Printing

For other articles that otherwise might have the same name, see Print (disambiguation).

The folder of newspaper web offset printing press

Printing is a process for producing texts and images, typically with ink on paper, usually using a printing press or other kind of printing apparatus. It is often carried out as a large-scale, industrial process and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing. In photography, the process of using a negative to make a positive picture on photosensitive or other paper, in either black and white or color, is also known as printing.

History

PartI

(From the Website: http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml)

One of the most important event for the world that took place during the Tang (618-906) dynasty was the invention of printing, sometime between the 4th and 7th century C.E. It began as blocks cut from wood used to print textiles and then used to reproduce short Buddhist religious texts that were carried as charms by believers. Later long scrolls and books were produced, first by wood-block printing and then, beginning in the 11th century, by using movable type. Inexpensive printed books became widely available in China during the Song (960-1279) dynasty. The earliest printed book found so far was a Buddhist scripture, printed in 868, hidden at Dunhuang cave, along the Silk Road.

The first mentioned of printing was in an imperial decree of 593 in which Sui emperor Wen-ti ordered the printing of Buddhist images and scriptures, but no details with regard to this enterprise were given. The text was first written on a piece of thin paper, then glued face down onto a wooden plate. The characters were carved out to make a wood-block printing plate, which was used to print the text. Wood-block printing took a long time as a new block had to be carved for every page in a book (See picture on the right). A expert can print 2,000 or more sheets a day. In the 9th century, printed books first appeared in quantities in Shu (modern Szechuan province) and could be purchased from private dealers. Soon the printing technique spread to other provinces, and by the end of the 9th century it was common all over China. The printed books included Confucian classics, Buddhist scriptures, dictionaries, mathematics and others. The technique was advanced very fast. By 1000, paged books in the modern style had replaced scrolls. Two color printing (black and red) was seen as early as 1340.

In the 1040's the printing technique was further advanced through the invention of movable type, by someone named Pi Sheng (died 1051). Block printing was a costly and time-consuming process, for each carved block could only be used for a specific page of a particular book. However movable type changed all of that. Each piece of movable type had on it one Chinese character which was carved in relief on a small block of moistened clay. After the block had been hardened by fire, the type became hard and durable and could be used wherever required. The pieces of movable type could be glued to an iron plate and easily detached from the plate. Each piece of character could be assembled to print a page and then broken up and redistributed as needed.

Throughout the centuries both movable type and blocking printing existed side by side in China. The Muslims knew about the technology but didn't use it. It is uncertain when the printing was introduced to the Xinjiang area; however the printing material in several languages was found in Turfan, dated as early as the 13th century. When Marco Polo visited China in the 13th century, he must have seen printed books. It is possible that he or some other Silk Road travellers brought that knowledge to Europe, which later inspired John Gutenberg to invent printing in the West. In 1456, Gutenberg printed a new edition of the Bible, using movable type.

Part II

Printing was first conceived of and developed in China. Primitive woodblock printing was already in use by the 6th century in China. In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese writer named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book "Yuan Xian San Ji" that the woodblock was used to print Buddhist scripture during the Zhenguan years (627~649 C.E.). The oldest known Chinese surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of Wu Zetian period (684~705 C.E.); discovered in Tubofan, Xinjiang province, China in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo, Japan. Printing is considered one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.

The oldest known Korean surviving printed document is a Buddhist scripture, which dates to 751 [1] The oldest surviving book printed using the more sophisticated block printing, the Chinese Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist scripture), dates from 868. The movable type printer was first invented by Bi Sheng in 1041 during Song Dynasty China. In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money also the movable copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money, nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty, people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal official documents, the typical example of this kind of movable copper-block printing is a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215. The world's first movable type metal printing press was invented in Korea in 1234 by Chwe Yun-ui during the Goryeo Dynasty. By the 12th and 13th century many Chinese libraries contained tens of thousands of printed books. The oldest extant movable metal-type book is the Jikji, printed in 1377 in Korea.

