The history of book printing can be traced back hundreds of years ago to China,
where most scholars believe the process’ origins began. Since then, the process
of book printing has changed greatly into the advanced, high-quality service
that Instant Publisher uses today and makes available to professional and
amateur writers alike. Here, we will take a look back at a short timeline
illustrating the evolution of the all-important book printing process:
- Woodblock Printing
– 220 AD – The technique of woodblock printing incorporated blocks of wood that were carved with text, images or patterns and then covered with an ink or dye. Similar to stamps, the blocks were then pressed onto cloth and later on paper, to reveal the carved text or design. This technique began in East Asia and then spread to Roman Egypt and other areas of the Middle East in the 4th
century. - Movable Type Printing
– 1040 – The first ever movable type was documented in China and was created
out of porcelain. Every word was carved into a small piece of porcelain making
typesetting and printing itself more efficient. - Printing Press -1450 – The famous German inventor Johannes Gutenberg created the Gutenberg press. This machine used movable type made from sturdy metal. The sturdier type material combined with the speed of the press machine made book printing faster than ever.
- Inkjet Printing
– 1976 – Jump to the 20th century and the invention of computers and you
will find that inkjet printing has become the popular method of book printing.
Both fast and inexpensive, inkjet printers create images or text by propelling
droplets of ink onto paper. - Digital Printing
–1993 – Similar to inkjet printing, digital printing uses ink droplets to create
an image gained from a digital base like a computer. Digital printer is better
for larger job such as book printing because it can print faster and produce
more pages than smaller at-home inkjet printers. Since images and text can be
received digitally, this allows book publishing companies like us to produce
high-quality work for our customers all over the world.