Printing

The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tablets, used during the sixth century.

The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

[3] The earliest examples of ink-squeeze rubbings and potential stone printing blocks appear in the mid-sixth century in China.

A copy of the Buddhist Dharani Sutra called the Pure Light Dharani Sutra (Korean: 무구정광대다라니경; Hanja: 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經; RR: Mugu jeonggwang dae darani-gyeong), discovered in Gyeongju, in a Silla dynasty pagoda that was repaired in 751,[8] was undated but must have been created sometime before the reconstruction of the Shakyamuni Pagoda of Bulguk Temple, Kyongju Province in 751.

[15] Printing spread early to Korea and Japan, which also used Chinese logograms, but the technique was also used in Turpan and Vietnam using a number of other scripts.

[18] The printing technique in Egypt was embraced by reproducing texts on paper strips and supplying them in different copies to meet the demand.

These were all short, heavily illustrated works, the bestsellers of the day, repeated in many different block-book versions: the Ars moriendi and the Biblia pauperum were the most common.

He also developed a complex system of revolving tables and number-association with written Chinese characters that made typesetting and printing more efficient.

[24][25][26][27][28] The Korean form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as "extremely similar to Gutenberg's".

He advanced innovations in casting type based on a matrix and hand mould, adaptations to the screw-press, the use of an oil-based ink, and the creation of a softer and more absorbent paper.

[31] Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, antimony, copper and bismuth – the same components still used today.

The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type for Western languages.

[34] Time Life magazine called Gutenberg's innovations in movable type printing the most important invention of the second millennium.

[35] The steam-powered rotary printing press, invented in 1843 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe,[36] ultimately allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day.

Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.

The printing cylinders are usually made from copper plated steel, which is subsequently chromed, and may be produced by diamond engraving; etching, or laser ablation.

Gravure printing is known for its ability to produce high-quality, high-resolution images with accurate color reproduction and using viscosity control equipment during production.

It is estimated that following the innovation of Gutenberg's printing press, the European book output rose from a few million to around one billion copies within a span of less than four centuries.

[47] Samuel Hartlib, who was exiled in Britain and enthusiastic about social and cultural reforms, wrote in 1641 that "the art of printing will so spread knowledge that the common people, knowing their own rights and liberties, will not be governed by way of oppression".

[48][49] In the Muslim world, printing, especially in Arabic scripts, was strongly opposed throughout the early modern period, partially due to the high artistic renown of the art of traditional calligraphy.

[50] According to an imperial ambassador to Istanbul in the middle of the sixteenth century, it was a sin for the Turks, particularly Turkish Muslims, to print religious books.

At the end of the sixteenth century, Sultan Murad III permitted the sale of non-religious printed books in Arabic characters, yet the majority were imported from Italy.

Ibrahim Muteferrika established the first press for printing in Arabic in the Ottoman Empire, against opposition from the calligraphers and parts of the Ulama.

Print gave a broader range of readers access to knowledge and enabled later generations to build directly on the intellectual achievements of earlier ones without the changes arising within verbal traditions.

She claims that print created a sustained and uniform reference for knowledge and allowed comparisons of incompatible views.

Printers emerged as a new group of artisans for whom literacy was essential, while the much more labour-intensive occupation of the scribe naturally declined.

Universities were influenced in their "language of scholarship, libraries, curriculum, [and] pedagogy"[55] Before the invention of the printing press, most written material was in Latin.

However, the issue was solved in 1589 by a man named Merton who decided books should be stored on horizontal shelves rather than lecterns.

3D printing is a form of manufacturing technology where physical objects are created from three-dimensional digital models using 3D printers.

Fused deposition modeling (FDM), which uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material, is the most common 3D printing process in use as of 2020[update].