Printing - History Of Printing, The Gutenberg Revolution, Conventional Printing Methods, Letterpress, Large Presses, Printing Pictures - Photogravure, Dot-matrix printers
hollows plate ink acid
In photogravure, ink is held in the hollows of a plate rather than on high relief. This method of printing is known as intaglio. The photogravure plate, like the halftone plate, is produced with the aid of a camera and an acid to etch away parts of the metal plate. The acid creates hollows of different depths. The deepest hollows hold the most ink and print the darkest areas in the picture. Shallow hollows hold less ink and print lighter areas.
Dot-matrix printers work by drawing dots in much the same way that typewriters produce characters. They create whole letters by striking a sheet of paper through an inked ribbon. The dot matrix printer is ideally suited for printing carbon-copy forms, but does not find much current use in desktop publishing.
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Although a technology in which seals were first pressed into damp clay tablets is known to have been used by the Babylonians, the Chinese probably invented printing. They used carved stones for making copies by first sprinkling soot over the carving, then placing a piece of paper on it and rubbing until the ashes came off on the stone. The oldest known printings were produced in China 1,200 years …
The first European to successfully use movable type was probably Johann Gutenberg, who was born in Germany in 1397. Gutenberg hit upon the notion of cutting each letter in the alphabet on the end of a small stick. Each letter was then pressed into a small square of metal, and when Gutenberg had a letter-shaped hollow for each letter of the alphabet, he could produce type. Gutenberg fitted four pie…
Conventional typesetting machines mold type from molten metal, in a process called type casting, for each new printing job. Casting type is more efficient than setting type by hand. Cast type can be melted down, and reused. Typesetting machines either cast an entire line of type at once (linotype machines) or a single letter at a time (monotype machines). James O. Clephane and Ottmar Merganthaler …
Images are still occasionally printed using metal plates that are engraved or etched by hand. In the case of photoengraving, a similar process makes use of a camera. First, the image is photographed to produce a negative on a sheet of transparent film. The negative is then used to print the image on a sheet of zinc that is covered with a gelatin-like substance, or emulsion. Chemicals in the emulsi…
In lithography, a picture is drawn on a smooth flat stone with a special type of oily crayon. Because the printing surface is flat, lithography is an example of planographic or surface printing. Then the lithographer passes a water-soaked roller over the stone. The water adheres to the bare stone surface, but does not stick to the oily crayon marks. Another roller soaked with printer's ink …
In desktop publishing, text is first prepared on a word processor, and illustrations are prepared using drawing software. Photographs or other art may also be captured electronically using a scanner. The electronic files are next sent to a computer running a page-layout application. Page layout software is the heart of desktop publishing. This software allows the desktop publisher to manipulate te…
Laser printers currently accommodate the high volume printing needs of many large organizations, and meet the more modest requirements of individuals and small businesses. In laser printing, electronic signals describing the document are first sent from the desktop publishing computer to the printer's logic board. Printing fonts are next loaded into the printer's memory. The printer&…
Ink jet printers offer low cost printing alternatives to laser printers, while retaining some of the print quality of laser printers. They operate silently, are lightweight, and make good home printers. In ink jet printing, liquid ink is pumped into a set of chambers, each containing a heating element. There the ink is heated until it vaporizes. The vaporous ink is then forced through tiny nozzles…
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