In which country was the printing press invented? History of printing
TOPIC: HISTORY OF PRINTING
In the form of a printed word, thought has become durable
like never before: she is winged, elusive, indestructible ...
Victor Hugo
nbsp; 1. Nothing in the world happens by chance. The appearance of a printing press in Europe in the middle of the 15th century was also logical. By that time in European countries have all the prerequisites for the emergencetypography.
!! REMEMBER.
What prerequisites developed in Europe by the middle of the 15th century for the emergence of printing ? _________
A lot of experience has already been gained in using PRINT FORM. A variety of ways to get printed IMPRESSION have been known for a long time. The very first printed book "DiamondSutra" was made byobtaining an impression on paper from wooden boards in China as early as the 9th century.This way of printing booksused in European countries in the 13-14 centuries.
REMEMBER.
What was the name of this type of printing? What did the books printed in this way look like? ________________________________________ ______________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ _____
Preparing carved wooden forms for printing, the craftsmen noticed one feature of the printed impression: everything in it is turned upside down. In order for the print to be printed correctly, it must be cut mirror-inverted. To print such a book, a press was created that pressed the printing plate to the paper. This experience was very useful for the transition to more advanced book printing.
THINK.
How can letters cut on a wooden board be used to print not only one page of text, but also subsequent ones, without cutting them out again?
Most likely, you guessed that for this you need to cut out individual letters, and by combining them, type any text. When you were little and learned to read, you used to put together a word from children's blocks with letters, then take it apart and put together another word. This principle of using the same block-letters (letters) in different words is the basis of TYPE PRINTING.
It is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of typesetting. Its roots must be sought in ancient times. The name of the Chinese blacksmith Bi Shen has been preserved in history. In the middle of the 11th century, he learned to compose a whole printing form from individual clay letters with the image of one character (hieroglyph).
The Chinese blacksmith Bi Shen was the first in the history of mankind to use movable type for printing. Bi Shen took soft clay and molded them into rectangular blocks. Then, at the upper end of the bar, with the help of a pointed stick, he squeezed out a mirror image of the hieroglyph. The printing plate was an iron plate with a frame, covered with a thick mass, into which the LITERATURES were pressed. They formed the text. Then he covered it with paint and got a print. Having finished printing, he brought the form to the fire, the mass softened, and the letters could be easily removed from the form and used for a new text.
In the 14th century in Korea, they printed from typesetting forms made up of individual metal letters. 
2. Many countries tried to invent printing. But only in the 15th century in Germany, the master JOHANN GUTHENBERG (1399? - 1468) invented such a method, which was developed in all European countries. This person put into real technical forms an idea that had been expressed for a long time. He found the best solution to the problem posed to mankind by the entire course of world history. His great discovery, the invention of the printing press, Gutenberg pondered and carried out for ten years. He was educated in the sciences and knew many trades.
Any invention is the sum of several inventions. Gutenberg figured out how to make metal letters - letters for printing, so that there are many of them and so that they are the same. But you can't print anything in separate letters.
He figured out how to compose and fasten a line of type and how to connect the type lines into a page so that it does not fall apart when it is transferred to the printing press. He improved the press, came up with a new paint composition.
At first, Gutenberg tried to print simple publications: leaflets, brochures. After gaining experience, I started printing. BIBLE(1452 - 1455).
She was very beautiful and looked like a handwritten book. Only the text was printed; headings, initials, patterns were drawn by hand in red and gold paint. The complete copy of the Bible has 1282 pages. By the number of lines on the strip, it is usually called "42 - line"
Several more of his printed editions have come down to us.
The appearance of the printing press is an important milestone in the history of human culture. Since that time, the spoken word, written down and then reproduced in tens, hundreds and thousands of prints, has become the most important tool for enlightenment and education, a tool for disseminating knowledge.
3. Typography according to the method of Johannes Gutenberg spread over several decades, first throughout Germany, and then throughout Europe. In many European cities began to emergePRINTING HOUSES.
