printing

In the Middle Ages, books were laboriously copied by hand. They were rare, carefully preserved in monasteries and private collections, and too expensive for all but the wealthiest to own. Few people were literate; books were the preserve of the aristocracy, the members of the church, and university professors.

The first printing technology in Europe used wood-blocks, which were carved with various designs and images that could be transferred to cloth and, at the start of the fifteenth century, to paper. This method was invented by the Chinese and may have been brought to Europe by overland merchant traders, or by Christian missionaries and explorers on their return from China. In the 1440s Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, developed a method of printing by movable type. Gutenberg transformed a farmer's press, loading small blocks of letter type that he cast from a metal alloy. The type was set into a wooden matrix and then covered with an oil-based permanent ink. Pressing sheets of paper against the matrix created a printed page.

Gutenberg used the press to create elaborately illustrated Bibles, as well as broadsheets, pamphlets, and color prints. The press spread rapidly through western Europe in the late fifteenth century, creating a new industry and revolutionizing communication. Venice, Paris, and the Netherlands became important printing centers; bookshops began selling their wares in every major city. Printing allowed philosophers and scholars to distribute their works all over the continent, and poets to set their verse in a permanent form. Presses were set up in the Spanish colonies in the 1530s; the first in North America was running in Massachusetts in 1638.

Printing shops operated as did many other artisanal industries in Renaissance Europe. The masters selected constructed presses, selected titles to print, and purchased materials. Apprentices mixed inks and cut and prepared paper. Journeymen were responsible for casting type, compositors set the type, and pressmen set up pages and worked the printing press. Journeymen had to serve many years of apprenticeship and had to learn Latin, the language of education, law, religious tracts, and mass communication. Printing technology spread when journeymen moved from town to town in search of new employers and opportunities to set up their own shops.

The publishing industry grew rapidly in the sixteenth century, when the first large publishing houses opened for business. Some were supported by groups of wealthy men who pooled their capital and published books as financial speculations. Others printed and sold books by subscription, in which those willing to buy a book agreed to pay cooperatively for its printing. Some books were printed in installments, in which a short section of the work was printed each time. Installment printing spread out the cost of printing and reduced the financial risk. Specialty printing houses created journals, calendars, almanacs, illustrated prints, political broadsheets, and the first newspapers.

Printing spread literacy and specialized knowledge to a wider cross section of European society. It allowed scientists to share ideas and challenge concepts that had been accepted for more than a millennium. Books allowed thinkers to openly question the authority of the Catholic Church, and unite with like-minded writers across the continent. No longer isolated by long distances and difficult travel, Europeans could garner larger followings for their ideas, and take part in open scholarly and religious debates. By the end of the Renaissance, thousands of books were being printed every year, the first public libraries were operating, and books had moved from a preserve of the aristocracy to the common possession of the middle class.

See Also: Gutenberg, Johannes; Venice

328. Printing

See also 53. BOOKS ; 98. COPYING

algraphy

an offset process that uses an aluminum plate instead of a lithographic stone. Also called aluminography . —algraphic, adj.

autography

the process in lithography of transferring writings and drawings to a stone surface. —autographic, adj. —autographically, adv.

chromolithography

a printing process by which colored lithographs are produced by a series of stone or zinc plates, each of which carries different portions of the picture to be printed, inked in different colors.

chromoxylography

printing in colors from a series of wooden blocks.

electrotypy

the process of preparing a facsimile printing surface, involving the depositing of a thin copper or nickel shell by electrolytic action in a mold of the original and backing it with a lead alloy. —electrotyper, electrotypist, n. —electrotypic, adj.

glyphography

a process for making letterpress plates by engraving a waxed copper plate, dusting with zinc, and preparing an electrotype. —glyphographer, n. —glyphographic, adj.

graphotype

a device for embossing letters on thin sheets of metal.

imprimatur

permission, particularly that given by the Roman Catholic Church, to publish or print; hence, any sanction or approval.

italicism

the use of italics in printing text to indicate foreign words, abbreviations, emphasis, titles, etc.

lithography

1. the art or process of producing an image on a flat, specially prepared stone, treating the items to be printed with a greasy substance to which ink adheres, and of taking impressions from this on paper.

2. a similar process in which the stone is replaced by a zinc or aluminum plate, often provided with a photosensitive surface for reproducing an image photographically. —lithographer, n. —lithographic, adj.

lithotypy

a printing process in which types are impressed in a soft matrix, the resulting hollow spaces being filled with a heated mixture that later solidifies and can be used for printing. —lithotypic, adj.

metallography

an offset printing process, similar to lithography, using metal plates instead of stone.

offset lithography

a printing method in which the image on a plate is offset onto a rubber blanket from which it is transferred onto the surface to be printed.

oleography

the production of chromolithographs printed in oil colors on canvas or cloth as well as on paper. —oleographic, adj.

optotype

type used in the testing of eyesight.

papyrography

a process by which a line drawing or writing on paper is transferred to a zinc plate, which is then used for printing. —papyrograph, n. —papyrographic, adj.

photoxylography

the process of producing a raised impression on wood from a photograph and using the block thus produced for printing.

polyautography

Obsolete, lithography.

thermography

a technique for imitating an engraved appearance, as on business cards, by dusting areas already printed with a powder attracted only to the inks and using heat to fuse the ink and powder. —thermographer, n. —thermographic, adj.

typography

1. the design, theory, and art of creating characters for printing.

2. the design and selection of printed matter.

3. the craft or business of composing type. —typographic, typographical, adj.

typothetae

printers, especially master printers, usually found in the names of associations of printers.

xylography

the art of engraving on wood or of printing from such engravings. —xylographer, n. —xylographic, xylographical, adj.

printing Technique for multiple reproduction of images, such as text and pictures. In ancient China and Japan, carved wooden blocks were inked to print pictures. From the 10th century, the Chinese used separate pieces of type, so that each page could be printed from arrangements of standard characters. Metal type, made by casting, first appeared in Korea in c.1403. In Europe, Gutenberg and Caxton developed the use of letterpress in the 1400s. Printing expanded rapidly in the 1700s and 1800s. Lithography enabled printers to produce impressive colour prints. For text, stereotype printing plates were cast from the pages of type, so that the type could be re-used for setting other pages. Typesetting machines speeded up the process of setting up pages. The invention of photography in the 1820s led to the development of new techniques for reproducing photographs in print, such as the halftone process. More recently, production speeds greatly increased with the application of photosetting, in which the type is set photographically on sheet film, and offset printing. Today, many publications are produced using a word processor to enter the text. Desktop publishing (DTP) programs allow images of the text and pictures to be arranged on screen. The computer data is postcripted for each page, and the postscripted files transferred directly to printing plates.

print·ing / ˈprinting/ • n. the production of books, newspapers, or other printed material: the invention of printing | [as adj.] the printing industry. ∎  a single impression of a book: the second printing was ready just after Christmas. ∎  handwriting in which the letters are written separately rather than being joined together.

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