In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a durable representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Different types of printers include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers.
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses.
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium, thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper, or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element. Thereby, the machine produces a legible written document composed of ink and paper. By the end of the 19th century, a person who used such a device was also referred to as a typewriter.
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tablets, used during the sixth century. Printing by pressing an inked image onto paper appeared later that century. Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.
George E. Clymer, printing press inventor and manufacturer, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American engineer and all around inventor. Clymer, in his earlier vocational years, was something of a civil engineer and as an inventor became noted for his improvements and developments in early nineteenth century printing presses, and ultimately developed his own distinctive printing press, which soon became widely known as the Columbian Printing Press, which were often favorably received by printers in America, England and parts of Europe. After relocating to England because of better market conditions, Clymer subsequently became one of the principal developers and suppliers of printing presses in Europe in the early nineteenth century. The innovative designs he incorporated into his printing presses were put to use in the manufacturing of other printing presses years after his death.
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing for producing many copies by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against individual sheets of paper or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.
The Museum of Printing (MoP), located in Haverhill, Massachusetts, is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of printing technologies and practices, the graphic arts, and their role in the development of culture and literacy.
A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically in Europe, broadsides were used as posters, announcing events or proclamations, giving political views, commentary in the form of ballads, or simply advertisements. In Japan, chromoxylographic broadsheets featuring artistic prints were common.
In printing, a stereotype, stereoplate or simply a stereo, is a solid plate of type metal, cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mould taken from the surface of a forme of type. The mould was known as a flong.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was the first newspaper printed in Australia, running from 5 March 1803 until 20 October 1842. It was a semi-official publication of the government of New South Wales, authorised by Governor Philip King and printed by George Howe. On 14 October 1824, under the editorship of Robert Howe, it ceased to be censored by the colonial government.
The history of printing starts as early as 3000 BCE, when the proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations used cylinder seals to certify documents written in clay tablets. Other early forms include block seals, hammered coinage, pottery imprints, and cloth printing. Initially a method of printing patterns on cloth such as silk, woodblock printing for texts on paper originated in China by the 7th century during the Tang dynasty, leading to the spread of book production and woodblock printing in other parts of Asia such as Korea and Japan. The Chinese Buddhist Diamond Sutra, printed by woodblock on 11 May 868, is the earliest known printed book with a precise publishing date. Movable type was invented by Chinese artisan Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty, but it received limited use compared to woodblock printing. However, the use of copper movable types was documented in a Song-era book from 1193, and the earliest printed paper money using movable metal type to print the identifying codes were made in 1161. The technology also spread outside China, with the oldest extant printed book using metal movable type being the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era.
The Albion press is a model of early iron hand printing press, originally designed and manufactured in London by Richard Whittaker Cope around 1820.
Plantin is an old-style serif typeface. It was created in 1913 by the British Monotype Corporation for their hot metal typesetting system and is named after the sixteenth-century printer Christophe Plantin. It is loosely based on a Gros Cicero roman type cut in the 16th century by Robert Granjon held in the collection of the Plantin–Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The Ben Lane Print Shop is a demonstration site at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, in the United States.
Early American publishers and printers played a central role in the social, religious, political and commercial development of the Thirteen Colonies in British America prior to and during the American Revolution and the ensuing American Revolutionary War that established American independence.
In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lighter and cheaper than large sizes of metal type.
Adam Ramage was an American printing press manufacturer and the originator of Ramage printing press, a "one-pull" printing press. He is noted for being one of the most important printing press makers and innovators of his day, and the primary press-builder in the United States during the beginning of the 19th century. Ramage was one of the first press makers to incorporate an iron printing bed into the apparatus. The advent of printing was the primary way information was passed on from town to town, colony to colony, state to state, and functioned as a news network during its early years.
The Ruthven printing press was invented and manufactured by John Ruthven of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1819 to 1822. The Ruthven press was an iron bed press which functioned by means of an unconventional platen which rolled over a stationary table which held the type, where the pressure on the type faces was exerted from below, instead of in the conventional method where pressure was applied from above. The platen is supported by two iron springs, under which are four brass bevelled wheels which move along on two tracks made of bevelled steel. After the impression is made the springs give way, and consequently rise up. The press overall incorporated a number of other rather complex mechanical components, the details of which are beyond the scope of this article. The press was smaller in size than most presses of this period, easier to use, and subsequently it quickly established a favorable reputation for itself among English printers.
