Arne J. Haalands age 10, of Canoga Park CA
Who invented printing?
The dictionary says that printing is making a mark by pressing, The animals have been accidentally printing their footsteps on the soft ground since the world began. The first printing on purpose was done by early pottery makers. They used sticks to print designs on wet clay. Later, carved stones were used for printing. Monarchs often wore carved signet rings for printing seals and signatures., This simple printing was the only kind known for thousands of years.
The kind of printing on this page had to wait for the Chinese to invent paper. Before than the writing materials were parchment vellum and papyrus, None of these had a surface smooth enough to hold printing, It took hundreds of years for paper to become common in Europe. Then came the beginning idea from which our paper printing developed. Like the invention of papers it came from the orient.
This first printing was block printing. A design was carefully carved on a wooden block. The raised parts were inked or dipped in colors and the block then pressed onto paper or fine silk. The same block could make hundreds of copies. Marco polo may have brought samples of this block printing back from China. The earliest one we still have is a Japanese block print made in 764 A.D.
Those clever Chinese invented movable type printing way back in the year 1040. It was not much use to them for they had no alphabet. They write with thousands of different picture words. Europe had alphabets and a few letters could be juggled to build countless different words. So movable type was developed soon after paper became popular, which was in the fifteenth century. Beautiful block printing was also done at that time in Europe.
The first complete printed book on record was finished August 14 1457. It was a beautiful psalm book and ten copies of it still exist. The painstaking work was done by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer of Germany. A handsomely colored almanac which did not count as a completed book was printed in 1448 'mid we still and we still have copies of Church documents printed in 1454. Playing cards were also printed at that time.
Most people give credit for inventing the printing press td Johann Gutenberg of Germany. Certainly copies of the Bible were printed in his workshop. Some experts say that Laurens Coster of Holland perfected the first wonderful printing press. It may well be that the forward looking printers of the day exchanged ideas and developed the wonderful invention between them. At any rate, the new idea caught and in the fifty years from 1450 to 1500 some eight million complete books were printed. At least 1,125 opened up for business with the new printing press.
The idea of printing, it seems, grew through the years. This one and that one added an improvement to meet his needs. The next big improvement came in 1804. The Earl of Stanhope in England made the first Iron printing press. Ten years later the first cylinder press powered by steam was rolling out the print, The London Times used this press to get out the daily news in the year 1814.