timeline
Stone tools and brushes were used for thousands of years to keep records and inscribe messages in the form of cuneiforms, one of the earliest known writing systems developed in Sumer (modern day Iraq). Wedge-shaped marks were made on clay tablets by a blunt stylus cut from a reed.
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level.
the most significant contribution to printmaking from the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the art form and the culture. While not the original inventor, Gutenberg perfected the movable type printing press around 1450 and popularized it in Europe. His most famous works, the 1,300-page Gutenberg Bibles, were masterful prints that used printed gothic type designed to look like hand calligraphy.
Linotype machine became the world's leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typesetting equipment; outside North America, its only serious challenger for book production was the United States-/England-based Monotype Corporation.
The Monotype system is a system for printing by hot-metal typesetting from a keyboard. The two most significant differences from the competing Linotype machine are:
- It is divided into two machines, the Monotype keyboard and the Monotype caster, which communicate by perforated paper tape. It is not necessary to have the same number of each machine.
- The Monotype caster casts individual letters, which are assembled into lines in a fashion similar to classical movable type. This requires a more complex high-speed water-cooled casting mold, but only requires one matrix per possible character.
On January 24, 1984, Apple announced the Macintosh to its Board of Directors - and to the world. The tiny computer was a radical departure from the large Lisa with it's 12" screen, just as the Lisa itself had been a huge departure from the Apple II series and the growing family of MS-DOS computers on the market. The personal computer, like the Gutenberg press, made printing more accessible than ever before as more and more people began owning personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s. Word processing softwares began coming pre-installed into these machines, making simple typsetting and printing easier than ever.