Misplaced Pages

#913086

114-468: Many of the buildings in this area were used by printing and publishing businesses. Today, the buildings have mainly been converted into residential lofts with the last remaining printer, Palmer Printing, Inc., near the corner of Clark and Polk streets, selling to residential developers in early 2018. Dupli Group, a family owned printer since after the Second World War, continues to operate

228-435: A blank area around the image, the non-printing areas must be trimmed after printing. Crop marks can be used to show the printer where the printing area ends, and the non-printing area begins. The part of the image which is trimmed off is called bleed . Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing . A worker composes and locks movable type into the bed of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer

342-565: A blank hidden page. Later the sewn bindings were preferred rather than pasted bindings. Only relatively small volumes ( juan 卷 ) were bound up, and several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a tao , with wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close up the book when not in use. For example, one complete Tripitaka had over 6,400 juan in 595 tao . Despite the productive effect of woodblock printing, historian Endymion Wilkinson notes that it never supplanted handwritten manuscripts. Indeed, manuscripts remained dominant until

456-424: A consequence the idea of printing and its advantages in replicating texts quickly became apparent to Buddhists, who by the 7th century, were using woodblocks to create apotropaic documents. These Buddhist texts were printed specifically as ritual items and were not widely circulated or meant for public consumption. Instead they were buried in consecrated ground. The earliest extant example of this type of printed matter

570-515: A doctor blade. Then a rubber-covered roller presses paper onto the surface of the plate and into contact with the ink in the cells. The printing cylinders are usually made from copper plated steel, which is subsequently chromed, and may be produced by diamond engraving; etching, or laser ablation. Gravure printing is known for its ability to produce high-quality, high-resolution images with accurate color reproduction and using viscosity control equipment during production. Ink evaporation control affects

684-400: A method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate. When paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the technique transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onward. Around

798-433: A need for a university library based on the idea that professor were the library. Libraries also began receiving so many books from gifts and purchases that they began to run out of room. However, the issue was solved in 1589 by a man named Merton who decided books should be stored on horizontal shelves rather than lecterns . The printed press changed university libraries in many ways. Professors were finally able to compare

912-417: A new dimension of cultural reverence. Those who considered themselves real scholars and true connoisseurs of the book did not consider imprints to be real books. Under the elitist attitudes of the time, "printed books were for those who did not truly care about books". However, copyists and manuscripts only continued to remain competitive with printed editions by dramatically reducing their price. According to

1026-607: A press was faster and more durable. Also, the metal type pieces were sturdier and the lettering more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type for Western languages. The printing press rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance , and later all around the world . Time Life magazine called Gutenberg's innovations in movable type printing

1140-515: A print shop in Printer's Row, having recently occupied an industrial loft space in the neighborhood. Buildings in the neighborhood include the M.A. Donohue & Co. Building at Plymouth Court and Polk Street, and the red brick and polychromatic tile Franklin Building . It features painted tile depictions of printing tradesmen such as a bookbinder and typesetter as well as a painted tile mural of

1254-511: A result, Hebrew printing flourished in Italy , beginning in 1470 in Rome, then spreading to other cities including Bari, Pisa, Livorno, and Mantua. Local rulers had the authority to grant or revoke licenses to publish Hebrew books, and many of those printed during this period carry the words 'con licenza de superiori' (indicating their printing having been officially licensed) on their title pages. It

SECTION 10

#1732793469914

1368-456: A single block for a whole page, appeared in Europe in the mid-15th century. As they were almost always undated, and without statement of printer or place of printing, determining their dates of printing has been an extremely difficult task. Allan H. Stevenson , by comparing the watermarks in the paper used in block books with watermarks in dated documents, concluded that the "heyday" of block books

1482-566: A span of less than four centuries. Samuel Hartlib , who was exiled in Britain and enthusiastic about social and cultural reforms, wrote in 1641 that "the art of printing will so spread knowledge that the common people, knowing their own rights and liberties, will not be governed by way of oppression". In the Muslim world, printing, especially in Arabic scripts, was strongly opposed throughout

1596-533: A specific date of printing was discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang in 1907 by Aurel Stein . This copy of the Diamond Sutra is 14 feet long and contains a colophon at the inner end, which reads: "Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11 May, AD 868 ]". It is considered

1710-571: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus . The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tablets, used during

1824-678: Is a fragment of a dhāraṇī (Buddhist spell) miniature scroll written in Sanskrit unearthed in a tomb in Xi'an . It is called the Great spell of unsullied pure light ( Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經) and was printed using woodblock during the Tang dynasty, c.  650 –670 AD. A similar piece, the Saddharma pundarika sutra, was also discovered and dated to 690 to 699. This coincides with

