The Triumph of the Printing Press

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The Triumph of the Printing Press

• Or, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about
  Kerning and Serifs, But Were Afraid to Ask.

Kip Wheeler English 328 Fall 2008
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Printing is not a new idea

• We give all the credit to Johannes Gutenberg, but
  he wasnt the first Printer--just the first in
  Europe to make the innovation practical.

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The Phaistos Disk
Discovered in Crete, 1908. If it isnt a fake, it
dates to 1850 BCE.
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Woodblock Printing

• Used as early as 200 A.D. in China,(but
  economically not feasible without paper and
  without a phonetically based alphabet)

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Movable type first appears using wooden blocks
(and then later ceramic fired letters) in 1020 CE
under the direction of Bi Shang in China. It
becomes a standard competitor of calligraphy a
good 400 years before the technology permeates
Europe. It quickly spread to Korea and Tibet.
Here are the directions for a Zaju play from the
Yuan Dynasty of China, printed via wood block
printing. The play is entitled Zhuye Zhou.
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• Tibetan Monks using rubbing technique to create a
  Woodblock Print in Sera Monastery, Tibet

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Metal movable type first appears 20 years later
(1040 CE) in Arabic Egypt, sixty-some years
before the Crusades. The technology doesnt
become known in Europe until about 1450. European
crusaders are far too busy slaughtering Muslims
(and vice-versa) to trade printing technologies.
Here, we see a metal type-letter (a sort) and
the image it stamps on a page.
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A typesetter would align hundreds of these
sorts in rows, lock them in place, and
reverse-stamp them to print an entire page at
once.
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Advantages?

• Metal sorts wouldnt crack under pressure the
  way ceramic sorts would.
• Metal sorts would not absorb and hold excess ink
  the way pores in wood, much less messy.
• While each wood block had to be carved by hand,
  it was easy to reproduce metal type.
• Gutenberg (originally a goldsmith) was familiar
  with using a matrix to stamp a negative
  impression into a hand mould made of lead, tin,
  and antimony. This left a hollow impression of
  the desired stamped image. This hollow mould
  could be filled with liquid metal, cooled, and
  the the sort snapped out after excess casting
  stuck on the end and edges (tang) were trimmed
  away.

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Gutenbergs Debt to Olive Oil and Wine?

• He figured out the same mechanism used in
  winepresses to crush grapes and in oil presses to
  crush olives could be used to press ink against
  sheets of paper in rapid succession.

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• Renaissance
• Winepress
• c. 1450

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• Its daughter,
• Technologically
• Speaking--
• The Printing
• Press (example
• From 1598)

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• Its great-grand daughter The Koenig Platen
  Printing Press of 1823.

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Its Basic Anatomy
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The Rise of Typeset!

• Reproduction of medieval manuscripts
• Hybrid forms!
• Vignettes!
• Ligatures!
• Majuscule becomes Upper case!
• Miniscule becomes lower case (originally
  applied to the drawers in standard workshop
  design that held each letter!
• Kerning!
• Catchphrase!

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Serifs!
Sans Serif Font
Serif Font
Serif Font with serifs painted red.
Traditionally, American printers use serif fonts
for long passages or body text, and they use
sans serif fonts for titles or short phrases.
This rule is the opposite of most European
publications.
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The Rise of Fonts!
Geneva Helvetica New York Times
Arial Baskerville Bauhaus Braggadoccio Chicago Coo
per Black
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Finis!


Citations Under Construction!
Serif and Sans Serif. Wikimedia Commons.
Wine Press. The Clutterbug Photography. 7
October 2008. lthttp//www.theclutterbug.com/Photos
/index_photos.htmlgt.