Printing production process

The printing was developed in the

seventh century (600-699) in Korea and China 600 years before Gutenberg.

The printing was create by Chinese monks who were using a method as ink to paper, in which wooden blocks are coated with ink and pressed to sheet of paper.

Origen

“The Diamond Sutra”

created in 868 during the Tang Dynasty (618-909) in China, was the first books printed in this fashion, and combines words and pictures.

A of the Chinese version of Diamond Sutra was found in the early 20th century.

The diamond sutra

Expansion of the technique

In the 14th century it

developed a new technique in

Korea during the Goryeo

Dynasty in 1234: printing from

metal

It was expensive and the

metal tablets required for

scripts based on the Chinese

writing system, which have

thousands of characters.

In Europe, without knowledge of what

happened in East, were developed the techniques of printing by Craftsmen.

Like China, the printing took the form of lustred sheets printed from carved wooden blocks.

These illustrations were basically religious, simple in design and coloured by hand.

The big development arrive in hands of Johan Gutenberg, a Goldsmith working in Mainz, Germany, in the middle of the 15th century.

His idea was to use metal to make individual pieces of type. This technique became a cheaper alternative to making books by hand.

The type could be broken up and re-used to print another book.

One edition of the bible in Latin was made at his workshop. The book consist of 1,300 large copies and it was printed in two colours, black and red.

The books that exist were written in

Latin and owned by the Church.

These few books have to be written out individually by monks which took a long time.

Language

In 1471 printing had spread to other

countries as Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France and also in others cites from Germany.

By 1480 the printing had spread to many others cities in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and France and also to Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Holland Belgium and England.

In 1500 the printing had spread in almost every part of Europe.

The spread of Print

By 17th and 18th centuries the printing began to become very important in the world of the communication. The

development of the printing allows to increase demands of newspapers, which played an important part of the

expansion, and material printed. In the end of the 1800 the printing could print 30,000

to 40,000 copies an hour.