PRINTING 



1824 



PRINTING PRESS 



be printed on the sheet. Only small editions 

 of country papers and circulars are now printed 

 directly from the type. Large daily papers are 

 printed from stereotype plates, and books and 

 magazines from electrotypes. 



Printing, or Prcsswork. This process is de- 

 scribed in the article PRINTING PRESS, which 

 see. 



Color Printing. Some printing presses can 



print two or more colors at once; the colored 



parts of the Sunday is>in>s of l:irir<> city dailies 



are printed on such This is a cheap 



i is seldom pleasing. But 



books and magazines of high grade are fre- 

 quently illustrated with prints that are ex- 

 quisitely colored. The reader often wonders 

 :ch beautiful pictures can be made with- 

 out incurring an expense that would make the 

 price of the book or magazine prohibitive. The 

 l of making these pictures has been de- 

 veloped since the perfection of photography 

 (which see). The colored illustrations in THE 

 WORLD BOOK are a good example of this sort 

 of printing. These beautiful illustrations are 

 made by printing four colors yellow, red, blue 

 and black one over the other. Each electro- 

 plate is made to print one color, and the im- 

 pressions of these plates so overlap as to pro- 

 duce the variety of tints required in the picture. 

 The production of such pictures requires very 

 skilful printing, since the impressions must ex- 

 actly overlie each other. A variation of the 

 minutest fraction of an inch will mar, and may 

 ruin, the picture. Cheaper colored prints of 

 this sort are made with only three colors, the 

 black being omitted. 



History. Printing with movable type was in- 

 vented by Johannes Gutenberg of Germany 

 and Laurens Coster of Holland between 1420 

 and 1440. It is not positively known which of 

 these inventors was first in the field, but the 

 honor is generally conceded to be Gutenberg's. 

 The Chinese are known to have printed from 

 engraved blocks at least fifty years before the 

 Christian Era. The ancient Egyptians and the 

 Romans also used engraved stones and metal 

 for stamping signatures and other characters 

 upon documents, but real printing is considered 

 to have begun with the invention of movable 

 type. Gutenberg carried on his work at Mainz, 

 Germany, where he formed a partnership with 

 one Fust, or Faust, a jeweler. The first work 

 that came from his press was the Gutenberg 

 Bible. The partners soon quarreled and Guten- 

 berg retired, leaving Faust to carry on the 

 work. From Germany the art spread to Italy, 



France, Spain and England; William Caxton 

 introduced it into England in 1476. 



The first printing press in America was set 

 up in Mexico in 1536. The first press in the 

 United States was established at Harvard Col- 

 lege in 1639. The first work printed on this 

 press was the Freeman's Oath, but its most 

 famous publication was John Eliot's Indian 

 Bible, a few copies of which are still in exist- 

 ence (see ELIOT, JOHN). This was the humble 

 beginning of the great University Press of Bos- 

 ton, one of the largest bookmaking establish- 

 ments in America. 



From these small beginnings printing has 

 grown until it has become one of the world's 

 great industries. The United States is one of 

 the leading countries in printing and publishing, 

 and the value of the annual production of 

 printed matter is about $738,000,000. In the 

 Canadian provinces the industry is rapidly 

 growing. 



Consult De Vinne's Practice of Typography; 

 Hoe's Literature of Printing. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes : 

 Books and Bookbinding Lithography 

 Caxton, William Newspaper 



Electrotyping Printing Press 



Engraving Stereotyping 



Gutenberg, Johannes Type 



PRINTING PRESS, a device for printing 

 upon paper and other material. In none of the 

 mechanical arts except the development of fly- 

 ing machines have improvements been more 

 rapid since 1800. Except in the purpose for 

 which it is intended there seems to be little 

 relation between the ingenious but cumber- 

 some hand presses of the fifteenth century and 

 the huge, modern power-driven presses. In the 

 early days of printing the production of a single 

 printed sheet required eleven operations, all 

 performed by hand. 



The Earliest Presses. The first press was an 

 adaptation of the medieval cheese press, still 

 common in many parts of Europe, consisting 

 of a bed on which the cheese was placed and 

 above it a square block which was screwed 

 down by means of a lever inserted in a hole 

 in a wooden screw. The printing press of the 

 fifteenth century, built of wood, was exactly 

 the same. In place of cheese a form of type 

 or of engraved blocks of wood was laid on the 

 bed of the press. The ink was applied to the 

 type by a leather-co\ jred inking ball, usually 

 stuffed with wool. / sheet of dampened paper 

 was then carefully iaid on the form, and the 

 wooden block, or platen, was screwed down so 



