Printing then

The history of mechanical reproduction of texts and later images starts in the 15th century:
It is the time of Johannes Gutenberg, who invented movable types for the installation of printing blocks in Mainz. The fact that the first daily newspaper in the German language area was published already in 1660 in Leipzig is far less known. It is called "Incoming Newspaper", i.e. incoming messages. Another fact that is only known to a few is the discovery of the lithographic printing - a predecessor of today's offset printing - by Alois Senefelder who was searching for reproduction possibilities for his own drawings at that time.

The era of industrialisation
has entailed a whole series of inventions that have indirectly or directly revolutionised the appearance and production of print products:

• In 1812, the first quick printing press made by F. Koenig starts to rotate,
• fotography is invented in 1839,
• whereas halftone reproduction by pattern arrived in the year 1843,
• autotypy in 1881,
• the rotogravure of photographic halftone images
• with low grid in 1890,
• the Lynotype typesetting machine in 1884
• and the Monotype typesetting machine in 1897.

In the 20th century, the technological process ranges from the development of offset printing and newspaper rotogravure for text and images in 1904 in Germany over the first demonstration of a colour scanner in 1949 in the United States to the development of digital pre-press processes.

Since the 1980s, technologies have evolved in ever shorter intervals, especially in the pre-press:
with an orientation towards desktop publishing, computer-to-film and computer-to-plate and even further towards digital imaging and non-impact printing. Especially offset presses underwent a very dynamic development. Today, it is possible to process paper widths of 2.25 m at speeds of nearly 16 m/sec.

Interesting links:
www.druckkunst-museum.de
www.gutenberg.de
www.deutsches-museum.de