1938-527: Is also located near Printers Row at 700 S State Street. The area is also a student-oriented center with the University Center of Chicago (UCC), housing over 3,000 college students in dorm and apartment style units, as well as Dwight Lofts and 731 South Plymouth Court, two student housing buildings owned by Columbia College Chicago . Colleges in the area include Roosevelt University , Columbia College, Robert Morris University , UIC Law School , and

2052-621: Is considered the most accurate of Buddhist canons written in Classical Chinese as well as a standard edition for East Asian Buddhist scholarship. In the Kamakura period from the 12th century to the 13th century, many books were printed and published by woodblock printing at Buddhist temples in Kyoto and Kamakura . The mass production of woodblock prints in the Edo period was due to

2166-490: Is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed. As a method of printing on cloth , the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China by

2280-573: Is estimated to have been created no later than 704. By the ninth century, printing on paper had taken off, and the first completely surviving printed book is the Diamond Sutra ( British Library ) of 868, uncovered from Dunhuang . By the tenth century, 400,000 copies of some sutras and pictures were printed, and the Confucian classics were in print. A skilled printer could print up to 2,000 double-page sheets per day. Printing spread early to Korea and Japan, which also used Chinese logograms , but

2394-419: Is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the first movable type printing system in Europe. He advanced innovations in casting type based on a matrix and hand mould , adaptations to the screw-press, the use of an oil-based ink, and the creation of a softer and more absorbent paper. Gutenberg

SECTION 20

#1732793469914

2508-534: Is some evidence to suggest that these print blocks were made from non-wood materials, possibly tin , lead, or clay. The techniques employed are uncertain. Block printing later went out of use during the Timurid Renaissance . The printing technique in Egypt was embraced by reproducing texts on paper strips and supplying them in different copies to meet the demand. Block printing first came to Europe as

2622-478: Is still some controversy among scholars as to whether their introduction preceded or, in the majority view, followed the introduction of movable type, with the estimated range of dates being between about 1440 and 1460. Movable type is the system of printing and typography using movable pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches . Movable type allowed for much more flexible processes than hand copying or block printing. Around 1040,

2736-538: Is the collection of twenty-nine Kaempfer Prints ( British Museum , London), brought in 1693 by a German physician from China to Europe, which includes flowers, fruits, birds, insects and ornamental motifs reminiscent of the style of Kangxi ceramics. Equally famous is the compilation Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden , published in two parts between 1679 and 1701. It was initiated by the scholar and landscape painter Wáng Gài and expanded and prefaced by

2850-575: Is used for flexible packaging, corrugated board, labels, newspapers and more. In this market it competes with gravure printing by holding 80% of the market in US, 50% in Europe but only 20% in Asia. The other significant printing techniques include: It is estimated that following the innovation of Gutenberg's printing press, the European book output rose from a few million to around one billion copies within

2964-409: The renmen-tai ( ja ), in which several characters are written in succession with smooth brush strokes. As a result, a single typeface was sometimes created by combining two to four semi-cursive and cursive kanji or hiragana characters. In one book, 2,100 characters were created, but 16% of them were used only once. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, craftsmen soon decided that

3078-714: The Buddhist Dharani Sutra called the Pure Light Dharani Sutra ( Korean :  무구정광대다라니경 ; Hanja :  無垢淨光大陀羅尼經 ; RR :  Mugu jeonggwang dae darani-gyeong ), discovered in Gyeongju , in a Silla dynasty pagoda that was repaired in 751, was undated but must have been created sometime before the reconstruction of the Shakyamuni Pagoda of Bulguk Temple , Kyongju Province in 751. The document

3192-747: The Byzantine Empire . However printing onto cloth only became common in Europe by 1300. "In the 13th century the Chinese technique of blockprinting was transmitted to Europe", soon after paper became available in Europe. From 932 to 955 the Twelve Classics and an assortment of other texts were printed. During the Song dynasty , the Directorate of education and other agencies used these block print disseminate their standardized versions of

3306-690: The Classics . Other disseminated works include the Histories , philosophical works, encyclopedias, collections, and books on medicine and the art of war. In 971 work began on the complete Tripiṭaka Buddhist Canon ( Kaibao zangshu 開寶藏書) in Chengdu . It took 10 years to finish the 130,000 blocks needed to print the text. The finished product, the Sichuan edition of the Kaibao Canon , also known as

3420-568: The English cottager cannot buy anything like the amount of printed matter for his penny that the Chinaman can for even less. A penny Prayer-book, admittedly sold at a loss, cannot compete in mass of matter with many of the books to be bought for a few cash in China. When it is considered, too, that a block has been laboriously cut for each leaf, the cheapness of the result is only accounted for by

3534-596: The Kaibao Tripitaka , was printed in 983. Prior to the introduction of printing, the size of private collections in China had already seen an increase since the invention of paper. Fan Ping (215–84) had in his collection 7,000 rolls ( juan ), or a few hundred titles. Two centuries later, Zhang Mian owned 10,000 juan , Shen Yue (441–513) 20,000 juan , and Xiao Tong and his cousin Xiao Mai both had collections of 30,000 juan . Emperor Yuan of Liang (508–555)

