Letterpress printing, used in the West since the 15th century, involves clamping movable type in a printing press, inking it, and pressing the paper against it to form an impression. It was an important innovation, making printed matter available to a wider range of people. Today, some craftsmen still use letterpress printing for special projects, but it takes longer and is more expensive than offset printing.
Letterpress is a printing technique used in the West since the 15th century, when it was used by Johannes Gutenberg to manufacture the Gutenberg Bible. There has been some debate as to whether letterpress printing was first developed in the East or the West, with some suggestions that Chinese texts were printed in a similar method before Gutenberg’s Bible. Letterpress printing remained the primary way of printing and distributing information until the 20th century when offset printing was developed. It was also an extremely important technological innovation, making printed matter available to a wider range of classes of people.
Letterpress printing involves clamping movable type in the bed of a printing press, inking it, and rolling or pressing the paper against it to form an impression. The predecessors of letterpress printing had been around for hundreds of years, both East and West making woodblock prints and carved engravings. However, Gutenberg is usually credited with introducing movable type, which could be reset and reused. Movable type revolutionized printing techniques, because each page of a book no longer represented an individually carved woodcut or engraving. A fast typographer can set up a page in minutes.
The parts of a basic letterpress include a printing bed where type is set, rollers for ink, and a tympanum, which is a tightly tensioned drum or disc on which paper is mounted. Some presses roll the drum on the press bed to print, while others press a drum flat against the bed for an impression. For multiple colors, multiple passes of the printer must be made, unless the printer uses a split blending technique in which different colors of ink are spread across the rollers.
While not in common use, letterpress printing is prized by some craftsmen. High-quality papers and inks are used to create a particularly lush impression, and the technique is sometimes used for special invitations, announcements and art projects. Items printed at a print shop can be easily identified by the imprints of the letters, which slightly pierce the paper and create an embossed effect on the back of the printed product.
Letterpress printing takes longer than offset printing, which increases costs. Several methods have been developed to make the process more efficient. Letterpress type is made of lead, which is soft enough not to damage the paper. When the technique was in common use, newspapers often relied on linotype machines, which cast entire lines of type in hot lead. After the paper was printed, the lead could be melted down and reused.
Today, many printers do not manually set letters, instead relying on photopolymer plates. Small print shops still set their type by hand and are usually happy to offer tours of their facilities to those interested in learning more about letterpress.
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