Work in the printing houses of that time was very difficult. It went on for fourteen hours a day. For mistakes, the owners of the printing house severely punished the workers. Printers often suffered from chest diseases caused by the fact that they dealt with poisonous substances. Each printing house made the paint itself, its recipe was kept in strict confidence.
Remarkable printing houses appeared in Italy. The pinnacle of printing in the 15th century is publishingALDA MANUTIA . He paid great attention to the typographical perfection of his publications: he carefully eradicated typographical errors, ordered new typographicalFONTS. Books published by Alda's printing house are named after him. aldines. These were small elegant books, typed in a font unusual for the first printed books - in italics . On these books, Ald put a characteristic badge - an anchor with a dolphin wrapped around it. It was one of the first publishing marks. The existence of the publishing brand was caused by the fight against fakes and imitations.
Printing houses in France were famous for their beautiful illustrations.
All the first printing houses had their own characteristics. However, the first printed books of the 15th century have much in common.
They only printed text. The initials were drawn and colored by hand. And this was not done in all copies of the publication; in some, in place of the initial, there was an empty square in which the letter was only outlined. Therefore, the first line is shorter than the others. Gradually, this technique began to be used consciously, so a paragraph indent appeared -RED LINE . In the first printed books, there were no paragraphs in the text. The text, as in handwritten books, was divided into parts by red lines. There were no punctuation marks in the text. The comma first appeared in editions of Alda Manutius, at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The printed book of the 15th century still tried to resemble a handwritten book in everything.
Only at the end of the 15th century didTITLE PAGE . In handwritten and very early printed books, it was replaced byCOLOPHON - page at the end of the book with some information about it. On the title page of the printed book was placed the title of the book and information about where and when it was printed.
!! Think.
What role did the title page play in printed books?
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New fonts appear in books, making it possible to change the format of the book. Sheet numbering appears ( foliation), and then pages pagination). The same Aldus Manutius began to attach a table of contents to the book. The book becomes more user-friendly.
The look of the book is changing. It becomes stricter in design, colorful miniatures are increasingly replacing black and white ENGRAVINGS printed from a wooden board.
!! Remember . nbsp;
What is the name of this type of printing?
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Then they began to use engravings on copper plates.
New book style.
Before us is the Talian translation of the Bible, published in Venice. Simple, light and strict page style. The screen saver engraving depicts not a biblical prophet, but a writer at literary work. On the desktop is a candlestick (with a spike for pricking a candle), an hourglass, and an inkwell.
This is the style of book design at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.
!! Compare this style with page design in a handwritten book.
Where do you see the difference? __________________________________
All books printed before January 1, 1501 are calledINCUNABULAS . The word is translated as "cradle", that is, the infancy of printing.
Little incunabula has survived to our time. They are kept in museums and major libraries in the world. The incunabula are beautiful, their fonts are elegant and clear, text and illustrations are placed on the pages very harmoniously.
Their example shows that the book is a work of art.
One of the largest collections of incunabula in the world, about 6 thousand books, is stored in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. The collection is located in a special room, the so-called "Faust's study", which recreates the atmosphere of a Western European monastery library of the 15th century.
!! Check yourself.
1. Read the statement by the French writer Victor Hugo about the role of printing, which became the epigraph to this topic. How do you understand it?
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2. In Germany, in the city of Strasbourg, there is a monument to Johannes Gutenberg on the central square. For what merits did grateful descendants perpetuate the memory of this German master?
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3. Why 15th century printed books are called incunabula
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4. What new elements appeared in printed books in the 15th century?
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5. Explain the meaning of the following concepts using reference books.
The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary will help you (any edition
letter __________________________________ ____________________
typesetting (set)_________________________________ ______
font___________________________________ ____________________
printing house______________________________ ____________________
engraving_________________________________ ____________________
Red line__________________________________ _____________
Books have existed long before the invention of printing. But before they were written by hand, and then repeatedly rewritten, making the required number of copies. This technology was extremely imperfect, took a lot of time and effort. In addition, when rewriting books, errors and distortions almost always crept in. Handwritten were very expensive, and therefore could not find a wide.