Printer's Row, Chicago - Misplaced Pages Continue

3648-647: The Loop campus of DePaul University . Printers Row is served by the Harrison Station on the CTA's Red Line , as well as LaSalle Station on the Blue Line . The annual Printers Row Literary Festival , "Lit Fest", is held in early June along Dearborn Street. 41°52′25″N 87°37′45″W  /  41.8735°N 87.6292°W  / 41.8735; -87.6292 This Chicago geographical article

3762-504: The Middle Ages would never recur, that not an idea would be lost". Print was instrumental in changing the social nature of reading. Elizabeth Eisenstein identifies two long-term effects of the invention of printing. She claims that print created a sustained and uniform reference for knowledge and allowed comparisons of incompatible views. Asa Briggs and Peter Burke identify five kinds of reading that developed in relation to

3876-455: The Ming dynasty author Hu Yinglin , "if no printed edition were available on the market, the hand-copied manuscript of a book would cost ten times as much as the printed work", and also, "once a printed edition appeared, the transcribed copy could no longer be sold and would be discarded". The result is that despite the mutual co-existence of hand-copied manuscripts and printed texts, the cost of

3990-572: The Mongol invasion of 1232. King Gojong ordered another set to be created and work began in 1237, this time only taking 12 years to complete. In 1248 the complete Goryeo Daejanggyeong numbered 81,258 printing blocks, 52,330,152 characters, 1496 titles, and 6568 volumes. Due to the stringent editing process that went into the Goryeo Daejanggyeong and its surprisingly enduring nature, having survived completely intact over 760 years, it

4104-875: The Northern Song dynasty around the year 1041 by the commoner Bi Sheng . Metal movable type also appeared in the Southern Song dynasty . The earliest extant book printed using movable type is the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , printed in Western Xia c. 1139–1193. Metal movable type was used in the Song, Jin , and Yuan dynasties for printing banknotes. The invention of movable type did not have an immediate effect on woodblock printing and it never supplanted it in East Asia . Only during

4218-518: The Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns that was used widely throughout East Asia. It originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. The earliest examples of ink-squeeze rubbings and potential stone printing blocks appear in

4332-572: The early modern period , partially due to the high artistic renown of the art of traditional calligraphy. However, printing in Hebrew or Armenian script was often permitted. Thus, the first movable type printing in the Ottoman Empire was in Hebrew in 1493, after which both religious and non-religious texts were able to be printed in Hebrew. According to an imperial ambassador to Istanbul in

4446-655: The "first impression" of the Gutenberg Bible . When Ida B. Wells Drive , then known as Congress Parkway, was extended west between 1949 and 1952 through the area, it separated what is now the historic buildings of the Printing House Row District from those of the South Loop Printing House District . Printers Row is zoned to the following Chicago Public Schools campuses: South Loop School and Phillips Academy High School . The campus of Jones College Prep High School

4560-505: The 11th century, central government offices were saving tenfold by substituting earlier manuscripts with printed versions. The impact of woodblock printing on Song society is illustrated in the following exchange between Emperor Zhenzong and Xing Bing in the year 1005: The emperor went to the Directorate of Education to inspect the Publications Office. He asked Xing Bing how many woodblocks were kept there. Bing replied, "At

4674-488: The 39 year old Su Shi remarked upon the unforeseen effect an abundance of books had on examination candidates: I can recall meeting older scholars, long ago, who said that when they were young they had a hard time getting their hands on a copy of Shiji or Han shu . If they were lucky enough to get one, they thought nothing of copying the entire text out by hand, so they could recite it day and night. In recent years merchants engrave and print all manner of books belonging to

Printer's Row, Chicago - Misplaced Pages Continue

4788-486: The 480s, a man named Gong Xuanyi (龔玄宜) styled himself Gong the Sage and "said that a supernatural being had given him a 'jade seal jade block writing,' which did not require a brush: one blew on the paper and characters formed." He then used his powers to mystify a local governor. Eventually he was dealt with by the governor's successor, who presumably executed Gong. Timothy Hugh Barrett postulates that Gong's magical jade block

4902-478: The 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best-known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut , except for the block books produced mainly in the 15th century. According to the Book of Southern Qi , in

5016-491: The Ming and Qing dynasties did wooden and metal movable types see any considerable use, but the preferred method remained woodblock. Usage of movable type in China never exceeded 10 percent of all printed materials while 90 percent of printed books used the older woodblock technology. In one case an entire set of wooden type numbering 250,000 pieces was used for firewood. Woodblocks remained the dominant printing method in China until