There is little direct evidence, but it is highly probable that the Far East printing technology diffused into Europe through the trade routes from China which went through India and on through the Arabic world. Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing technology in 1440. Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented with him in Mainz. Basing the design of his machine on a wine-press, Gutenberg developed the use of raised and movable type, and from the start used oil-based inks.

The development of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production leading to the spread of knowledge. A printing press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. In 1476 a printing press was developed in England by William Caxton. The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.

Early print shops (near the time of Gutenberg) were run by "master printers." These printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution.

• Early print shop apprentices:

Usually between the ages of 15 and 20, worked for master printers. Apprentices were not required to be literate, and literacy rates at the time were very low, in comparison to today. Apprentices prepared ink, dampened sheets of paper, and assisted at the press. An apprentice who wished to learn to become a compositor had to learn Latin and spend time under the supervision of a journeyman.

• Early Journeyman printers: After completing their apprenticeships, journeyman printers were free to roam Europe with their tools of trade and print where they journeyed to. This facilitated the spread of printing to areas that were less print-centred.

• Early Compositors: Those who set the type for printing.

• Early Pressmen: the person who ran the press. This was physically labour intensive.

Master print shops became the cultural centre for literati.

The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the Dance of Death by Matthias Huss, at Lyon, 1499. This image depicts a compositor standing at a compositor's case being grabbed by a skeleton. The case is raised to facilitate his work. The image also shows a pressman being grabbed by a skeleton. To the right of the print shop a bookshop is shown.

In Prints and Visual Communication, William Ivins offers the following concise history of a series of rapid innovations in image and type printing at the end of the eighteenth century:

At the end of the eighteenth century there were several remarkable innovations in the graphic techniques and those that were utilized to make their materials. Bewick developed the method of using engraving tools on the end of the wood. Senefelder discovered lithography. Blake made relief etchings. Early in the nineteenth century Stanhope, George E. Clymer, Koenig and others introduced new kinds of type presses, which for strength surpassed anything that had previously been known.

In 2006 there are approximately 30,700 printing companies in the United States, accounting for $112 billion, according to the 2006 U.S. Industry & Market Outlook by Barnes Reports. Print jobs that move through the Internet made up 12.5% of the total U.S. Printing market last year, according to research firm InfoTrend/CAP Ventures.

Methods and Formats of Managing Financial Outlay

Court records from the city of Mainz document that Johannes Fust was, for some time, Gutenberg's financial backer.

By the sixteenth century jobs associated with printing were becoming increasingly specialized. Structures supporting publishers were more and more complex, leading to this division of labour. In Europe between 1500 and 1700 the role of the Master Printer was dying out and giving way to the bookseller – publisher. Printing during this period had a stronger commercial imperative than previously. Risks associated with the industry however were substantial, although dependent on the nature of the publication.

Bookseller publishers negotiated at trade fairs and at print shops. Jobbing work appeared in which printers did menial tasks in the beginning of their careers to support themselves.

1500 – 1700: Publishers developed several new methods of funding projects.

1. Cooperative associations/publication syndicates—a number of individuals shared the risks associated with printing and shared in the profit. This was pioneered by the French.

2. Subscription publishing—pioneered by the English in the early 17th century. A prospectus for a publication was drawn up by a publisher to raise funding. The prospectus was given to potential buyers who signed up for a copy. If there were not enough subscriptions the publication did not go ahead. Lists of subscribers were included in the books as endorsements. If enough people subscribed a reprint might occur. Some authors used subscription publication to bypass the publisher entirely.

3. Installment publishing—books were issued in parts until a complete book had been issued. This was not necessarily done under a specific time-allotment. It was an effective method of spreading cost over a period of time. It also allowed earlier returns on investment to help cover production costs of subsequent installments.

The Mechanick Exercises, by Joseph Moxon, in London, 1683, was said to be the first publication done in installments.