The first printed books appear to have appeared in China and Korea as early as the ninth century BC. For these purposes, special printed ones were used. The text that needed to be reproduced on paper was drawn in a mirror image, and then cut out on the surface of a flat piece of wood with a sharp tool. The resulting relief image was smeared with paint and pressed tightly against the sheet. In the result was a print that repeated the original text.
This method, however, did not find wide distribution in China, since every time it took a long time to cut out the entire text on the printed board. Some craftsmen even then tried to make a form from movable characters, but the number of hieroglyphs in Chinese writing was so large that such a method was very laborious and did not justify itself.
The invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg
In a more modern form, printing appeared in Europe in the first half of the 15th century. It was during these times that there was an urgent need for cheap and affordable books. Handwritten editions could no longer satisfy the needs of a developing society. The method of printing from boards that came from the East was inefficient and rather laborious. An invention was required that could allow the printing of books in huge quantities.
The German master Johannes Gutenberg, who lived in the middle of the 15th century, is considered to be the inventor of the original method of printing. Today it is very difficult to determine with high accuracy in what year he first printed the first text using the movable typesetting letters invented by him. The first printed book is believed to have come from the Gutenberg press in 1450.
The method of printing books developed and implemented by Gutenberg was very ingenious and practical. At first, he made a matrix from soft metal, in which he squeezed out depressions that looked like letters. Lead was poured into this mold, resulting in the required number of letters. These lead signs were sorted and stacked in special type-setting cash desks.
A printing press was designed to make books. In essence, he was a press with a manual drive, which had two planes. A frame with a font was installed on one plane, blank sheets of paper were applied to the other plane. The typed matrix was covered with a special coloring composition, the basis of which was soot and linseed oil. The productivity of the printing press was at that time very high - up to hundreds of pages per hour.
The method of printing invented by Gutenberg gradually spread throughout Europe. Thanks to the printing press, it became possible to print books in relatively large quantities. Now the book has ceased to be a luxury item available only to the elite, but has become widespread among the masses.
Computer technologies penetrate everywhere into all spheres of human activity. The electronic media born by them are increasingly crowding the position of the printed word. And yet, even in the 21st century, it is difficult to imagine our life without all that is dryly called "printed products."
It can be said without exaggeration that the invention of printing rightly takes its place among the real breakthroughs of human thought among such significant discoveries as the invention of the compass, gunpowder and paper. Being essentially a purely technical invention, or rather even technological, printing became a catalyst for human progress that determined the development of civilizations in the second half of the past millennium.
Mankind went a long way to the invention of the printing press, and the history of the creation of a printed book was not cloudless and, for various reasons, was torn apart by five centuries of oblivion.
For a long time, human memory was the only means of preserving and transmitting social experience, information about events and people. The immortal poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are known to have been written down in Athens on scrolls around 510 BC. Prior to this time, for centuries, poems had been circulated orally. The invention of writing can probably be considered the first information revolution in the history of mankind, which advanced the peoples that made it far. However, the possession of writing did not guarantee the peoples either global leadership or historical longevity. This is evidenced by the fate of the disappeared peoples who once had their own written language (for example, the Sumerians).
Currently, there are about 8,000 alphabets and their variants in the world, adapted to different languages and dialects. The most common alphabets are based on the Latin alphabet.
Typography (translated from Greek - polywriting) is the reproduction in a large number of copies of the same text or drawing.
The idea of printing was laid down in the brand or brand, with which cattle breeders marked their horses or cows. The stamping principle was already known in the cuneiform cultures of the Ancient East (the Sumerians, Babylon, Egypt). Symbols were applied spirally on the clay disc with the help of stamps. In fact, this disk was the first example of printing related text. The next stage is the printing of coins. Then "stone" books and books on clay tablets appeared, later - papyrus scrolls, and from the 2nd century BC. - books on parchment (parchment). Then, in the era of Aristotle and Plato, manuscripts were revealed to the world.