5130-401: The art critic Li Yu and the landscape painter Wáng Niè. It was noted for the quality of its polychrome and drawings, which influenced Qing painting. In 989 Seongjong of Goryeo sent the monk Yeoga to request from the Song a copy of the complete Buddhist canon. The request was granted in 991 when Seongjong's official Han Eongong visited the Song court. In 1011, Hyeonjong of Goryeo issued

5244-528: The beginning of the 12th century. It was used in large-scale printing of paper money issued by the Northern Song dynasty. Movable type spread to Korea during the Goryeo dynasty. Around 1230, Koreans invented a metal type movable printing using bronze. The Jikji , published in 1377, is the earliest known metal printed book. Type-casting was used, adapted from the method of casting coins. The character

5358-613: The book had declined by about 90 percent by the end of the 16th century. As a result, literacy increased. In 1488, the Korean Choe Bu observed during his trip to China that "even village children, ferrymen, and sailors" could read, although this applied mainly to the south, while northern China remained largely illiterate. In modern times, Chinese printing continued the tradition begun in medieval times. Black-and-white woodcuts were generally replaced by colored ones, achieved by printing successive runs with different inks. Between

5472-533: The carving of their own set of the Buddhist canon, which would come to be known as the Goryeo Daejanggyeong . The project was suspended in 1031 after Heyongjong's death, but work resumed again in 1046 after Munjong 's accession to the throne. The completed work, amounting to some 6,000 volumes, was finished in 1087. Unfortunately the original set of woodblocks was destroyed in a conflagration during

5586-419: The change in the color of the printed image. Gravure printing is used for long, high-quality print runs such as magazines, mail-order catalogues, packaging and printing onto fabric and wallpaper. It is also used for printing postage stamps and decorative plastic laminates, such as kitchen worktops. Flexography is a type of relief printing. The relief plates are typically made from photopolymers . The process

5700-498: The common people and were mass-produced. ukiyo-e is based on kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, beautiful women, landscapes of sightseeing spots, historical tales, and so on, and Hokusai and Hiroshige are the most famous artists. In the 18th century, Suzuki Harunobu established the technique of multicolor woodblock printing called nishiki-e and greatly developed Japanese woodblock printing culture such as ukiyo-e . Ukiyo-e influenced European Japonisme and Impressionism . In

5814-561: The creation of artistic books, and in preceding mass production for general consumption, were Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan. At their studio in Saga, Kyoto, the pair created a number of woodblock versions of the Japanese classics, both text and images, essentially converting emaki (handscrolls) to printed books, and reproducing them for wider consumption. These books, now known as Kōetsu Books, Suminokura Books, or Saga Books, are considered

SECTION 50

#1732793469914

5928-663: The early 20th century, shin-hanga that fused the tradition of ukiyo-e with the techniques of Western paintings became popular, and the works of Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida gained international popularity. A few specimen of wood block printing, possibly called tarsh in Arabic , have been excavated from a 10th-century context in Arabic Egypt . They were mostly used for prayers and amulets. The technique may have spread from China or been an independent invention, but had very little impact and virtually disappeared at

6042-408: The end of the 14th century. In India the main importance of the technique has always been as a method of printing textiles, which has been a large industry since at least the 10th century. Nowadays wooden block printing is commonly used for creating beautiful textiles, such as block print saree, kurta, curtains, kurtis, dress, shirts, cotton sarees. Block books, where both text and images are cut on

6156-571: The end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, three—and five—color prints appeared. The oldest surviving print is the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Paintings (1644) by Hu Zhengyan , of which there are several copies in various museums and collections. It is still commonly reproduced in China today and its images are very popular: it includes landscapes, flowers, animals, reproductions of jades, bronzes, porcelain and other objects. Another outstanding series

6270-553: The end of the empire it remained cheaper to pay a copyist than to buy a printed book. Seven hundred and fifty years after the first imperially sponsored printed works in the Northern Song, the greatest book project of the eighteenth century, the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (四庫全書), was produced as a manuscript, not as a printed collection. About 4 percent of it was printed in movable type in 1773, but it

6384-515: The engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin ( Conquests of the Emperor of China , 1767–1773). The emperor himself commissioned the Jesuits to instruct Chinese artisans in the intaglio technique, but they did not obtain good results. Already in the 19th century, the growing xenophobia against Europeans was progressively relegating the use of engraving in China. In the 20th century, the genre was revived by

6498-653: The era of Later Silla . The document is printed on a 8 cm × 630 cm (3.1 in × 248.0 in) mulberry paper scroll. A dhāraṇī sutra was printed in Japan around AD 770. One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by Empress Shōtoku . As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the Hyakumantō Darani (百万塔陀羅尼, "1,000,000 towers/pagodas Darani"). Woodblock printing spread across Eurasia by 1000 AD and could be found in

6612-451: The expense of producing more than 200,000 individual pieces of type. Even woodblock printing was not as cost productive as simply paying a copyist to write out a book by hand if there was no intention of producing more than a few copies. Although Sejong the Great introduced Hangeul, an alphabetic system, in the 15th century, Hangeul only replaced Hanja in the 20th century. And unlike China,

