Question

Find out more about the changes in print technology in the last 100 years. Write about the changes, explaining why they have taken place, what their consequences have been.

Answer 1

1. Eighteenth century innovations: At the end of the eighteenth century, there were several remarkable advances in graphic techniques and the materials used to create them. Bewick invented the method of engraving tools on the end of the wood. Senefelder discovered lithography. Blake created relief etchings.
2. Nineteenth century innovations:
   1. Stan Hope, George E. Clymer, Koenig, and others produced new kinds of type presses in the early nineteenth century, outperforming anything previously known in terms of strength.
   2. Bryan Donkin devised the composition roller and developed a commercial use for the Fourdrinier machine.
3. Twentieth century innovation: Offset lithography is the printing process used for books and newspapers. Other common techniques include:
   1. Flexography is used for packaging, labels, and newspaper
   2. Relief print,(mainly used for catalogues)
   3. Screen printing from T-shirts to floor tiles
   4. Rotogravure mainly used for magazines and packaging.
   5. Inkjet is typically used to print a limited quantity of books or packages, as well as to print a variety of materials on high-quality paper and offset printing floor tiles. Inkjet is also used to attach mailing addresses to direct mail pieces.
   6. Hot wax dry transfer
   7. Laser printing is primarily used for office transactional printing (bills, bank documents), but it is also widely used by direct mail companies to create variable-data letters or coupons, among other things.
   8. Gravure printing uses small holes bored into the surface of the printing plate to create the image that will be printed. The cells are filled with ink, and the surplus is scraped from the surface. A rubber-covered roller then presses paper into the plate's surface, bringing it into touch with the ink in the cells. Printing plates are usually constructed of copper and can be engraved or etched. Gravure printing is used for extended, high-quality print runs of publications, mail-order catalogues, packaging, and printing on fabric and wallpaper. It is also used to print postage stamps and decorative plastic laminates, such as kitchen worktops.
   9. Digital Printing: Printing at home or in an office or engineering environment is subdivided into:
      • Small format (up to ledger-size paper sheets), as used in businesses and libraries.
      • Wide format rolls of paper (up to 3' or 914 m wide) are used in drafting and design facilities.

Some of the more common technologies are:

1. Line printing- Where pre-formed characters are applied to the paper by lines
2. Daisy wheel- where pre-formed characters are applied individually
3. Dot-matrix- which produces arbitrary patterns of dots with an array of printing studs
4. Heat transfer- as early fax machines or modern receipt printers that apply heat to specific paper, which becomes black to make the printed image.
5. Laser- where toner consisting largely of polymer and pigment of the desired colors is melted and applied directly to the paper to generate the desired image.

Reasons and consequences behind these changes:

Vendors typically emphasize the total cost of operating the equipment, which involves complex calculations that include all cost factors involved in operation, as well as capital equipment costs, amortization, and so on. For the most part, toner systems outperform inkjets in the long run, despite the fact that inkjets are less expensive at the outset.

Professional digital printing (using toner) typically uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid ink to the substrate being printed on. The quality of digital prints has progressively increased since the introduction of early colour digital presses such as the Xerox iGen3, Kodak Express, and HP Indigo Digital Press series. The iGen3 and Express employ tiny particles, whereas the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are designed for small runs and unpredictable data, and they rival offset in quality.

Digital offset presses, also known as direct imaging presses, can receive computer files and automatically convert them into print-ready plates, but they cannot insert variable data. Small presses and fanzines typically use digital printing or, in rare cases, xerography. Before the emergence of low-cost photocopying, devices like the spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph were widely used.