Once we have understood how the concept of movable type changed our lives forever, we can then look at what effect it has had on everyone. To start with, we didn't have to write everything any more for media purposes. Looking at the process in a nutshell, it was a question of applying ink to a surface (type) and an "imprint" of that image was pressed onto a piece of paper. Where do you think the word "press" came from? I can imagine that entrepreneurs of the day could see what was going to happen commercially, in a similar way to how Bill Gates looked at software for computers. We had a situation where manufacturers - particularly type manufacturers - could offer their clients the opportunity of making their printed word look more attractive to their customers in turn and so increase profits. Imagine advertisers: before printing technology, they would simply have to write their campaigns in the hope that folk found it attractive and were drawn to the product they were selling - if indeed they wrote anything by hand. Someone else did the "publishing" work, so the same advertiser could run more than one campaign at a time with the knowledge that the advertising would be clear, concise, accurate and most importantly, time effective. As more mechanical equipment became available, so the type of thing that could be produced became more varied. Two-colour imaging first became the vogue, and the same entrepreneurs snapped it up and used it as a "modern" means of spreading the written word. Mass production printing, like newspapers, were an obvious means of using the current technology to spread current events to a wider audience and as time went on and more technology became available, so the size of these publications also increased. One of the primary offshoots of the technology was that many people were given employment within the printing industry. What is now known as "pre-press" were called compositors, who prepared the adverts within the pages and indeed the pages themselves for the presses. There were also stereotypers, who made the huge U-shaped leaden moulds that were clipped to the massive machines and from which the impression was taken and printed onto the newspaper's pages. I am not labouring on the newspaper side of the printing industry but it does give a clear indication of how many people were used in its production and how many skilled trades were involved. The "commercial" side of printing was also thriving, producing magazines, as a well as business flyers, invoices, every form of stationery imaginable and in "hot metal" days - these were the days prior to computerised typesetting with Apple Macs and the like - demand often outweighed supply and you could find printers and typesetters on almost every street in every town in every country. I believe the mechanics of printing, rather than the technology, has made it a viable industry. My reasoning being that anyone nowadays can set up a computer in the back room of a house and start producing a flyer with a very basic word processing programme. However, when that flyer has been "typed" the operator still has to visit a printer to get a good quality finished product. |