6726-462: The explosion in the numbers of books. Gutenberg's printing press had profound impacts on universities as well. Universities were influenced in their "language of scholarship, libraries, curriculum, [and] pedagogy" Before the invention of the printing press, most written material was in Latin. However, after the invention of printing the number of books printed expanded as well as the vernacular. Latin

6840-595: The first and finest printed reproductions of many of these classic tales; the Saga Book of the Tales of Ise ( Ise monogatari ), printed in 1608, is especially renowned. Saga Books were printed on expensive paper, and used various embellishments, being printed specifically for a small circle of literary connoisseurs. For aesthetic reasons, the typeface of the Saga-bon , like that of traditional handwritten books, adopted

6954-482: The first half of the 6th century implies that it may have been a large printing block. The rise of printing was greatly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism . According to Mahayana beliefs, religious texts hold intrinsic value for carrying the Buddha's word and act as talismanic objects containing sacred power capable of warding off evil spirits. By copying and preserving these texts, Buddhists could accrue personal merit. As

SECTION 60

#1732793469914

7068-600: The first known movable type system was created in China by Bi Sheng out of porcelain . Bi Sheng used clay type, which broke easily, but Wang Zhen by 1298 had carved a more durable type from wood. He also developed a complex system of revolving tables and number-association with written Chinese characters that made typesetting and printing more efficient. Still, the main method in use there remained woodblock printing (xylography), which "proved to be cheaper and more efficient for printing Chinese, with its thousands of characters". Copper movable type printing originated in China at

7182-597: The first press for printing in Arabic in the Ottoman Empire, against opposition from the calligraphers and parts of the Ulama . It operated until 1742, producing altogether seventeen works, all of which were concerned with non-religious, utilitarian matters. Printing did not become common in the Islamic world until the 19th century. Hebrew language printers were banned from printing guilds in some Germanic states; as

7296-576: The form of a leishu (類書), a type of encyclopedic reference book used to help examination candidates. Imperial establishments such as the Three Institutes: Zhaowen Institute, History Institute, and Jixian Institute also followed suit. At the start of the dynasty the Three Institutes' holdings numbered 13,000 juan , by the year 1023 39,142 juan , by 1068 47,588 juan , and by 1127 73,877 juan . The Three Institutes were one of several imperial libraries, with eight other major palace libraries, not including imperial academies. According to Weng Tongwen, by

7410-477: The half-literate, [...] which anyway had to be very brief because of the laborious process of cutting the letters". John Man's The Gutenberg Revolution makes a similar case: "wood-blocks were even more demanding than manuscript pages to make, and they wore out and broke, and then you had to carve another one – a whole page at a time". Commentaries on printing in China from the 1990s on, which cite contemporary European observers with first-hand knowledge, complicate

7524-644: The high literacy rate of Japanese people. The literacy rate of the Japanese by 1800 was almost 100% for the samurai class and 50% to 60% for the chōnin and nōmin (farmer) class due to the spread of private schools terakoya . There were more than 600 rental bookstores in Edo , and people lent woodblock-printed illustrated books of various genres. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, gardening books, cookbooks, kibyōshi (satirical novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), kokkeibon (comical books), ninjōbon (romance novel), yomihon , kusazōshi , art books, play scripts for

7638-429: The hundred schools, and produce ten thousand pages a day. With books so readily available, you would think that students' writing and scholarship would be many times better than what they were in earlier generations. Yet, to the contrary, young men and examination candidates leave their books tied shut and never look at them, preferring to amuse themselves with baseless chatter. Why is this? Woodblock printing also changed

7752-421: The image to a printing substrate (typically paper), making the image right-reading again. Offset printing uses a lithographic process which is based on the repulsion of oil and water. The offset process employs a flat (planographic) image carrier (plate) which is mounted on a press cylinder. The image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts an (acidic) film of water, keeping

7866-542: The industry began to decline, with stereotyped images. This coincided with the arrival of European missionaries who introduced Western engraving techniques. The Jesuit Matteo Ripa edited in 1714–1715 a series of poems by Emperor Kangxi, which he illustrated with landscapes of the imperial summer residence at Jehol . During the reign of Emperor Qianlong the one hundred and four maps of the Chinese Empire made by Jesuit missionaries were printed, as well as illustrations of his military victories, which he commissioned in Paris from

7980-402: The ink from the type which creates an impression on the paper. There is different paper for different works the quality of paper shows different ink to use. Letterpress printing was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century, when offset printing

8094-429: The introduction of lithography in the late 19th century. Traditionally it has been assumed that the prevalence of woodblock printing in East Asia as a result of Chinese characters led to the stagnation of printing culture and enterprise in that region. S. H. Steinberg describes woodblock printing in his Five Hundred Years of Printing as having "outlived their usefulness" and their printed material as "cheap tracts for