We can say that printing was invented twice: in the 900s AD. in China (China) and then in XV | century in Western Europe. Chinese book printing originally used a technology in which a board was used as a printing plate, on which texts and symbols were cut. Around 725. The world's first newspaper Di-bao (Messenger) was published. In 770. At the behest of Empress Shotoku, a million spells were printed in this way, which were embedded in miniature pagodas. Then comes the stamping.
Estampage is a technique for obtaining a direct impression of a relief image. The first experiments of such a peculiar method of printing are attributed to the period, which practically coincides with the time of the invention of paper in China (2nd century AD). The method consists in obtaining impressions from flat stone reliefs; a slightly moistened paper is applied to the relief, which is rubbed with special brushes and pressed into the recesses with a light tap; after that, water-based paint is applied to the surface of the dried paper, which has taken on relief forms, with a large flat brush and swabs.
Then in the Buddhist monasteries of China, approximately in 618-907. woodcut technology, or edged woodcut engraving, appeared. The first woodcut book was called the Diamond Sutra. It was made in 868 and first discovered in 1900. in the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas in Donghuang (Western China). In Europe, the woodcut book, as such, appeared during the Middle Ages after the Crusades. One of the famous woodcut publications was the "Bible of the Poor".
During the Renaissance in Europe, printing was reborn. In the 1440s, the woodcut method was perfected by the German Hans Gensfleisch or Johannes Gutenberg (1394/1399 - 1468).
The invention of book printing by I. Gutenberg marked a major turning point in the history of book culture - the end of the medieval book and the birth of the book of modern times. This invention was prepared and inspired by the entire development of the culture of the late Middle Ages, which created both the technical and general cultural prerequisites for it, and determined the urgent need for a new type of book.
It was in his printing house in the German city of Mainz that printed books first saw the light, typed with metal movable letters, cut out in a mirror image. The book printing technology he developed turned out to be the most productive for that time. Gutenberg came to the conclusion that it was necessary to quickly cast any amount of type - a word-casting process. This process was thought out by him to the smallest detail and for its implementation were developed: a method for making a printing plate by typing in separate letters, a manual type-casting device, a manual printing press for obtaining an imprint from a type-casting form.
The invention of the printing press determined the further development of the technology of book production and had a strong impact on the typology and art of the book, having received general cultural significance - the path for the formation of mega-civilizations, such as Western European, Chinese, and Islamic, was determined. We can say with confidence that the history of world culture is inseparable from the history of the printed book.
If a handwritten book was a very expensive item, and therefore, their largest collections, as a rule, were located in monasteries and universities, then the era of I. Gutenberg turned the book into a public domain, which means that it became a necessary element in the process of knowledge, education, and the formation of an aesthetic taste, a means of influencing the masses and even an information weapon. Already at that distant time, kings, emperors, clergymen and those in power in the era of the New Age began to use the book to promote their ideas, form this or that ideology, and strengthen their power. For example, Henry VIII and his Prime Minister Thomas Cromwell published pamphlets to establish the Church of England.
The first half of the 15th century is the time of great geographical and scientific discoveries, the transition to new socio-economic and political relations, the birth of a new worldview and attitude, the birth of new cities and new states, the era of the Reformation, when the Bible was translated into German by Martin Luther and published by a large circulation. The ongoing changes have led to a high demand for the book, resulting in the need for printing. By the end of the century, more than a thousand printing houses had been founded, which had already produced about 40 thousand publications with a circulation of approximately 12 million copies. Simultaneously with the triumphant march of book printing across Europe, a new form of the book was born and quickly asserted itself, and with it a new book aesthetics.
The presence of a book market, the simultaneous demand for a large number of copies, at least of some of the most common and important books, raised the issue of circulation for printing houses, especially since printing technology is primarily a circulation technique, moreover, it is economically profitable as a result of the ability to produce a large number of copies from one set. the number of equal impressions. Thus, another practical problem, which was becoming more and more urgent, was also solved: careful verification of the text before its reproduction, without exposing the book to the danger of distortion during repeated rewriting. But in order for these tasks to be consciously set, it is necessary, on the one hand, the development of scientific criticism of texts, and on the other hand, the emergence of the very idea of circulation as a specific, predetermined form of a book subject to technical reproduction.
