History of printing and typography, from the invention of movable type printing of Gutenber to digital printing.

From the origins of the printing systems today, the inventor of movable type printing Johann Gutenberg to modern computer systems.

Johann Gutenber is considered the inventor of the art of letterpress printing with movable type, with the help dell’amanuense Peter Schöffer, financed by the banker Johann Fust, Gutenberg press between 1448 and 1454 in Mainz the famous 42-line Bible, perfecting a similar technique was probably already in use in China.

The technique is based on the types of Gutenberg, they are small metal shaped prisms each as the reverse side of a character, which are aligned and assembled in lines to build the matrix, the full page of text to be printed.

Each matrix as follows, is inked and placed in a press where pressure is done printing on paper. In the first production of Gutenberg and throughout 1400, the cats were held together by bands and is for this reason (from the Latin in my cradle, namely cots, an infant) so printed books are called incunabula.

The Bible in 42 lines is sold in Frankfurt since the year 1455, the printing press began to spread throughout Europe and in 1469 in Venice spread the first printers who adopt this new technology helping to make the lagoon city the the most important European center of book printing.

Due to the shape of the characters, the general provision and the use of statements, the first incunabula resemble the existing manuscripts, but in the sixteenth century, the continuous evolution of the fledgling publishing industry makes the text more readable and accessible by reducing characters, eliminating abbreviations, and further ranging lines.

The continuous evolution of the technique of letterpress printing in 1700 brings new standards of characters that follow precise geometric proportions. These characters are introduced by John Baskerville, François Ambroise Didot and Bodoni by the Italian Giovanni.

During the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, is taken a further evolutionary step, is introduced to a new fact, the “press of Gutenberg” with metal rather than wood.

In the late 1700s, specifically in 1796, Aloys Senefelder invented lithography, printing technique chemistry of stone, whose principles inspire later the technique of offset printing that will see the light in 1875 thanks to Robert Barclay.

In 1798, to increase the production speed, Luis Nicolas Robert invented the “paper machine”, which will allow to manufacture a continuous sheet of paper.

In this period the papers introduce as many innovations in printing; among these it stands out the “Times” of London, which increases production from 300 to 1100 copies per hour by adopting the press plane-cylindrical steam, which will be exceeded in 1828 by the machine “four-cylinder” vertical capable of producing over 5000 copies per hour.

But it is thanks to the French-born Italian Auguste Hippolyte Marinoni that we are witnessing a real revolution: Marinoni invents first printing in four colors that color (CMYK), and later in 1886, the press, a machine capable of printing thousands of copies per hour on a continuous strip of white paper. CMYK printing allows you to get a picture with colors and shades you want, overlapping layers of 4 different colors.

The end of ‘800 saw the birth by Ottmar Mergenthaler Linotype, machinery that allowed the mechanical composition of an entire line of characters in metal, machinery followed by Monotype in 1889, developed by Tolbert Lanston.

These technologies of mechanization of the press will come until 1960, when it is introduced on an industrial offset printing.

A note in this historical period is certainly adding to the introduction of xerography, mother of the first digital printers, technology that in the decades to follow definitely revolutionize the world of print.

The progress of information technology degl ’70s can have systems that can generate documents already organized into lines and pages, starting from typing on the keyboard. Thanks to phototypesetting it is possible to see on video terminals what the composer typing.

Apple Macintosh in 1985, thanks to programs like PagMaker marks the debut of Desktop Publishing, giving further impetus to the revolution and evolution of computing techniques in a print today typography.