8208-400: The introduction of print: The invention of printing also changed the occupational structure of European cities. Printers emerged as a new group of artisans for whom literacy was essential, while the much more labour-intensive occupation of the scribe naturally declined. Proof-correcting arose as a new occupation, while a rise in the numbers of booksellers and librarians naturally followed

8322-405: The introduction of the mechanical printing press in the mid fifteenth century. Reliable figures of the number of imprints of each edition are as hard to find in Europe as they are in China, but one result of the spread of printing in Europe was that public and private libraries were able to build up their collections and for the first time in over a thousand years they began to match and then overtake

8436-568: The invention of printing. Copies of classical texts on tablets were erected in a public place in Luoyang during the Han dynasty for scholars and students to copy. The Suishu jingjizhi , the blibography of the official history of the Sui dynasty , includes several ink-squeeze rubbings, believed to have led to the early duplication of texts that inspired printing. A stone inscription cut in reverse dating from

8550-416: The kabuki and jōruri (puppet) theatre, etc. The best-selling books of this period were Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (Life of an Amorous Man) by Ihara Saikaku , Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Takizawa Bakin , and Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige by Jippensha Ikku , and these books were reprinted many times. From the 17th century to the 19th century, ukiyo-e depicting secular subjects became very popular among

8664-529: The largest libraries in China. During the 16th and 17th centuries, printmaking enjoyed great popularity, especially in the illustration of books such as Buddhist texts, poems, novels, biographies, medical treatises, music, etc. The major center of production was initially in Kien-ngan ( Fujian ) and, from the 17th century, in Sin-ngan ( Anhui ) and Nanjing ( Jiangsu ). On the other hand, in the 18th century,

8778-413: The maximum number of pages which various press designs could print per hour . All printing process are concerned with two kinds of areas on the final output: After the information has been prepared for production (the prepress step), each printing process has definitive means of separating the image from the non-image areas. Conventional printing has four types of process: To print an image without

8892-503: The mid-fifteenth-century, block-books , woodcut books with both text and images, usually carved in the same block, emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed with movable type . These were all short, heavily illustrated works, the bestsellers of the day, repeated in many different block-book versions: the Ars moriendi and the Biblia pauperum were the most common. There

9006-528: The mid-sixth century in China. A type of printing called mechanical woodblock printing on paper started during the 7th century in the Tang dynasty , and subsequently spread throughout East Asia. Nara Japan printed the Hyakumantō Darani en masse around 770, and distributed them to temples throughout Japan. In Korea , an example of woodblock printing from the eighth century was discovered in 1966. A copy of

9120-491: The middle of the sixteenth century, it was a sin for the Turks , particularly Turkish Muslims, to print religious books. In 1515, Sultan Selim I issued a decree under which the practice of printing would be punishable by death. At the end of the sixteenth century, Sultan Murad III permitted the sale of non-religious printed books in Arabic characters, yet the majority were imported from Italy . Ibrahim Muteferrika established

9234-558: The most important invention of the second millennium. The steam-powered rotary printing press, invented in 1843 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe , ultimately allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace. Hoe's original design operated at up to 2,000 revolutions per hour where each revolution deposited 4 page images, giving

9348-474: The movable type system was kept mainly within the confines of a highly stratified elite Korean society: Korean printing with movable metallic type developed mainly within the royal foundry of the Yi dynasty. Royalty kept a monopoly of this new technique and by royal mandate suppressed all non-official printing activities and any budding attempts at commercialization of printing. Thus, printing in early Korea served only

9462-407: The non-image areas ink-free. Most offset presses use three cylinders: Plate, blanket, impression. Currently, most books and newspapers are printed using offset lithography. Gravure printing is an intaglio printing technique, where the image being printed is made up of small depressions in the surface of the printing plate. The cells are filled with ink, and the excess is scraped off the surface with

9576-590: The number of all the preceding centuries combined. Private libraries of 10–20,000 juan became commonplace while six individuals owned collections of over 30,000 juan . The earliest extant private Song library catalogue lists 1,937 titles in 24,501 juan . Zhou Mi's collection numbered 42,000 juan , Chen Zhensun's collection lists 3,096 titles in 51,180 juan , and Ye Mengde (1077–1148) as well as one other individual owned libraries of 6,000 titles in 100,000 juan . The majority of which were secular in nature. Texts contained material such as medicinal instruction or came in

9690-404: The opinions of different authors rather than being forced to look at only one or two specific authors. Textbooks themselves were also being printed in different levels of difficulty, rather than just one introductory text being made available. > 30,000 ( A3 trim size , web-fed) By 2005, digital printing accounted for approximately 9% of the 45 trillion pages printed annually around