Publishing trade organizations allowed publishers to organize business concerns collectively. Systems of self-regulation occurred in these arrangements. For example, if one publisher did something to irritate other publishers he would be controlled by peer pressure. These arrangements helped deal with labour unrest among journeymen, who faced difficult working conditions. Brotherhoods predated unions, without the formal regulations now associated with unions.

Block printing

The original method of printing was block printing, pressing sheets of paper onto individually carved wooden blocks (xylography). Block printing is believed to have originated in Asia. Recently, an excavation of a Korean pagoda unearthed a Buddhist sutra which predates the dates to AD 750-751, and is now considered the oldest discovered printed work in the world. [2] [3]. Before this discovery, it was believed that the earliest known printed text was the Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist scripture), printed in China in mid-9th century. The technique was also known in Europe, where it was mostly used to print Bibles. Because of the difficulties inherent in carving massive quantities of minute text for every block, and given the levels of illiteracy at the time, texts such as the "Pauper's Bibles" emphasized illustrations and used words sparsely. As a new block had to be carved for each page, printing different books was an incredibly time consuming project.

Movable type

Movable type allowed for much more flexible processes than hand copying or block printing. It was invented in 1041 by Bi Sheng in China. Sheng used clay type, which broke easily, but Wang Zhen later carved more durable type from wood. Eventually, invention of printing with metal movable type came about in 1234 during the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea by Chwe Yun-Ui. Examples of this metal type are on display in the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The oldest extant movable metal print book is the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377.

Since there are thousands of Chinese characters, the benefit of the technique was not as large as with alphabetic based languages, which typically are made up of fewer than 50 characters. Still, movable type spurred scholarly pursuits in Song China and facilitated more creative modes of printing. Nevertheless, movable type was not extensively used in China until the European-style printing press was introduced in relatively recent times.

Johann Gutenberg is credited with inventing the first printing press. Gutenberg is also credited with the first use of a oil-based ink. He printed on both vellum and paper, the latter having been introduced in Europe somewhat earlier from China by way of the Arabs, who had a paper mill in operation in Baghdad as early as 794.

Before inventing the printing press in the 1440s, Gutenberg had worked as a goldsmith. The skills and knowledge of metals that he learned as a craftsman were crucial to the later invention of the press. Gutenberg made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality prints.

Printing press

Printing press from 1811, taken in Munich, Germany.

The use of movable type to mass-produce printed works was popularized by a German goldsmith and eventual printer, Johannes Gutenberg, in the 1440s. The skills and knowledge of metals that he learned as a craftsman were crucial to the later invention of the press. Gutenberg made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality prints. While there are several local claims for the invention of the printing press in other parts of Europe, including Laurens Janszoon Coster in the Netherlands and Panfilo Castaldi in Italy, Gutenberg is credited by most scholars with its initial invention.

Presses for olives and wine were known in Europe since Roman times, and Gutenberg was the first to convert the concept for printing uses. Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously used water-based inks. He was also the first to use types made out of lead, which proved to be more suitable for printing than the clay, wooden or bronze types used in East Asia. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention, a special matrix wherewith the moulding of new movable types with an unprecedented precision at short notice became feasible. Within a year after his B42, Gutenberg also published the first coloured prints. As printing material he used both vellum and paper, the latter having been introduced in Europe somewhat earlier from China by way of the Arabs, who had a paper mill in operation in Baghdad as early as 794.

Impact of printing

Diffusion of printing in Europe

In Europe, books were copied mainly in monasteries, or (from the 13th century) in commercial scriptoria, where scribes wrote them out by hand. Books were therefore a scarce resource. While it might take someone a year or more to hand copy a Bible, with the Gutenberg press it was possible to create several hundred copies a year, with two or three people who could read (and proofread), and a few people to support the effort. Each sheet still had to be fed manually, which limited the reproduction speed; and the type had to be set manually for each new page, which limited the number of different pages created per day. Books produced in this period, between the first work of Johann Gutenberg and the year 1500, are collectively referred to as incunabula.