In 1494 The Montenegrin Printing House, located in a monastery in the city of Cetinje, founded by the monk Macarius, began its activities. The first book in the Old Slavonic language "Okhtoih the first voice" was printed.
In 1517-1519. in Prague, Francis Skorina, a Belarusian pioneer printer and educator, printed the book “Psalter” in Cyrillic in Church Slavonic.
Typography in Russia originates in the 50s of the 16th century in a Moscow printing house located in the house of the priest Sylvester (author of Domostroy). Here were published in Church Slavonic: three Four Gospels, two Psalms and two Triodion. A feature of Russian fonts was the use of superscripts with line crossings separately from other letters. This made it possible to skillfully imitate the appearance of a handwritten book page. Tin was used for casting fonts, so the letters could not withstand large print runs.
In 1563 The first state printing house began its activity, known for the fact that Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Timofeev Mstislavets worked in it. It was there that the first dated book, The Apostle, was produced. The work on its publication lasted almost a year - from April 19, 1563 to March 1, 1564.
An important milestone in the development of writing and literature was book printing in Russia. With the development of statehood, the issue of the lack of books became acute. There were written samples, but their creation took a long time.
In Europe during this period (mid-16th century) printing presses already existed. understood the invaluable role of the book in the process of the formation of the state. He contributed to the foundation of the first printing house in Moscow.
The most educated people of that time were involved in the work on the first printed edition. The goal of the young tsar was to unite a large number of Orthodox peoples in one territory and into one state. There was a need for universal ecclesiastical and secular education, therefore, the priesthood and educators needed a quality printed publication.
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The first Russian printed book - the history of creation
Preparations for printing the original source of knowledge took a total of a decade. The creation of the first copy of printed art was preceded by a long construction and arrangement of the printing house.
In 1563, the book printer and inventor Ivan Fedorov and his faithful friend and disciple Pyotr Mstislavets set about printing a unique book that had no analogues at that time, which was called "The Apostle".
Over the first edition, book printers pored over as much as 12 months. Printer Ivan Fedorov put into his brainchild all the knowledge and skills that he acquired throughout his life. The first non-handwritten copy turned out to be truly a masterpiece.
The weighty volume was in a frame made of wood, which the creators covered with thin leather with amazing gold embossing. Large capital letters were decorated with unprecedented herbs and flowers.
The first edition was dated March 1, 1564. Later, this date began to be considered the year of foundation of the Russian book press. In the modern history of the Russian state, the day of the Orthodox book is celebrated on March 14. "Apostle" has survived until the 21st century unchanged, and is in the Moscow Historical Museum.
Beginning of book printing in Russia
As soon as the first book of the Moscow printing house "Apostol" ("Acts and Epistles of the Apostles") saw the light of day, the early Russian printers set about creating a new church publication called "Chasovnik". Not a year was spent on this work of printed art, but only a few weeks.
In parallel with the creation of church books, work was underway on the first Russian textbook "ABC". A children's book appeared in 1574.
Thus, in the 16th century, book printing was born and established in Russia, and the first non-manuscript church books appeared. The creation of a children's textbook was a very important stage in the development of Slavic writing and literature.
Who printed the first books in Russia
The founder of book printing in Russia was the inventor Ivan Fedorov. The man, even by modern standards, was very educated and enthusiastic. The man was educated at the university in the city of Krakow (now the territory of modern Poland). In addition to his native language, he spoke two more languages - Latin and ancient Greek.
The man was well versed in carpentry, painting, foundry crafts. He himself cut and melted matrices for letters, made bindings for his books. These skills helped him fully master the process of book printing. Nowadays, the mention of the first Russian book printing is often associated with the name of Ivan Fedorov.
