The printing process generally consists of reproducing image or text onto another medium via ink. The medium can vary from cloth material, synthetic polymers, and various paper types. Printing as a global phenomenon, has come to occupy a substantial place in our every day lives.
We are constantly inundated with printed images, text, newspapers, magazines, and journals while engaged in our daily life tasks.
Historical Background
Modern advertising has blanketed our lives with so much reproduced text and images that we are often unaware of how modern printing has evolved. Although printing may be transmitted upon different types of medium, we typically associate printing with reproduced text and/or image on paper via ink. Using this association, the earliest recorded evidence of printing text on individual sheets of paper, occurred in China during the Tang Dynasty. China has greatly been credited with the early stages of printing including movable type printing and for laying the groundwork for the evolution of the printing process in the New World.
The advent of printing in Europe is mostly credited to Johannes Gutenberg. Historians surmise that printing technology made its way from China to Europe via established trade routes. The success of the Gutenberg press can be attributed to the evolution of printing technology over time and the adaptation of a press that would allow one to produce movable type printing in a flexible and efficient manner. Thus, the Gutenberg press allowed for mass communication abroad and a means to communicate vital knowledge and information on a mass scale.
Printing Today
Society