The rise of printed works was not immediately popular. Not only did the papal court contemplate making printing presses an industry requiring a license from the Catholic Church (an idea rejected in the end), but as early as the 15th century some nobles refused to have printed books in their libraries, thinking that to do so would sully their valuable handcopied manuscripts. Similar resistance was later encountered in much of the Islamic world, where calligraphic traditions were extremely important, and also in the Far East.

Despite this resistance, Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly, and within thirty years of its invention in 1453, towns and cities across Europe had functional printing presses. Johann Heynlin, for example, introduced the first press to Paris in 1470. The city of Tübingen saw its first printed work, a commentary by Paul Scriptoris, in 1498. It has been suggested that this rapid expansion shows not only a higher level of industry (fueled by the high-quality European paper mills that had been opening over the previous century) than expected, but also a significantly higher level of literacy than has often been estimated.

The first printing press in a Muslim territory opened in Andalusia in the 1480s. This printing press was run by a family of Jewish merchants who printed texts with the Hebrew script. After the reconquista in the 1490s, the press was moved from Granada to Istanbul (a popular destination for thousands of Andalusian Jews).

File:PressHist.JPG

A sixteenth century printing press.

Effects of printing on culture

The discovery and establishment of the printing of books with movable type marks a paradigm shift in the way information was transferred in Europe. The impact of printing is comparable to the development of language, and the invention of the alphabet, as far as its effects on the society. It is, however, important to note that there has been much recent doubt about the dominance of print. Handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced, and the influence of the printed word on oral communication meant that no one form of communication could dominate.

They also led to the establishment of a community of scientists (previously scientists were mostly isolated) who could easily communicate their discoveries, bringing on the scientific revolution. Also, although early texts were printed in Latin, books were soon produced in common European vernacular, leading to the decline of the Latin language.

Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before, the author was less important, since a copy of Aristotle made in Paris might not be identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author was entirely lost.

Because the printing process ensured that the same information fell on the same pages, page numbering, tables of contents, and indices became common. The process of reading was also changed, gradually changing from oral readings to silent, private reading. This gradually raised the literacy level as well, revolutionizing education.

It can also be argued that printing changed the way Europeans thought. With the older illuminated manuscripts, the emphasis was on the images and the beauty of the page. Early printed works emphasized principally the text and the line of argument. In the sciences, the introduction of the printing press marked a move from the medieval language of metaphors to the adoption of the scientific method.

In general, knowledge came closer to the hands of the people, since printed books could be sold for a fraction of the cost of illuminated manuscripts. There were also more copies of each book available, so that more people could discuss them. Within 50-60 years, the entire library of "classical" knowledge had been printed on the new presses (Eisenstein, 1969; 52). The spread of works also led to the creation of copies by other parties than the original author, leading to the formulation of copyright laws. Furthermore, as the books spread into the hands of the people, Latin was gradually replaced by the national languages. This development was one of the keys to the creation of modern nations.

Some theorists, such as McLuhan, Eisenstein, Kittler, and Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from printing, removing the role of the image from society. Other authors stress that printed works themselves are a visual medium.

The art of book printing

For years, book printing was considered a true art form. Typesetting, or the placement of the characters on the page, including the use of ligatures, was passed down from master to apprentice. In Germany, the art of typesetting was termed the "black art". It has largely been replaced by computer typesetting programs, which make it possible to get similar results with less human involvement. Some few practitioners continue to print books the way Gutenberg did. For example, there is a yearly convention of traditional book printers in Mainz, Germany.

Printing in the industrial age

The Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying, and as testament to its effectiveness, it was essentially unchanged from the time of its invention until the Industrial Revolution, some three hundred years later. The "old style" press (as it was termed in the nineteenth century) was constructed of wood and could produce 240 impressions per hour of simple work using a well experienced two-man crew.

