HISTORY AND INVENTION OF PRINTING

What would our world be without paper? We all know how important paper is, in today’s world. We cannot imagine a world without paper. It has grown up to play as an integral role in our life. 

Before the discovery of paper, there was a time when people used to write on palm leaves. Some of the old manuscripts written on palm leaves are preserved in India’s National Manuscript Library in Delhi.

In regard to the research I did on ‘History of Printing’, it started around 3000 BC, when Mesopotamian civilization used clay tablets to transfer images using ‘cylinder seals’. The Art of Printing was first invented by the Chinese, during the period of the Tang Dynasty in 600 AD.  They used wooden blocks to print letters. The oldest known surviving printed work in a woodblock is a Buddhist scripture of 684 AD, which is now exhibited in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo. The first dated book that was created with a printer is the "Diamond Sutra" which was created in 868 AD in China. 

Block printing was introduced in Europe by 1300. Johannes Gutenburg of Germany was the one to develop printing technology around 1439. Oil- based ink for printing was also invented by Gutenburg. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period, which played a very vital role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution and also laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. He printed the Bible in 1450. It was in the Latin language and had 1282 pages .He used movable printing blocks for the book.

Well, printing technology came to India in 1556, which was brought by Jesuit priest. The first book printed in our country was in Portuguese language in Old Goa. It was St. Francis Xavier’s "Doutrina Christão" by the Jesuit press.

The invention of printing has remarkably revolutionized mass communication. No other invention has had such an impact and influence in the history of mankind.  The history of printing is rich and full of technological invention and ingenuity.