ITAP; week 8, Principle 1 - A Brief History of Production

Principle 1 A Brief History of Production 

Task: When and how was the first ever book in Europe printed? - focus research on history of books.

 

The first place that books were discovered to have been created were in Asian countries such as Iran, and Iraq. However, Uruk was where the first book to have been created was founded, some of the earliest books were also discovered in Ur. The books here were created through handwritten manuscripts, apposed to printing presses, or use of moving type.   
  In 1445 Johannes Gutenberg, German Blacksmith, Goldsmith, Printmaker, and Publisher, was the first person in Europe to introduce print. Gutenberg’s invention of mechanical moving type enabled users to reproduce the elements of a document, and therefore revolutionised print and press making within Europe, allowing development for mass production of printed books.

   From the development of the invention of mechanical moving type, it showed significant improvement from the original handwritten manuscripts, which happened to be the former method of production for books within Europe.

    Further more, with his invention the Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with movable type in the West, this marked the beginning of the “Gutenberg Revolution”, creating an iconic status for this production of this book due to its aesthetic qualities, as well as its artistic qualities.

    As a result in the success of movable type, Western printing technology was adopted in all world regions by the end of the 19th century, displacing the manuscript and block printing.

 

Timeline of production of print 

• The Diamond Sutra, an Indian text translated from Sanskrit to Chinese in about AD400, is the world’s earliest dated book.

• Until the end of the 18th century, the only way to print type and illustrations combined on the same page was by using woodcuts. These have a period charm but lacked the capacity for fine detail, as is obvious from this depiction of the 1456 visit of Halley’s Comet, from Conrad Lycosthenes’ Prodigiorum acostentorum chronicon, 1557

• Because etching is an intaglio process, illustrations had to be printed separately from the text and were “tipped in” when the book was bound. The baker’s shop, 1635, comes from a series of 22 etchings on the arts and crafts by Jan Joris van der Vliet!

• Title page from The Whole Book of Psalms (1640), the first book to be published in North America, by Stephen Dayle of Cambridge, Massachusetts