History of Publication

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THEHISTORY

PUBLICATION

Saakshita Prabhakar

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PUBLICATION

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T o publish is to make content publicly known. The word publication means the act of publishing and any

writing of which copies are published. Good publications require well-written text,

appropriate illustrations, intelligent design and layout, careful typography, and good-quality printing and binding. Among publications are books, and periodicals, the latter including magazines, scholarly journals, and newspapers.

An account of the selection, preparation, and marketing of printed matter from its origins in ancient times to the present. The activity has grown from small beginnings into a vast and complex industry responsible for the dissemination of all manner of cultural material; its impact upon civilization is impossible to calculate.

Publishing as it is known today depends on a series of three major inventions—writing, paper, and printing—and one crucial social development—the spread of literacy. Before the invention of writing, perhaps by the Sumerians in the 4th millennium bc, information could be spread only by word of mouth, with all the accompanying

limitations of place and time. Writing was originally regarded not as a means of disseminating information but as a way to fix religious formulations or to secure codes of law, genealogies, and other socially important matters, which had previously been committed to memory. Publishing could begin only after the monopoly of letters, often held by a priestly caste, had been broken, probably in connection with the development of the value of writing in commerce. Scripts of various kinds came to be used throughout most of the ancient world for proclamations, correspondence, transactions, and records; but book production was confined largely to religious centres of learning, as it would be again later in medieval Europe. Only in Hellenistic Greece, in Rome, and in China, where there were essentially no theocratic societies, does there seem to have been any publishing in the modern sense—i.e., A copying industry supplying a lay readership.

The functions peculiar to the publisher—i.e., selecting, editing, and designing the material; arranging its production and distribution; and bearing the financial

The history of publishing is characterized by a close interplay of technical innovation and social change, each promoting the other.

PUBLICATIONCAPSULE

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risk or the responsibility for the whole operation—often merged in the past with those of the author, the printer, or the bookseller. With increasing specialization, however, publishing became, certainly by the 19th century, an increasingly distinct occupation.

Published matter can be divided into two main categories, the periodicals and nonperiodicals; i.e., publications that appear at more or less regular intervals and those that appear on single occasions.

Periodical publications may be further divided into two classes, newspapers and magazines. Though the boundary between them is not to clear—there are magazines devoted to news, and many newspapers have magazine features—their differences of format, tempo, and function are sufficiently marked: the newspaper (daily or weekly) usually has large, loose pages, a high degree of immediacy, and miscellaneous contents; whereas the magazine (weekly, monthly, or quarterly) has smaller pages, is usually fastened together and sometimes bound, and is less urgent in tone and more specialized in content. Both sprang up after the invention of printing, but both have shown a phenomenal rate of growth to meet the demand for quick information and regular entertainment.

Of the nonperiodical publications, books constitute by far the largest class; they are also, in one form or another, the oldest of all types of publication and go back to the earliest civilizations. There is no satisfactory definition of a book, as the word covers a variety of publications.

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation). The first known movable type system was invented in China by Bi Sheng out of ceramic between 1041 and 1048. Metal movable type was first invented in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230). This led to the printing of the Jikji in 1377—today the world’s oldest extant movable metal print book.

Neither movable type system was widely used, probably because of the enormous amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets, or in the case of Korea, metal tablets, required by the use of Chinese characters.

Compared to woodblock printing, movable type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for alphabetic scripts. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg’s movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.

Precursors to movable typeThe technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer.

Movable Type

“News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class publication and not news”

~ Benjamin Disraeli

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Woodblock printingFollowing the invention of paper in the Han Dynasty, writing materials became more portable and economical than the bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal or stone tablets, silk, etc. previously used. Yet copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172-178 AD) towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty did sealing print and monotype appear. It was soon used for printing designs on fabrics, and later for printing texts.

Metal block printingBlock printing, called tarsh in Arabic was developed in Arabic Egypt during the 9th-10th centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. There were different types of print blocks, including ones made from metal, wood and other materials. This technique, however, appears to have had very little influence outside of the Muslim world. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, initially for fabric, the technique of metal block printing was also unknown in Europe. Block printing later went out of use in Islamic Central Asia after movable type printing was introduced from China.

