printing press

printing press, machine by which text and images are transferred from movable type to paper or other media by means of ink. Movable type and paper were invented in China, and the oldest known extant book printed from movable type was created in Korea in the 14th century. Printing first became mechanized in Europe during the 15th century.

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The earliest mention of a mechanized printing press in Europe appears in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439; it reveals construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. Gutenberg’s press and others of its era in Europe owed much to the medieval paper press, which was in turn modeled after the ancient wine-and-olive press of the Mediterranean area. A long handle was used to turn a heavy wooden screw, exerting downward pressure against the paper, which was laid over the type mounted on a wooden platen. Gutenberg used his press to print an edition of the Bible in 1455; this Bible is the first complete extant book in the West, and it is one of the earliest books printed from movable type. (Jikji, a book of the teachings of Buddhist priests, was printed by hand from movable type in Korea in 1377.) In its essentials, the wooden press used by Gutenberg reigned supreme for more than 300 years, with a hardly varying rate of 250 sheets per hour printed on one side.

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Metal presses began to appear late in the 18th century, at about which time the advantages of the cylinder were first perceived and the application of steam power was considered. By the mid-19th century Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected a power-driven cylinder press in which a large central cylinder carrying the type successively printed on the paper of four impression cylinders, producing 8,000 sheets an hour in 2,000 revolutions. The rotary press came to dominate the high-speed newspaper field, but the flatbed press, having a flat bed to hold the type and either a reciprocating platen or a cylinder to hold the paper, continued to be used for job printing.

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A significant innovation of the late 19th century was the offset press, in which the printing (blanket) cylinder runs continuously in one direction while paper is impressed against it by an impression cylinder. Offset printing is especially valuable for colour printing, because an offset press can print multiple colours in one run. Offset lithography—used for books, newspapers, magazines, business forms, and direct mail—continued to be the most widely used printing method at the start of the 21st century, though it was challenged by ink-jet, laser, and other printing methods.

Apart from the introduction of electric power, advances in press design between 1900 and the 1950s consisted of a great number of relatively minor mechanical modifications designed to improve the speed of the operation. Among these changes were better paper feed, improvements in plates and paper, automatic paper reels, and photoelectric control of colour register. The introduction of computers in the 1950s revolutionized printing composition, with more and more steps in the print process being replaced by digital data. At the end of the 20th century a new electronic printing method, print-on-demand, began to compete with offset printing, though it—and printing generally—came under increasing pressure in developed countries as publishers, newspapers, and others turned to online means of distributing what they had previously printed on paper.