Printing

Origins

Printing from movable (or exchangeable) type appeared in China and Korea in the eleventh century. The oldest known printed rather than manuscript text was printed from clay in Korea in 1397 A.D. In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz (Germany) introduced printing with ink on paper to the Western world with his invention of movable cast metal type mounted on a converted wine press. Until Gutenberg's invention, all books in the West were laboriously handwritten or copied by scribes. Changes in press construction evolved slowly until the first all-metal press was built in England by the Earl of Stanhope early in the nineteenth century. Expanded use of printing was spurred by the growth of book and newspaper publishing and the need to produce more copies of publications faster. During the Industrial Revolution the job (or platen) press and the cylinder press were developed. The first successful cylinder press, in which a rotating cylinder was used to press the paper against a flat type bed, was the steam-powered press built in London by German inventor Frederick Koenig. It was used for the Lon don Times in 1814 and was capable of producing 1,100 sheets per hour. Cylinder presses provided the speed for high-capacity magazine, newspaper, and book printing.

Mechanized Printing

American Richard Hoe manufactured the first rotary press in 1846. The first such press was installed at the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Early models produced 2,000 impressions per hour. The first web (roll-fed) press was developed by American William Bullock in 1856. These early web presses delivered 15,000 signatures (multiple pages printed on one large sheet) per hour, printed on both sides. A device for folding the papers as they came from the press was added in 1875.

Letterpress printing (metal type) was replaced by offset lithography in the 1960s.

Lithography

The basic principle of lithography—“stone writing”—is based on the principle that oil-based ink and water do not mix. It was discovered by Alois Senefelder of Munich about 1798. Working on a highly porous stone, he sketched his design with a greasy substance that adhered to the stone. He then wet the entire surface with a mixture of gum arabic and water. It wet the blank or nonimage areas, but the greasy image repelled the ink. An ink made of soap, wax, oil, and lampblack was rolled on the stone. This greasy substance coated the image but not the moist blank area.

Senefelder called his invention “chemical printing.” Artists used lithography to make reproductions of artwork—drawings and paintings.

The first steam-driven press for lithography was invented in France in 1850, and introduced in the United States by Richard Hoe in 1868. Direct rotary impression for lithography was introduced in the 1890s using grained zinc and aluminum metal plates to which images were hand transferred from stones using starch-coated transfer sheets.

...