Short History of Printing
When thinking about printing and its history, the very first name that comes to your mind is probably Johannes Gutenberg. But the history of printing and inks started long before him.
Inks to write with were used as early as 2600 BC by the Egyptians and Chinese. Nearly 3000 years passed until around the year 200, when the Chinese brushed ink onto carved wooden blocks and stamped the image onto cloth, which can be considered as the earliest attempt to print.
The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text printed in 868 AD, holds the distinction of being the world’s oldest known dated printed book – predating Gutenberg by nearly six centuries. Composed of seven panels of paper printed from carved wooden blocks and joined to form a scroll, the Diamond Sutra measures approximately 5 meters. The text, written in Chinese, is a translation of a Sanskrit Buddhist scripture focusing on the concept of non-attachment. This, of course, was still pretty much handcrafted.
However, before Gutenberg, efforts to create the first movable-type printing date back to the 11th century. In China, between 1039 and 1048, Ben Sheng, a common artist and engineer, invented the world’s first movable type based on fired clay tiles – one for each Chinese character. The ceramic type did not hold the water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well and had the additional disadvantage that the size of the type could change during the baking process, resulting in uneven matching of the type, which prevented it from becoming more popular.
Bi Sheng also developed wooden movable type but abandoned it due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. However, wooden movable type was further developed in the West in China by the 12th century, where the Tanguts, a Sino-Tibetan people, printed the ‘’Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union,” a 449-page Buddhist text which is nowadays considered the earliest example of a text printed using the wooden movable type.
Staying in Asia, it is recognised that the earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code was made in 1161 in China. In 1193, also in China, a book documented how to use copper movable type. The oldest preserved book printed with movable metal type was called Jikji, also a Buddhist text, and printed in Korea in 1377.
But back to Europe…
The worldwide expansion of printing with movable metal type began with its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany in the 15th century. Gutenberg replaced the then-traditional methods of book production, namely copying by hand and woodblock printing, by making it possible to produce large quantities of books faster and cheaper. His most important work is the Gutenberg Bible, which was named after him.
His invention spread throughout Europe within a very short period of time, thus triggering a media revolution that had a decisive influence on social developments such as humanism and the Reformation.
Good to know: Gutenberg and his associates also developed oil-based inks ideally suited for printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces.
In the following years, printers continued to make their own inks through the mixing of pigments and boiled linseed oil with small amounts of rosins as a binder. However, as print demand continued to increase, the process of manufacturing ink at the print shop became too time-consuming and ink manufacturing as a separate business started off in the first half of the 17th century.
Apart from Gutenberg’s hand press, his printing process – relief printing with lead type – remained the standard technique for printing books until the 20th century. It was only in the 1960s that it was replaced by offset printing as the prevailing technique.
In the following centuries, printing presses underwent significant advancements but no major changes to the process as such. In the 18th century, the steam-powered press was introduced, enabling higher print volumes. Subsequently, the Industrial Revolution brought forth the development of cylinder presses, powered by steam or mechanised systems, enabling presses that could print thousands of pages per hour.