The History of the Printing Machine

If fire was the key to mankind's survival, and the wheel the key to our technological prowess, then the printing machine was the plaster of our culture. It allowed for books to be made more quickly and cheaply, and the effects of that are far-reaching. It allowed for increased literacy, a revival of classical texts, a scientific revolution and a few socio-political upheavals by way of pamphlets and fliers. In addition, the invention of the first printing machine led to the invention of other, better printing machines.

History

The first printing machine was actually a printing press, so named because it pressed movable metal type onto paper. It was invented by the stone-cutter and goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 in Germany. This was not the world's first instance of printing; woodblock prints came to Europe with Marco Polo around the 12th century. Several other attempts were being made to perfect the printing process in Europe at around the same time, but Gutenberg's was the most significant contribution.

The Gutenberg Press

Gutenberg brought about two changes that allowed for books to be more cheaply and quickly produced. First, he replaced the woodblock print with durable movable type made from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. Second, he introduced oil-based ink, which was more long-lasting than the water-based inks used at the time. He combined these innovations with available press-machine technologies (used in wine-making, textile imprinting, and woodblock printing) to usher in the new age of media.

Advantages

The previously used method of printing, wood-block printing, was time-consuming and inefficient. The blocks had to be hand carved, so they took a long time to produce, and since they were made of wood, they broke easily in the presses. Gutenberg's type, however, was not only durable but it could be easily reproduced; a mold of the letters was made, and if additional letters were needed one could just whip up a batch of the metal alloy and make new ones. Also, since the type was movable, new combinations and new texts could be generated without the laborious process of carving out another block.

After Gutenberg

Printing was largely unchanged for the next three hundred years. While it was much more efficient than previous methods, Gutenberg's press was man-powered and required some strength to operate. By 1800, Lord Stanhope developed a press made entirely of cast iron, reducing the manpower required for operation, but not increasing the output (250 pages per hour). The first steam-powered printing machine was designed in 1811 by the German printer Friedrich Koenig. Capable of printing 1,100 pages per hour, the machine was sold to the Times newspaper in London in 1814, and later it was improved to print text on both sides of the page. The year 1833 saw the invention of the rotary printing press by Richard M. Hoe in the United States, a process in which the images or texts to be printed are curved around a cylinder. This invention not only raised the output of a printing press to millions of pages per day, but also paved the way for the more modern printing machines we have now.

The Printing Machine Today

The most popular method of printing we have today, offset printing, came about as an accident on the rotary press. In 1903 a printer named Washington Rubel found, by forgetting to insert paper into his rotary press, that the image would imprint on the rubber tubing and, further, that when it then transferred onto paper, it was much clearer than the image made the "proper" way. The brothers Charles and Albert Harris also made this discovery around the same time, and they all, apart from each other, built presses around this "accident." With advancements in technology came electrical devices such as Xerox machines, which imprint images using a combination of imaging and offset printing technology. A laser printer was developed at IBM by modifying the Xerox machine. Improvement after improvement, printing machines will continue to excel in speed and quality thanks to the current rise in technological advancements. The digital age has caused some to question the staying power of printed materials, but given its tradition, not even the mighty Internet may be able to pry the printed word from our hands.