If we look around us we might spot numerous books, magazines or posters. All of these had to be printed and nowadays are normal and a daily thing for us. But back in the day, everything had to be copied by hand which obviously took a very long time and a lot of work. With the invention of printing, books became more accessible and more people learned to read and could educate themselves. Beforehand, reading or printing was something that was only affordable for the upper class. Today a lot of things are read online – like this article – but printing is still present in our daily life and the invention made many things possible that we take for granted.
Who invented printing?
It’s very difficult to exactly pinpoint by whom or when printing was invented. Nevertheless, there are a couple of important dates when it comes to the development of the process we know today. In 105 CE the production of paper was invented in China, which was a deciding factor for printing books. The first known type of printing is printing with wooden bricks. Designs were carved into the wood and printed on paper. This technique was used in Asia around 151 CE. In 1377 the first book using metal type was printed and is kept in a museum today. In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg finally develops a printing press using movable metal type. It’s important to note that Gutenberg didn’t invent either of these but only brought them together to be more efficient.
Printing comes from the Latin word preměre which means ‘to press’. In the following text, I will present different types of printing and all of them involve pressing paper into the ink.
Relief printing
This form of printing is being used for over 500 years. It is very similar to Johannes Gutenberg’s machine and you might know it from typewriters or the potato printing most have us have probably done as kids. Relief printing works by creating a relief of the image that needs to be printed and covering it with ink. The chosen colour only covers up the sticking-up parts, which then get transferred by pressing the paper on the surface. Nowadays relief printing is mostly made with a printing plate made of metal, but the rest stays the same. The fastest letterpress method is rotating printing plates in form of a cylinder. That’s how newspaper gets printed for example. Paper rolls from “webs” and gets guided between two cylinders which then print both sides simultaneously.
Gravure printing
The second type of printing is basically the exact opposite of relief printing. The needed image gets scraped into the material, the ink then fills up those spaces and the leftover ink left on the raised parts gets removed. The paper, which then gets pressed on the material, only picks up the colour from the carved lines, which then creates the image.
Photogravure is a method which still gets used regularly today. The picture gets transferred onto a copper plate, which is covered with an acid-resistant chemical, and then engraved into it. The carved lines expose the copper, which is then no longer covered with the chemical. Afterwards, the plate is dipped into acid and only the lines react with it. Through this process, the lines get ‘etched’ into the material and can then be filled with ink.
Offset printing
Offset printing is found in most cases of printing surfaces nowadays. In this case, the plate doesn’t press directly onto the paper but instead the plate presses onto a roll which then presses the image onto the paper. This technique protects the printing plate and keeps it from being worn down quickly.
As you can see printing has a lot of history and is more complicated than you might have thought. The next time you print an essay or pictures of your family, take a moment to appreciate that we don’t have to copy everything by hand anymore but have our prints available within seconds.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/video/171689/history-printing-press-work-discussion-Johannes-Gutenberg#:~:text=In%20Gutenberg’s%20printing%20press%2C%20movable,sharp%20images%20on%20the%20paper
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-printing-works.html