moveable type press. Moveable type simply means that each letter used in the press is an individual piece, which allowed the printer to rearrange letters to make different pages. This meant that they didn’t have to carve entire pages as a single piece– they could just rearrange letters and start printing a new page.

However, none of this was really new. The Chinese and Koreans had been using moveable type for hundreds of years before the time of Gutenberg. Gutenberg, however, did include an advance never before seen in printing. Using his skills as a goldsmith, he created his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. This new type was far more durable than the wood and porcelain materials favored in East Asia. His letters were not only clearer, print after print, but could also be placed with greater precision, making it far easier to read Roman-style lettering across the page.

Technology alone doesn’t a killer app make, though. Like all madly successful entrepreneurs, Gutenberg’s new press was the right tool in the right place at the right time. The flexibility of Roman type, coupled with the rise of a more educated European middle class which was eager for reading material, allowed the new press to ignite a firestorm across Europe. Suddenly, people could easily share and disseminate information across the continent. What a scientist discovered in Rome could be read about and studied by colleagues in London–and potentially fought over, disproved or built upon. A social revolution, most heavily felt in the Protestant Reformation, followed. Nothing was the same after Gutenberg’s press made it easy for people to share and disseminate information across Europe. Sound familiar?

After that, printing didn’t change much for 300 years. Printing remained a primarily muscle-powered business until 1811, when German printer Friedrich Koenig harnessed the power of steam to run his presses. One of the first buyers was The Times of London, which started the rise of cheap, ubiquitous newspapers. Nearly twenty years later, an American invented the rotary press, which used giant spools of paper for a continuous feed.

Bigger and faster, however, meant that the printing process and printing presses pretty much stayed in the hands of the wealthy. It would be the electronic revolution of the 20^th century that would change that. The big break would come in 1938, when Chester Carlson invented electrophotography. This dry printing process was the precursor of photocopying and laser printers. As time went on, it became easier for people to make copies of almost any document they wanted and as the clarity of photocopiers improved, the machines added the ability to reproduce colors beyond just black and white.

But it was the personal computer that really put printing into the hands of everyday people. Instead of just being able to copy what others had written, which was the primary use of the photocopier, a computer hooked to a printer allowed you to publish your own documents. Early printers were large machines, and most were literally clunky, being very noisy when operating. This, of course, led people to make music with these noisy printers!

Eventually, though, the technology behind photocopying merged with computer printing, and the old, loud machines were replaced with the quieter, swifter laser and inkjet printers we enjoy today. With today’s high quality printers, people in their own homes can produce full-color documents of a quality far surpassing the most expensive printing machines of a mere fifty years ago. Gutenberg would probably think it was miraculous.

Photo credits: wyzik, takomabibelot, and schoschie.