Publishing

History Of Publishing

Early Printing One of the oldest techniques of printing is by using wood blocks. It is a relief process in which an image is carved in reverse into a piece of wood, inked up and paper is pressed down on top of it to transfer the ink and image. It is one of the rarest forms of printing in use today, due primarily to time consumption. However, there are many sets of type still in existence that were created from woodblocks and are often used in letterpress poster printing. The earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and woodblock printing remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century.

Letterpress

Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing using a printing press. A worker composes and locks movable type into the bed of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type which creates an impression on the paper.

Letterpress printing was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century until the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century.

Lithography / Offset lithographyA printing plate with a relief image is dampened with water and then coated with ink. The ink only sticks to the parts of the plate that are not wet with water. The printing plate is fixed to a roller and the image is transferred onto paper fed under the roller.

Offset printing is created using plates generated for each colour used in the printing process. There are two kinds of offset printing called Sheetfed, in which individual sheets are fed into the printer, and Web, which prints from large rolls and can be used to quickly produce very large quantities of printed materials such as newspapers.In offset-lithography, the paper does not come into direct contact with the printing plate. Instead, the image is transferred to a rubber roller.

Printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by German author and actor Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of publishing theatrical works.

Laser printing & photocopyingA laser printer is a printer for computers. It uses LED-technology to get small particles of toner from a cartridge onto paper. Very often, this is more economical to use than the ink of inkjet printers. The laser printer was first invented by a team at Xerox in 1969.

Office photocopying was introduced by Xerox in 1959, and it gradually replaced copies made by Verifax, Photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines.

Desk Top Publishing Desktop publishing (abbreviated DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout skills on a personal computer. Desktop publishing software can generate layouts and produce typographic quality text and images comparable to traditional typography and printing.

It was primarily the introduction of both the Apple LaserWriter, a PostScript desktop printer, and PageMaker for the Mac that kicked off the desktop publishing revolution. The Apple Macintosh was released in 1984.