The Development of Printing

Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts

Institute of State Management

Department of Documentation and Information Activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Development of Printing

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                 Student 2 course

                                                                Group DM – 32

                                                                Yana Dorozhko

 

 

 

Kyiv – 2013

Content

1………………………………………………………………… Introduction

2……………………………………………………….……………..Overview

3……………………………………………………Print and Modern Thought

4………………………………………………..Advances in Print Technology

5…………………………………………………………………..Conclusions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

The earliest dated printed book known is the "Diamond Sutra", printed in China in 868 CE. However, it is suspected that book printing may have occurred long before this date.

Before Gutenberg, printing was limited in the number of editions made and nearly exclusively decorative, used for pictures and designs. The material to be printed was carved into wood, stone, and metal, rolled with ink or paint and transferred by pressure to parchment or vellum. Books were hand copied mostly by members of religious orders.

Overview

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press is widely thought of as the origin of mass communication-- it marked Western culture's first viable method of disseminating ideas and information from a single source to a large and far-ranging audience. A closer look at the history of print, however, shows that the invention of the printing press depended on a confluence of both cultural and technological forces that had been unfolding for several centuries. Print culture and technology also needed to go through centuries of change after Gutenberg's time before the "massification" of audiences could fully crystallize.

The story of print is a long and complex one. It may be too much to claim that print was the single cause of the massive social, political and psychological changes it is associated with. However, print did wield enormous influence on every aspect of European culture. Some historians suggest that print was instrumental in bringing about all the major shifts in science, religion, politics and the modes of thought that are commonly associated with modern Western culture.

The key technological, cultural and psychological issues associated with the emergence of the printing press can be organized into the following areas:

China: The Technological Roots

• Paper;
• paper's migration to Europe;
• ideographic alphabet.

Gutenberg and the Historical Moment in Western Europe

• scribal hand-copying;
• Church indulgences;
• movable metal type;
• Gutenberg Bibles;
• the Protestant Reformation;
• William Caxton and print in England.

Print and Modern Thought

• scientific thinking;
• the scientific community;
• the rise of an intellectual class;
• transformations: oral, written and print cultures;
• privacy and individual rights.

Print in the U.S.

• first colonial press in Cambridge;
• the penny press: news for all.

Advances in Print Technology

• innovations since the Linotype;
• innovations in contemporary print culture.

Print and Modern Thought

The scientific revolution that would later challenge the entrenched "truths" espoused by the Church was also largely a consequence of print technology. The scientific principle of repeatability--the impartial verification of experimental results-- grew out of the rapid and broad dissemination of scientific insights and discoveries that print allowed. The production of scientific knowledge accelerated markedly. The easy exchange of ideas gave rise to a scientific community that functioned without geographical constraints. This made it possible to systematize methodologies and to add sophistication to the development of rational thought. As readily available books helped expand the collective body of knowledge, indexes and cross-referencing emerged as ways of managing volumes of information and of making creative associations between seemingly unrelated ideas.

Innovations in the accessibility of knowledge and the structure of human thought that attended the rise of print in Europe also influenced art, literature, philosophy and politics. The explosive innovation that characterized the Renaissance was amplified, if not in part generated by, the printing press. The rigidly fixed class structure which determined one's status from birth based on family property ownership began to yield to the rise of an intellectual middle class. The possibility of changing one's status infused the less privileged with ambition and a hunger for education.

Print technology facilitated a communications revolution that reached deep into human modes of thought and social interaction. Print, along with spoken language, writing and electronic media, is thought of as one of the markers of key historical shifts in communication that have attended social and intellectual transformation. Oral culture is passed from one generation to the next through the full sensory and emotional atmosphere of interpersonal interaction. Writing facilitates interpretation and reflection since memorization is no longer required for the communication and processing of ideas. Recorded history could persist and be added to through the centuries. Written manuscripts sparked a variation on the oral tradition of communal story-telling--it became common for one person to read out loud to the group.

Print, on the other hand, encouraged the pursuit of personal privacy. Less expensive and more portable books lent themselves to solitary and silent reading. This orientation to privacy was part of an emphasis on individual rights and freedoms that print helped to develop. Print injected Western culture with the principles of standardization, verifiability and communication that comes from one source and is disseminated to many geographically dispersed receivers. As illustrated by dramatic reform in religious thought and scientific inquiry, print innovations helped bring about sharp challenges to institutional control. Print facilitated a focus on fixed, verifiable truth, and on the human ability and right to choose one's own intellectual and religious path.

Advances in Print Technology

A number of dramatic technological innovations have since added a great deal of character and dimension to the place of print in culture. Linotype, a method of creating movable type by machine instead of by hand, was introduced in 1884 and marked a significant leap in production speed. The typewriter made the production and "look" of standardized print much more widely accessible. The process of setting type continued to go through radical transformations with the development of photo-mechanical composition, cathode ray tubes and laser technologies. The Xerox machine made a means of disseminating print documents available to everyone. Word processing transformed editing and contributed dramatic new flexibility to the writing process. Computer printing has already moved through several stages of innovation, from the first daisy-wheel and dot matrix "impact" printers to common use of the non-impact printers: ink-jet, laser and thermal-transfer.

Both the Internet and interactive multimedia are providing ways of employing the printed word that add new possibilities to print's role in culture. The printed word is now used for real-time social interaction and for individualized navigation through interactive documents. It is difficult to gauge the social and cultural impact of new media without historical distance, but these innovations will most likely prove to signal another major transformation in the use, influence and character of human communication.

Conclusion

From the time of the Gutenberg bible in the fifteenth century to the mass-produced books of the twenty-first century, the printing press has permitted ideas and knowledge to spread, transforming every aspect of everyday life. At the same time, printing has helped to shape alterations in social relations made possible by industrial development and economic transformations. By means of books, pamphlets, and the press, information of all kinds has reached all levels of society in most countries.

Print remains an extraordinarily powerful medium influencing thought, belief and culture and has given little ground to the power of other modern media. In view of the contemporary competition over some of its traditional functions, it has been suggested by some observers that printing is destined to disappear. On the other hand, this point of view has been condemned as unrealistic by those who argue that information in printed form offers particular advantages different from those of other audio or visual media. Printed texts and documents, though they require a longer time to be produced, are permanently available and so permit reflection. Print is directly accessible. Far from being fated to disappear, printing seems more likely to experience an evolution marked by its increasingly close association with these various other means by which information is placed at the disposal of humankind.