The Role of Printing

As per the recorded history, Gutenberg was the first person to invent the printing machine in 1452, but the very idea of printing existed long before Gutenberg. It was as early as 700 AD that the first printable version of newspaper was published in Beijing with the help of a Chinese model printing press, which was nothing more than a mere wood-block printing system. Thus, it was actually East Asia, where the concept of printing was born. The process of printing has undergone various evolutionary stages for centuries and gradually developed.  Printing at present is not a simple mechanical way of publishing or producing something on paper, rather it is now considered as a major industrial process of action. Those interested in typography must know the process of movable type printing. Unlike the earlier models of block printing, the movable version was more flexible where letters were set in a changeable position. Gutenberg’s invention however ushered in the era of mass publication. The movable version of printing type ensured qualitatively good material after publication and at a relatively low cost. Gutenberg had chosen Bible as his first printing material. However, the most important contribution of Gutenberg’s printing press should be assessed in the context of Italian Renaissance, which shook the conventional foundation of every civilization. It was simply because books were now available in large numbers. A book is a source of knowledge without which a human being is not rational at all, and it is the possession of knowledge that distinguishes a man from an animal. There is no wonder why Aryans, after occupying South-Asia did not allow the subjugated non-Aryans to read books and kept the habit only for themselves. Printing evolved in different kinds over the ages and some of them exist even today in different parts of the world. According to a 2005 study, approximately forty five trillion pages come to be printed across the globe annually. In the United States alone, there existed more than thirty thousand printing companies in 2006. Not only in the US, but also in all countries across the globe, printing presses are being manufactured every day as the growth of literacy and the need for printed matter grows by the day. The advent of modern technology has completely changed all salient features of printing. Now books, newspapers, journals, periodicals and all other readable materials are printed in the computerized process, which is known as ‘offset printing’. It is not merely a quicker and qualitatively higher process, but also easier and simpler than that of the block printing process. We can regard this new process as a groundbreaking step towards the evolution of printing.  Offset printing is sometimes referred to as offset lithography. Apart from this technique, we have other popular methods such as screen-printing, relief printing, flexography, pad printing and many more. For T-shirts as well as tiles, screen-printing is applicable whereas flexography is for labeling and packaging. For three-dimensional surfaces, pad printing is suitable. Another form of printing is laser printing which can be found in case of printing bank bills and official documents. Thus, printing is itself an institution that has regulated the society and will continue doing that in future.