Who Invented Printing?
The art of printing, like language and music, has been around since antiquity and it is just not possible with the currently available historical evidence to pin down the first person who printed some text, instead of just copying it,. It is, however, known that the Babylonians had developed a technique to reproduce texts without having a scribe to write it again. They used ‘cylinder seals’, which had on them, complex figures and text engraved. This was around 3000 BC. Some of those ‘cylinder seals’ still survive.
The Chinese adopted a different manner of reproducing their texts. Their technique is known as ‘woodblock printing’ and it was developed around 4th century BC. Woodblock printing includes the printing of words by first cutting engraving them on blocks of wood, later applying ink (or similar material) and pressing them on paper (or silk) in a careful manner. The Chinese are usually credited with the invention of printing.
The real revolution came in Europe in the 15th century when a Johannes Gutenberg established a press in Germany. He used special ink which didn’t leave marks on paper and the printing machine invented by him is known as the Gutenberg type press. This made is possible to publish a lot of books in a very short span of time. This increased literacy throughout Europe. This is also known as the only peaceful revolution in human history.
The printing techniques improved with time and soon there were entirely different types of printing machines being used throughout the world. Today, one can even purchase a typing machine for personal use – a computer printer!
Category: Inventions, Technology