The power of print is something that most of us take for granted in modern times, as high quality printers are found in the vast majority of homes and businesses, ink cartridges brim full and ready to print anything from school essays to bus timetables, from short stories to bank statements.
But this luxury is one that has only become available to people over the last couple of decades, since the technology required has in the past been very expensive. Let's take a brief look at the colorful development of printing which has led to most of us becoming rather print-happy with ink cartridges, both color and black and white, primed and at the ready.
The earliest known examples of printing are from China, dating from around 220. This process involved the use of woodblocks and began on textiles, progressing later to paper. Woodblocks were also used in East Asia and the Middle East.
Long before our versatile home printers and affordable ink cartridges we had the Movable Type system, arriving in 1040. This involved movable pieces of metal type, allowed much more flexibility than previous methods. Its invention in China heralded a revolution in how printed information was distributed, offering the possibility of many more people reading various printed matter.
The ability to print was, and remains, an extremely powerful way to distribute information, to entertain and inform. But centuries ago, many of those in power were not so enthusiastic about the spread of larger scale printing. This was particularly the case with church leaders, who preferred that they and their clergymen remained the main communication conduit for the masses. The fear was that the population at large would come into contact with controversial or dangerous political or social ideas, which might weaken their formidable influence. The idea that in the future almost everyone would have access to cheap printers and ink cartridges would have been most unsettling for these men of power!
But the eventual benefits of widely available printed matter are various. It dramatically increased the literacy rate of the world's populations, and increased the sense of individualism, since people could select their own reading matter and no longer needed someone, such as a clergyman, to read to them as part of a group.
Today, a wide range of printing processes are used, with an estimated 45 trillion pages printed annually. Despite the universal use of the computer, paper-printed matter is still by far the most popular reading media. The human eye finds glowing computer screens far less relaxing to process than the old-fashioned printed page, and so the concept of printing remains one of the most enduring of all human inventions.
The ability then for most of us to print off information at the touch of a button in our own homes is a powerful one to have. Whether we want to create a flyer or leaflet for a social occasion or event, or simply print off a business report whilst working from home, our high quality printers and affordable ink cartridges allow us to produce printed matter in a few seconds. What was once the privilege of a few powerful church leaders or royalty has become an integral part of modern life.
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