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1398 – February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer who is credited with being the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439, and the global inventor of the mechanical printing press. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

The Gutenberg PressThe Gutenberg press with its wooden and later metal movable type printing brought down the price of printed materials and made such materials available for the masses. It remained the standard until the 20th century. The Gutenberg printing press developed from the technology of the screw-type wine presses of the Rhine Valley. It was there in 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg created his printing press, a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of moveable hand-set block letters held within a wooden form.

The Gutenberg BibleThe Gutenberg Bible is one of the first books we know of that were mass produced. It is nearly synonymous with

the phrase “rare book”. Gutenberg started producing his Bibles in 1450, with the first ones being

available in 1454. The Bible, printed at Mainz, probably required several years

of work; it began in 1452 and was completed not in 1455 and printed in an edition of about 180 copies.

The Gutenberg Bible is known as an “illuminated manuscript”, meaning that the pages of text are heavily decorated with engravings, flourished

initials and stylish borders. Small portraits or miniatures are painted on

pages of particular importance. Though the text was printed mechanically, all of

the additional illumination was done by hand. Some of the Bibles are printed on paper and some

on vellum (fine calf ’s skin). The typeface of these books is called “textura”, made up of very bold horizontal and vertical strokes.

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FIRST OFPUBLICATIONS

“Hidden for centuries in a sealed-up cave in north-west China, ‘Diamond Sutra’ is the world’s earliest complete survival of a dated printed book. It was made in AD 868. Seven strips of yellow-stained paper were printed from carved wooden blocks and pasted together to form a scroll over 5m long. Though written in Chinese, the text is one of the most important sacred works of the Buddhist faith, which was founded in India. Although not the earliest example of a printed book, it is the oldest we have bearing a date. The quality of the illustration at the opening of this ‘Diamond Sutra’ shows the carver of the printing blocks to have been a man of considerable experience and skill.

This scroll was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in a walled-up cave at the ‘Caves of the Thousand Buddhas’, near Dunhuang, in North-West China.

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A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side.

Books may also refer to a literature work, or a main division of such a work. In library and information

science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature.

History of Books

AntiquityWhen writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing. Alphabetic writing emerged in Egypt around 1800 BC.

ScrollPapyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool, was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty. Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll.

CodexThe first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the century, where he praises its compactness. However the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use.

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ManuscriptsThe fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. saw the decline of the culture of ancient Rome. Papyrus became difficult to obtain due to lack of contact with Egypt, and parchment, which had been used for centuries, became the main writing material. Monasteries carried on the Latin writing tradition in the Western Roman Empire. Cassiodorus, in the monastery of Vivarium (established around 540), stressed the importance of copying texts. Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books expensive and comparatively rare.

Magazines

Magazines didn’t look like that until after World War II. The first magazines, in the 1700s, looked like....books. Magazines began as genteel soapboxes from which literate men expounded their points of view, in essay or satire. According to several sources, Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (Edifying Monthly Discussions) is considered the world’s first magazine (published in Germany). It was started in 1663 by Johann Rist, a theologian and poet of Hamburg. Soon after there appeared a group of learned periodicals: the Journal des Sçavans (later Journal des Savants; 1665), started in France by the author Denis de. Established in Paris by Jean Donneau de Vise. The first English-language magazine was “The Review,” published in London in 1704 by Daniel Defoe. The Gentleman’s Magazine, first published in 1731 in England, is considered to have been the first modern magazine. Daniel Defoe started The Review, during or just after his imprisonment for criticizing the Church of England which ran successfully tri-weekly without interruption until 1713. In 1741, magazines made their way to America, though most publications lasted only a few issues.

InfluenceHistorically, magazines have had a powerful influence on people and society. Muckrakers like Upton Sinclair used magazines to expose the injustices of the factories during the industrial revolution. “National Geographic,” first published in 1899, promoted cultural awareness through its photographs and essays/articles on people from all around the world.

News MagazinesThere was an increased interest in world events because of Word War I. This led to the creation of news magazines

such as “Time” in 1923 and “Newsweek” a decade later.