The invention of the steam powered press, credited to Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer in 1812, made it possible to print over a thousand copies of a page per hour.

Koenig and Bauer sold two of their first models to The Times in London in 1814, capable of 1,100 impressions per hour. The first edition so printed was on November 28, 1814. Koenig and Bauer went on to perfect the early model so that it could print on both sides of a sheet at once. This began to make newspapers available to a mass audience (which in turn helped spread literacy), and from the 1820s changed the nature of book production, forcing a greater standardization in titles and other metadata.

Koenig and Bauer's press was improved by Applegath and Cooper. The diagram indicates the principle operation of a Cooper and Applegath's Single Machine. The press is built up from a large flat inking table (A) which moves regularly back and forth, the form (B) on the table holds the type. The paper travels clockwise round a large cloth covered cylinder, the impression roller (C), and is pressed against the table. The ductor roller (D) rotates and so draws ink from the attached reservoir. The ink passes from the ductor roller to the vibrating roller (E), this moves, on its arms, in a regular motion between the ductor roller and the table. The ink is spread thinly and evenly by the distributing rollers (F) and then, as the table moves, passes onto the inking rollers (G). The axles of the inking rollers rest in groves, allowing them to rise and fall, they are also position at a slight angle to the table to improve ink distribution. As the table continues to move the form passes alternately under the inking rollers, twice, and then under the impression roller.

Later on in the middle of the 19th century the rotary press (invented in 1833 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe) allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.

Also, in the middle of the 19th century, there was a separate development of jobbing presses, small presses capable of printing small-format pieces such as billheads, letterheads, business cards, and envelopes. Jobbing presses were capable of quick set-up (average makeready time for a small job was under 15 minutes) and quick production (even on treadle-powered jobbing presses it was considered normal to get 1,000 impressions per hour [iph] with one pressman, with speeds of 1,500 iph often attained on simple envelope work). Job printing emerged as a reasonably cost-effective duplicating solution for commerce at this time.

Movable type has been credited as the single most important invention of the millennium.

Later inventions in this field include the following: <<Please include 1-3 sentences that briefly explain what each term means. This can be done by checking the corresponding Wikipedia site.>>

• Lithography
• Offset printing
• Desktop publishing
• Electronic publishing (on CD-ROM or online)
• Computer printer
• Composing stick

Modern printing technology

Books and newspapers are printed today using the technique of offset lithography. Other common techniques include

• flexography used for packaging, labels, newspapers
• relief print, (mainly used for catalogues),
• screen printing from T-shirts to floor tiles
• rotogravure mainly used for magazines and packaging,
• inkjet used when you have to print a small number of books, packaging and to print a lot of materials from high quality papers to simulate offset print to floor tiles
• hot wax dye transfer
• laser printing mainly used in offices and for transactional printing (bills, bank documents).

State-of-the-art presses use to mix more printing techniques so you can have an offset machine with a flexo section for the varnishing of the product they are printing or a digital printing unit.

Digital Printing

Printing at home or in an office or engineering environment is subdivided into:

• small format (up to ledger size paper)
• wide format (up to 3' or 914mm wide rolls of paper).

Beyond that, there are the following methods:

• heat transfer (like old fax machines or even modern receipt printers that apply heat to special paper, which turns black as directed to form the printed image)
• blueprint (chemical process)
• inkjet (including bubble-jet - where ink is sprayed onto the paper to create the desired image)
• laser (where toner consisting primarily of polymer with pigment of the desired colours is melted and applied directly to the paper to create the desired image.)

Vendors typically stress the total cost to operate the equipment, involving complex calculations that include all cost factors involved in the operation as well as the capital equipment costs, amortisation, etc. For the most part, toner systems beat inkjet in the long run, whereas inkjets are less expensive in the initial purchase price.

