It's hard to imagine life without printing equipment. Education would be oral, with students sitting at the feet of teachers. Those out of reach of oral teaching would do without. Clerks would still enter daily accounts into large ledgers with pen and ink. All books, email and snail mail, magazines, movies (images printed on film), patterned cloth, engineering and industrial designs, and more would not exist.
Mankind began to create images while they still lived in caves. Stone Age civilizations used plant and mineral dyes to paint images on birch bark, animal skins, or clay pots. Drawing by hand was slow, and copies made in the same manner were never exact.
Replication preserves a design and reproduces it without undue effort or the mistakes that are inevitable with copying by hand. The first replication tool was a wood-block carving. An early Chinese print on cloth done in three colors dates back to the third century AD. By the fourth century, this kind of image reproduction was used in the Roman Empire.
The first use was artistic, but characters that made up words soon began to carved onto wood blocks as well. The Chinese language is very complicated, so the process was slow. The earliest known book is a Chinese volume dating to 869 AD. Paper money was another early example of this primitive print method.
The Chinese are credited with the first movable type, characters made of clay. Their utility was quickly recognized, and more durable wood and metal were used. Characters that could be reused and rearranged made books and other designs much easier to make and replicate. The works of Confucius are early examples.
The Gutenberg printing press of the fifteenth century, which used the simpler western alphabet, brought books into the reach of the common man. No longer were manuscripts locked away in monasteries or the libraries of royalty. The basic technique of Gutenberg, including a metal alloy that he used to make his typeface, is still used today. The Gutenberg Bible came out in 1455.
People in power often feared the spread of literacy to the common man. Religious leaders felt that only priests should read and interpret the Scriptures. Political leaders feared that the governed would get radical ideas, while men feared that women would become too independent. It was illegal to teach slaves to read and write in many American states.
Today we enjoy even more access to printing equipment with new computer technology. This ability to reproduce images in a cost effective manner is valuable in many fields, including education, industry, engineering, and communication.
Mankind began to create images while they still lived in caves. Stone Age civilizations used plant and mineral dyes to paint images on birch bark, animal skins, or clay pots. Drawing by hand was slow, and copies made in the same manner were never exact.
Replication preserves a design and reproduces it without undue effort or the mistakes that are inevitable with copying by hand. The first replication tool was a wood-block carving. An early Chinese print on cloth done in three colors dates back to the third century AD. By the fourth century, this kind of image reproduction was used in the Roman Empire.
The first use was artistic, but characters that made up words soon began to carved onto wood blocks as well. The Chinese language is very complicated, so the process was slow. The earliest known book is a Chinese volume dating to 869 AD. Paper money was another early example of this primitive print method.
The Chinese are credited with the first movable type, characters made of clay. Their utility was quickly recognized, and more durable wood and metal were used. Characters that could be reused and rearranged made books and other designs much easier to make and replicate. The works of Confucius are early examples.
The Gutenberg printing press of the fifteenth century, which used the simpler western alphabet, brought books into the reach of the common man. No longer were manuscripts locked away in monasteries or the libraries of royalty. The basic technique of Gutenberg, including a metal alloy that he used to make his typeface, is still used today. The Gutenberg Bible came out in 1455.
People in power often feared the spread of literacy to the common man. Religious leaders felt that only priests should read and interpret the Scriptures. Political leaders feared that the governed would get radical ideas, while men feared that women would become too independent. It was illegal to teach slaves to read and write in many American states.
Today we enjoy even more access to printing equipment with new computer technology. This ability to reproduce images in a cost effective manner is valuable in many fields, including education, industry, engineering, and communication.
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