Printing, as anyone who had a John Bull Printing Outfit will know,
used to be about putting ink on letter-shaped bits of metal or wood then transferring the ink to the paper. This was the case from 1448 [Gutenberg] to 1971 when the dot matrix printer came upon us. Oh yes there was etching and gravure and silk-screen printing, and Xerox must needs be mentioned. But for general, work-a-day printing, from your typewriter to the penguin novel, ink was smeared on letter-shaped metal and then stamped on paper. [okay so your typewriter used a ribbon, but let’s not get picky]. Today printing is all dots and digital and photosensitive. Hot metal has gone the way of all things.
It all started in China, in about 1045, Pi Sheng, with nothing to do one rainy afternoon, the television have not been invented and his home team playing away, began fiddling around with movable type,
then a mere 400 years later Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, by all accounts a blacksmith [and there’s nothing wrong with that] brought the whole thing together with a printing press in 1455,
a strenuous business befitting an ironmonger I feel.
Our very own William Caxton introduced us to printing in 1474,
though many were puzzled by this new high technology.
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