The history of printing as we know it can be traced back a long way back, into the magazine of human history. The development of a written language came well before the first printed documents excessively start their way off of a printing press. Primitive printing methods were used by the ancient Mesopotamians, who constitute prolific solutions to their winged need to ration written laws on clay tablets. Rolling machines with pictograms were used as the earliest proclaimed printing presses, and cylinders attached to pulleys were the first declared forms of printing.
Silk screening was the next major development in the history of printing, and was developed in ancient China and Egypt around 3000 years ago. Utilized as both an effective method to record the written word and as an art form, the silk screening process is still widely utilized today by many different artisans.
Block printing was the next step in the evolution that resulted in the later development of the modern printing press. This technique was developed during the Han Dynasty in China, and is a method capable of printing on both cloth and paper materials. This made block printing very versatile and cheap during a time where cutting costs and expenses was crucial. Paper making was a lengthy and difficult process that could require a significant amount of time, and block printing offered some of the best quality printed images the world had seen up to that point.
The Chinese are responsible for many of the major advances in printmaking, but during the same time Buddhist monks in India were using practices for printing on silk and paper that most closely resemble the devices later invented by Gutenberg to print the famous first edition on his Gutenberg Press. The Buddhist Creed was the primary reason for having the necessity for a printing press. The monks would print the creed on leaflets and distribute them, much like the informational pamphlets we would see today.
The evolution of ancient printing reached its pinnacle in Europe, with the invention of the revolutionary idea of movable, expandable type. This system allowed one printing machine to be pre - loaded with block printing letters so that new editions could be printed on a frequent basis. This revelation changed the print media forever, allowing presses to produce new content that helped the world keep up with the news at last. Newspapers evolved shortly after this time period, and the literacy rate of the civilized world began increasing exponentially as a result.