9804-633: The present. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type is the Jikji of 1377. This form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as "extremely similar to Gutenberg's". Movable type never replaced woodblock printing in Korea. Indeed, even the promulgation of Hangeul was done through woodblock prints. The general assumption is that movable type did not replace block printing in places that used Chinese characters due to

9918-578: The press a throughput of 8,000 pages per hour. By 1891, The New York World and Philadelphia Item were operating presses producing either 90,000 4-page sheets per hour or 48,000 8-page sheets. The rotary printing press uses impressions curved around a cylinder to print on long continuous rolls of paper or other substrates. Rotary drum printing was later significantly improved by William Bullock . There are multiple types of rotary printing press technologies that are still used today: sheetfed offset , rotogravure , and flexographic printing. The table lists

10032-602: The prevailing wood-based technology extremely disturbing, even dangerous". Matteo Ricci made note of "the exceedingly large numbers of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold". Two hundred years later the Englishman John Barrow, by way of the Macartney mission to Qing China, also remarked with some amazement that the printing industry was "as free as in England, and

10146-528: The profession of printing open to everyone". The commercial success and profitability of woodblock printing was attested to by one British observer at the end of the nineteenth century, who noted that even before the arrival of western printing methods, the price of books and printed materials in China had already reached an astoundingly low price compared to what could be found in his home country. Of this, he said: We have an extensive penny literature at home, but

10260-578: The reign of Wu Zetian , under which the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra , which advocates the practice of printing apotropaic and merit making texts and images, was translated by Chinese monks. The oldest extant evidence of woodblock prints created for the purpose of reading are portions of the Lotus Sutra discovered at Turpan in 1906. They have been dated to the reign of Wu Zetian using character form recognition. The oldest text containing

10374-829: The same time as the printing press from Europe. An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei . Tokugawa Ieyasu established a printing school at Enko-ji in Kyoto and started publishing books using domestic wooden movable type printing-press instead of metal from 1599. Ieyasu supervised the production of 100,000 types, which were used to print many political and historical books. In 1605, books using domestic copper movable type printing-press began to be published, but copper type did not become mainstream after Ieyasu died in 1616. The great pioneers in applying movable type printing press to

10488-553: The semi-cursive and cursive script style of Japanese writings was better reproduced using woodblocks. By 1640 woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes. After the 1640s, movable type printing declined, and books were mass-produced by conventional woodblock printing during most of the Edo period . It was after the 1870s, during the Meiji period , when Japan opened the country to the West and began to modernize, that this technique

10602-426: The shape and structure of books. Scrolls were gradually replaced by concertina binding (經摺裝) from the Tang period onward. The advantage was that it was now possible to flip to a reference without unfolding the entire document. The next development known as whirlwind binding ( xuanfeng zhuang 旋風裝) was to secure the first and last leaves to a single large sheet, so that the book could be opened like an accordion. Around

10716-400: The sixth century. Printing by pressing an inked image onto paper (using woodblock printing ) appeared later that century. Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and

10830-462: The small, noble groups of the highly stratified society. Western style movable type printing-press was brought to Japan by Tenshō embassy in 1590, and was first printed in Kazusa, Nagasaki in 1591. However, western printing-press were discontinued after the ban on Christianity in 1614. The moveable type printing-press seized from Korea by Toyotomi Hideyoshi 's forces in 1593 was also in use at

10944-600: The start of our dynasty, there were fewer than four thousand. Today, there are more than one hundred thousand. The classics and histories, together with standard commentaries, are all fully represented. When I was young and devoted myself to learning, there were only one or two scholars in every hundred who possessed copies of all the classics and commentaries. There was no way to copy so many works. Today, printed editions of these works are abundant, and officials and commoners alike have them in their homes. Scholars are fortunate indeed to have been born in such an era as ours! In 1076,

11058-466: The technique was also used in Turpan and Vietnam using a number of other scripts. This technique then spread to Persia and Russia. This technique was transmitted to Europe by around 1400 and was used on paper for old master prints and playing cards . Block printing, called tarsh in Arabic , developed in Arabic Egypt during the ninth and tenth centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets . There

11172-474: The traditional narrative. T. H. Barrett points out that only Europeans who had never seen Chinese woodblock printing in action tended to dismiss it, perhaps due to the almost instantaneous arrival of both xylography and movable type in Europe. The early Jesuit missionaries of late-16th-century China, for instance, had a similar distaste for wood-based printing for very different reasons. These Jesuits found that "the cheapness and omnipresence of printing in China made

11286-425: The very end of Imperial China: As a result of block-printing technology, it became easier and cheaper to produce multiple copies of books quickly. By the eleventh century, the price of books had fallen by about one tenth what they had been before and as a result they were more widely disseminated. Nevertheless, even in the fifteenth century most books in major libraries were still in manuscript, not in print. Almost to

