The impact of the Printing Press

The Printing Press was voted the most critical invention in mankind's history. This Article Explores this device which paved the way for new advancements in the progress of our evolution...

By
Kenneth Lafler

The development of printing allowed information to be disseminated more quickly than ever before. Books before this point could take sometimes twenty to thirty years to finished and were done by hand ...most were done in Monasteries by monks and were written on cloth..

The first printing was thought to have been done in China in about 600 b. c. and was most likely done by the Silk Screen Method. This is done by a process using lacquer film and ink. This process is still used today. Our t-shirts, bottles and anything round is usually printed by Silk Screen....

The next development in printing was the Guttenburg press .

This Happened in Germany and was developed by Johannes Guttenberg in 1440 and used moveable type. This greatly accelerated the process of printing. This method of printing also is still used today and is called "Letterpress". This type of printing is being replace by Laser and offset methods though.

Modern printing began with the Industrial Revolution. With the new high speed presses, mass media came about. The most widely use method of printing today is the offset method and uses water and ink. A photographic "Plate" is burned by a plate burning device and placed on a round cylinder on the head part of the printing press. This part moves extremely quickly and care should be taken. A fast moving press can be very dangerous.

The above press is the hand printing press, and uses the Guttenberg process for printing with moveable type. Ink is placed on the ink plate and rollers are ran across it and then over the type. It is then pressed on to paper creating an image.

The next press is the power press; The picture above is of the Kluge Automatic, which is an excellent press. It is an automatic press and simply needs to be set up and can be run by it's self.

The next press is the Original Heidelberg. This is considered one of the finest presses ever built and also is an automatic press.

Today's presses are mostly computer oriented and have taken a lot of the skill away from the printing industry. Pressmen spent a lifetime learning the trade and were true craftsmen. Today the industry is run with automated presses sometimes requiring little experience in the industry. Printing processes such are roto qravuere are obsolete , and some of the new printing although looking sophisticated are done by laser not by hand leaving little skill .Only small shops still use the old methods of printing and probably will soon be replaced