VarietyThe twentieth century saw a wide range of magazines, from women’s magazines such as “Family Circle” and “Cosmopolitan,” men’s magazines like “Playboy” and “Field and Stream,” and general interest magazines like “Reader’s Digest.”

Online MagazinesMuch of the cost of producing magazines comes from paper, postage and circulation. In order to save costs, many magazines today exist partially or solely online.

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The sending of greeting cards at Christmas began in the Victorian era. Although wood engravers produced prints with religious themes in the European Middle Ages, the first commercial Christmas and New Year’s card is believed to have been designed and printed in 1843 in London.

John Callcott Horsley (born 1817-- died 1903), a British narrative painter and a Royal Academician, designed the very first Christmas and New Year’s card at the request of his friend Sir Henry Cole (the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum). In 1843 an edition of 1,000 of these Christmas cards were printed and placed on sale in London. They were printed in lithography by Jobbins of Warwick Court, Holborn, London, and hand-colored by a professional “colourer” named Mason.

The Christmas card was lithographed on stiff cardboard, 5 1/8 by 3 1/4 inches, in dark sepia, with a design of a trellis of rustic-work, in the Germanesque style, divided into a center and two side panels. In the panels were figures representing two of the acts of charity, “feeding the hungry” and “clothing the naked.”

By the 1850s, the greeting card had been transformed from a an expensive, handmade and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal communication, due largely to advances in printing and mechanization. By 1860s, companies like Marcus Ward & Co, Goodall and Charles Bennett began the mass production of greeting cards. They employed well known artists such as Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane as illustrators and card designers.

FIRST EVER PUBLISHEDCHRISTMAS CARD

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Newspaper

The story begins some five centuries ago in Europe. Here, merchants would distribute newsletters written by hand containing information regarding the weather, economic conditions, wars and human-interest stories. Although this was the first known form of distributed written information, the country accredited with the creation of the first newspaper is Holland. Opregte Haarlemsche Courant from Haarlem, first published in 1656, is the oldest paper still printed. It was forced to merge with the newspaper Haarlems Dagblad in 1942 when Germany occupied the Netherlands.

America, however, was a step behind. Publick Occurrences, both Foreign and Domestick, was the first newspaper published in America. Printed by Richard Pierce, and edited by Benjamin Harris, the first copy issued on September 25, 1690 would also be the last. It filled only 3 sheets of paper measuring six by ten inches, the equivalent of filling half of the front page of a newspaper today (14” x 23”).

The sudden discontinuation of Publick Occurrences would mean the last news offered to Americans for the next few years. Instead, newspapers published in London were read even though the “first true newspaper in English was the London Gazette, published four years later in 1666.

By 19th century, Europe, North and South America, published newspaper. Advances in printing technology enabled newspapers to become popular means of communication.

Industrial RevolutionThe industrial revolution, dramatically affected newspapers. Both the numbers of papers and their paid circulations continued to rise. The 1850 census catalogued 2,526 titles. In the 1850’s powerful, giant presses appeared, able to print ten thousand complete papers per hour. At this time the first “pictorial” weekly newspapers emerged;

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(Top left) Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, (Top Right) Publick Occurrences, (Bottom

Left) The Times, (Bottom Right) Diario de Pernambuco

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713 Mixed News in Kaiyuan (name of the year) is first newspaper published in China.

1040 In China, Pi Sheng invents printing from movable woodblocks.

1447 Gutenberg invents letterpress printing,.

1556 Venetian Notizie scritte was published, a monthly paper for which readers pay a “gazetta”

1605 Johann Carolus publishes the first printed newspaper, Relation, in Strasbourg

1631 The Gazette, the first French newspaper, is founded.

TIMELINE

1645 Post-och Inrikes Tidningar

(“Regular Mail Tidings News”), is published in

Sweden

1656 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant from Haarlem was

published.

1690 Publick Occurrences is the first paper

published in America when it

appears in Boston

1803 Australia’s military

government publishes the

Sydney Gazette and New South

Wales Advertiser.

1814, John Walter, publisher of The Times in London

1880 First photographs

appear in a newspaper

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A project under Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology dated 11th October 2009