Professional digital printing (using toner) primarily uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid ink to the substrate it is printed on. Digital print quality has steadily improved from color and black & white copiers to sophisticated colour digital presses like the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress and the HP Indigo series presses. The iGen3 and Nexpress use toner particles and the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are made for small runs and variable data, and rival offset in quality. Digital offset presses are called direct imaging presses; although these receive computer files and automatically turn them into print-ready plates, they cannot do variable data.

Small press and fanzines generally use Digital printing or more rarely xerography. Prior to the introduction of cheap photocopying the use of machines such as the spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph was common.

Topics in Printing Today

• Office printers: Xerography. Copiers. Mimeography. Laser and bubble jet printers.

• The US Government printing office

• Printing of money and postage stamps: US Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Website: http://www.bep.treas.gov/

• Today there are thousands of different printers available. The Linux website database contains 2270 printers – but that was several months ago, so there are no doubt several hundred more by now!

• Printing for the blind: American Printing House for the Blind

Website: http://www.aph.org/

• Printing history: “Printing: Renaissance and Reformation”

Website: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/sccoll/renprint/renprint.html

• Digital printing

• Printing of things other than books and newspapers and magazines: Brochures. Flyers. Business cards. Catalogs. Folders. Leaflets. Printing on packaging. Shopping bags. Maps.

• There are numerous websites devoted to the history of printing. One is:

http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/booktext.html

• The U.S. Congress has a Joint (House and Senate) Committee on Printing. Among other things, it oversees the U.S. government Printing Office.

Website: http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/booktext.html

• Printing and elections: Is a paper trail – i.e. a printed record – needed for each vote in order to prevent fraud and mistakes in electronic voting?

• Role of printing – especially the printing of propaganda images in addition to text – in spreading the Protestant Reformation.

Website: http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/luther.html

• Many large companies, such as IBM, now offer comprehensive printing systems and machinery for office and other printing needs. See, for example, the IBM website:

http://www.printers.ibm.com/internet/wwsites.nsf/vwwebpublished/main_ww

• International Internet Printing Protocol: gives standards and rules so that all the world’s computers and printers can work together on the Internet

Website: http://www.pwg.org/ipp/

• Graphic Arts Information Network

Website: http://www.gain.net/eweb/StartPage.aspx

• The International Printing Museum, 315 Torrance Blvd., Carson, CA 90745

Website: http://www.printmuseum.org/

• There are various magazines and journals devoted to printing and the printing industry. One is Printing Impressions.

Website: http://www.piworld.com/

• Today’s office printing systems can handle inputs from many different computers, and produce output that conforms to the specifications and needs of the various inputs. See, for example, the website: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/printing.html

See also

• Color printing
• Letterpress printing
• Flexography
• Intaglio
• Typography
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Jang Young Sil
• Paper
• printmaking
• on-line printing
• Graphic Design
• Printmaking
• Anilox
• George E. Clymer
• William Clowes
• National Print Museum of Ireland
• Print culture

External links

• American Printing History Association - numerous links to online resources and other organizations
• The development of book and printing. English website of the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz (Germany)
• Planet Typography - history of printing - selection of international sites dedicated to the history of printing

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Gill Saunders and Rosie Miles Prints Now : Directions and Definitions Victoria and Albert Museum (May 1, 2006) ISBN 1-85177-480-7

• Woong-Jin-Wee-In-Jun-Gi #11 Jang Young Sil by Baek Sauk Gi. Copyright 1987 Woongjin Publishing Co., Ltd. Pg. 61.

• Steinberg, S.H. Five Hundred Years of Printing (London and Newcastle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press), 1996.

• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering, Dover Books, 1957

• Tam, Pui-Wing The New Paper Trail, The Wall Street Journal Online, February 13, 2006 Pg.R8

• Fontaine, Jean-Paul. L'aventure du livre: Du manuscrit medieval a nos jours. Paris: Bibliotheque de l'image, 1999.

• Citation from The Encyclopedia of World History Sixth Edition, Peter N. Stearns (general editor), © 2001 The Houghton Mifflin Company, at Bartleby.com.

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