By Frank Granger
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In an early exuberance for the great invention, some sage called printing "the art preservative." This implies not only the ability to record, but to distribute and profligate, thus helping to preserve the written word and art. It is a good phrase and printers have repeated it proudly to describe what we do, but it may be limiting in its praise.
The phrase doesn’t insinuate anything about printing’s contribution to universal education. Nor does it imply that printing has driven business and commerce for half a thousand years. Absent, also, is the credit that "the art" should get for setting many of the standards in language and design.
Printing deserves the credit for being the chief provocation for advances in civilization and technology. Printing has been the stepping stone for every great progress. Printing anything leads to advancement. Even the vilest words and objectionable illustrations when set in print can cause a backlash of revolt. Sometimes, during the period of change, printing will take the blame for the ills of society.
Lest we forget, printing was once the devil's art, the brash and bold tool of reformers. Advances in printing lead to the displacement of older technology, status, and wealth. It has had detractors. Even today, some are all too ready to "put to bed" this current edition of technology.
As we enter what our chronological history tells us is a new millennium, the exuberance for printing is replaced with giddy excitement for all forms of electronic and digital media. Some imprudent persons unwisely predict the uselessness of printing.
It is senseless to argue with fanaticism, but it may prove helpful to point out some of the definitive events that have brought us to the place where the prodigy seeks to replace the parent.
The Invention of Paper
Vellum and parchment, the hides of animals, provided early scribes with a substrate to write on. Each was unique in size and texture. The cost was prohibitive for mass production. Egyptian papyrus was less permanent. The Chinese used bamboo strips and silk called "chih," which also proved inconvenient.
Ts‘ai Lun, around 100 AD in China, is credited with the invention of the water, wood, and rag slurry that when strained produced an inexpensive, uniform, and suitable surface for writing and later for printing.
The Invention of Printing Ink
The average person might not give ink the same accord given paper, but it was equally as necessary. Not just a mere berry juice or dye; it had to be formulated and stiffened to transfer from type to paper and remain permanent on the paper.
We again give the Chinese credit for another invention. Oils had to be painstakingly extracted from grain and boiled to form a thick varnish. Soot or lampblack had to be collected. Sometimes secret ingredients of wax, soap, tar, and pitch were added to make suitable ink.
The Necessity of Language
Paleolithic cave dwellers recorded in pictographs. When objects began to symbolize ideas, they were called ideograms. Phonetic writing came when symbols began to stand for sounds. It took centuries for the alphabet to evolve. Today, a child can master the art in a few years of primary school.
These "twenty-six lead soldiers" have been credited with being stronger than any army. The Chinese, a thousand years before Gutenberg, had all the necessary elements of printing except for a workable alphabet. This discouraged any significant advance in printing in that country.
Gutenberg’s Contribution
In 1450, Johann Gutenberg brought together the alphabet; the paper and ink with his moveable metal type and press. He gets the credit for putting it into a workable process. Others tried before him and there were limited successes, but his was the method that caught on.
Nicolas Jenson – The First Great Type Designer
The German, Johann Gutenberg invented the mechanics of printing. Nicolas Jenson, the Frenchman, brought art to type design. While in Italy, Jenson copied the humanistic style letters of Roman type and Italian script. He was a very successful businessman as well as designer. Society sometimes fails to recognize the importance of marketing, sales, and management in the progress of civilization. The reason we predominantly use Roman types today, and not German Gothic, is because of the success of Jenson in both art and business.
Aldus – The People’s Printer
In the early days of printing, called the incunabula, Aldus Manutius brought scholarship to the masses. His shop, like the religious scriptorium, was a haven for scholars, translators, and writers. He had a passion to bring out portable editions of the Greek and Latin classics, in a time when most books were wheelbarrow-size volumes. Printing and universal literacy were both greatly encouraged by the work of Aldus Manutius. Printers can trace their Renaissance ideal of mastering a wide range of skills and knowledge to this period.
Baskerville – The Unity of the Process
John Baskerville didn’t take up printing until after age 50. His early 18th century career in other fields brought fresh perspective to printing. He didn’t view the process as the separate technologies of paper, ink, type, and press. He started with type design. His delicately styled letters forced him to invent better ink, better paper, and better printing. He created a symbiotic process of cooperation between the parts leading to an improvement of the whole.
Koenig – Introducing the Mechanical Age
Friedrich Koenig took the slow labor-intensive process of stamping out one impression at a time and mechanized the press process by sending paper under a rotary cylinder. In 1814, "The Times" of London was the first newspaper to use this process. A new plateau in speed was established driving the need for faster typesetting. Following Koenig were other improvements in the press. The speed of the press drove the demand for more type and created the necessity for Merganthaler’s Linotype.
Morris – Printing is still an art
What Koenig did for automation, William Morris did for the design of printing. William Morris another late blooming printer of the 1800’s recognized the lack of soul that the industrial revolution brought to mass production. He tempered the revolution with artistic design and style. As printing became easier, less capable printers had taken up the craft. There was a disregard of basic principles to get any commercial image on paper. Morris fathered the ideal of quality in production.
Carlson – A new process
Chester Carlson is the icon of unrecognized potential. A photo executive showed him the door not recognizing that Carlson was presenting him, in the 1930’s, with the "cave drawings" of a new age. Carlson was the inventor of a new printing process. The electrostatic devices that cluttered this executive’s desk and the dry black powder that made the mess were the basics of xerography. Carlson was persistent in promoting his invention and he went on to prove that conventional wisdom is sometimes tunnel vision.
Desktop Publishing
We will not argue here the Mac or Microsoft question. Only to say, that there was more change in printing technologies in the last part of the 20th century than in the previous five hundred years. History will likely not credit only a single individual to this continuing revolution. It has been a movement.
The Future
From the predictions in electronics, robotics, digital communications, and information technologies, things are not going to settle down anytime soon.
We define what we call printing by our concepts. Sometimes our concepts are limiting. It doesn’t matter whether you print on boxes or broadsides. It doesn’t matter whether you print with paste ink or powdered toner. The tool alone is not the technology.
When was printing born? Certainly not with Gutenberg! He built on the invention of others. So did all of the others mentioned here and others not mentioned. Almost unrecognizable, the germ of printing was when primative man first had the idea to record events on the wall of a cave. Maybe equally unrecognizable is the transition from paper to pixels. There has always been an instinctive passion to print, to create, to record, to design.
There is the story of George Washington’s famous hatchet. Passed down and used for generations, it remained the prized possession of a family. They had to replace the handle three times and the blade twice, but it remained, just the same, George Washington’s hatchet.
Printing in all its many forms and transitions remains. It is a media not of paper and ink, or plastic, metal, and glass, but of hands, heads, and hearts.
Copyright © 2000 by Frank Granger
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