11400-411: The wideness of sale. Other modern scholars such as Endymion Wilkinson hold a more conservative and skeptical view. While Wilkinson does not deny "China's dominance in book production from the fourth to the fifteenth century," he also insists that arguments for the Chinese advantage "should not be extended either forwards or backwards in time." European book production began to catch up with China after

11514-514: The world's oldest securely dated woodblock scroll. The Diamond sutra was closely followed by the earliest extant printed almanac, the Qianfu sinian lishu (乾符四年曆書), dated to 877. Evidence of woodblock printing appeared in Korea and Japan soon afterward. The Great Dharani Sutra ( Korean : 무구정광대다라니경/無垢淨光大陀羅尼經 , romanized :  Muggujeonggwang Dadharanigyeong ) was discovered at Bulguksa , South Korea in 1966 and dated between 704 and 751 in

11628-428: The world. Printing at home, an office, or an engineering environment is subdivided into: Some of the more common printing technologies are: Woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper . Each page or image

11742-581: The writer Lou Siun, who founded a woodcut school in Shanghai in 1930. Influenced by contemporary Russian engraving, this school dealt especially with popular, agricultural and military subjects for propaganda purposes, as is evident in the work of P'an Jeng and Huang Yong-yu. In 1234, cast metal movable type was used in Goryeo (Korea) to print the 50-volume Prescribed Texts for Rites of the Past and Present , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi , but no copies survived to

11856-435: The year 1000, butterfly binding was developed. Woodblock prints allowed two mirror images to be easily replicated on a single sheet. Thus two pages were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a codex with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages. In the 14th century the folding was reversed outwards to give continuous printed pages, each backed by

11970-530: Was hanging . Print gave a broader range of readers access to knowledge and enabled later generations to build directly on the intellectual achievements of earlier ones without the changes arising within verbal traditions. Print, according to Acton in his 1895 lecture On the Study of History , gave "assurance that the work of the Renaissance would last, that what was written would be accessible to all, that such an occultation of knowledge and ideas as had depressed

12084-517: Was actually a printing device, and Gong was one of the first, if not the first printer. The semi-mythical record of him therefore describes his usage of the printing process to deliberately bewilder onlookers and create an image of mysticism around himself. However, woodblock print flower patterns applied to silk in three colours have been found dated from the Han dynasty (before AD 220). Inscribed seals made of metal or stone, especially jade, and inscribed stone tablets probably provided inspiration for

12198-497: Was cut in beech wood, which was then pressed into a soft clay to form a mould, and bronze poured into the mould, and finally the type was polished. Eastern metal movable type was spread to Europe between the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The Korean form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as "extremely similar to Gutenberg's". Authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type

12312-407: Was developed. More recently, letterpress printing has seen a revival in an artisanal form. Offset printing is a widely used modern printing process. This technology is best described as when a positive (right-reading) image on a printing plate is inked and transferred (or "offset") from the plate to a rubber blanket. The blanket image becomes a mirror image of the plate image. An offset transfer moves

12426-410: Was hand-carved movable wooden type. Indeed, the entire collection was only printed for the first time in the 1980s. Access to books, especially large works, such as the Histories , remained difficult right into the twentieth century. Not only did manuscripts remain competitive with imprints, they were even preferred by elite scholars and collectors. The age of printing gave the act of copying by hand

12540-472: Was not replaced completely, but remained an international language until the eighteenth century. At this time, universities began establishing accompanying libraries. "Cambridge made the chaplain responsible for the library in the fifteenth century but this position was abolished in 1570 and in 1577 Cambridge established the new office of university librarian. Although, the University of Leuven did not see

12654-464: Was said to have had a collection of 80,000 juan . The combined total of all known private book collectors prior to the Song dynasty number around 200, with the Tang alone accounting for 60 of them. Following the maturation of woodblock printing, official, commercial, and private publishing businesses emerged while the size and number of collections grew exponentially. The Song dynasty alone accounts for some 700 known private collections, more than triple

12768-402: Was the 1460s, but that at least one dated from about 1451. Block books printed in the 1470s were often of cheaper quality, as a cheaper alternative to books printed by printing press . Block books continued to be printed sporadically up through the end of the 15th century. The method was also used extensively for printing playing cards . Ceramic and wooden movable type were invented in

12882-433: Was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin , antimony , copper and bismuth – the same components still used today. Johannes Gutenberg started work on his printing press around 1436, in partnership with Andreas Dritzehen – whom he had previously instructed in gem-cutting – and Andreas Heilmann, the owner of a paper mill. Compared to woodblock printing , movable type page setting and printing using

12996-507: Was thought that the introduction of printing 'would strengthen religion and enhance the power of monarchs.' The majority of books were of a religious nature, with the church and crown regulating the content. The consequences of printing 'wrong' material were extreme. Meyrowitz used the example of William Carter who in 1584 printed a pro-Catholic pamphlet in Protestant-dominated England. The consequence of his action

#913086