The first printing house in Russia - its creation and development
In 1553, the first printing house was founded in Moscow by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The printing house, as the printing house was called in ancient times, was located next to the Kremlin, not far from the Nikolsky Monastery, and was built on donations from the ruler himself.
The deacon of the church, Ivan Fedorov, was placed at the head of the printing house. It took 10 years to equip the building of the ancient printing house and create printing equipment. The room of the book printer was made of stone, and was popularly referred to as the “hut-printing house”.
Here the first printed edition "Apostle" was created, later the first "ABC" and "Hourmaker" were printed. Already in the 17th century, more than 18 titles of books were printed.
Later, the printer Ivan Fedorov and his assistant, on the slander of ill-wishers, will be forced to flee from Moscow, fleeing the wrath of the tsar. But the pioneer printers will be able to save the equipment and take it with them outside the principality of Moscow. The first printing house on Nikolskaya Street will be burned down by the book fighters.
Soon Ivan Fedorov will open a new printing house in Lvov, where he will publish several more editions of the Apostle, in the introduction to which the printer will tell about the persecution of ill-wishers and envious people.
Ivan Fedorov's first printing press
The first equipment for printing was extremely unpretentious: a machine tool and several typesetting cash desks. The basis of the ancient printing press was a screw press. Ivan Fedorov's machine has survived to this day.
You can see this value, touch the history, breathe in the hoary antiquity in the Lviv Historical Museum. The weight of the machine is about 104 kg. The typeface was constructed in such a way as to resemble written letters. It was close to the handwriting that was understandable to a simple Russian person. The slope to the right is observed, the letters are even, the same size. Margins and spacing between lines are clearly observed. The title and capital letters were printed in red ink, while the main text was printed in black.
The use of two-color printing is an invention of Ivan Fedorov himself. Before him, no one in the world used several colors on one printed page. The quality of printing and materials is so impeccable that the first printed book "The Apostle" has survived to this day and is in the Moscow Historical Museum.
In the 16th century, there were two significant events for the history of Moscow, and later for the history of Russia - the construction of the Cathedral of Ivan the Blessed in the capital and the creation of a printing press by Ivan Fedorov.
The first textbooks in Russia
The development of education was an important matter for the formation of the Russian state. Books transcribed by hand were distinguished by a large number of errors and distortions. Their authors were not always well educated themselves. Therefore, for teaching children to read and write, well-read, understandable, non-manuscript textbooks were needed.
The first book for teaching children to read and write was Ivan Fedorov's printed volume The Clockworker. For quite a long time, children learned to read from this book. Two copies of this edition have survived to this day. One volume is in Belgium, the other is in the Leningrad Library. Later, the Azbuka, which became the first textbook for children, will be printed in Moscow. Today, this rare copy of ancient printing is located in the United States.
Tsar Ivan the Terrible, with all the ambiguous attitude towards him, understood that it was impossible to build a strong developed state without smart, educated people. It is necessary to keep up with the times and keep up with the advanced states. The source of true truthful knowledge at all times has been and will be a book. Only reading, literate, educated people will be able to build an advanced power and introduce technologies, according to the requirements of the time.
The founder of book printing in Russia, Ivan Fedorov, is a genius of his time, who was able to move Russia from the point of ignorance and stupidity, to direct it along the path of enlightenment and development. Despite the disgrace and persecution that befell him, Ivan Fedorov did not leave his life's work and continued to work in a foreign land. His first printed editions became the basis of writing and literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Since ancient times, people have made books by hand (see Writing). For months, and sometimes for years, a scribe worked to reproduce a literary or scientific work on durable sheets of expensive writing material - parchment, made from animal skins. To reduce the price of the book, to make it more popular, paper allowed, the inventor of which is considered the Chinese Tsai Lun, who lived in the 1-2 centuries. n. e. In Europe, the first paper mill started operating in the 12th century.
The development of crafts and trade, the great geographical discoveries, the emergence of universities - all this contributed to the formation of enlightenment, the growth of education. More and more books were needed. Manuscript workshops, located mainly in monasteries and castles of sovereigns, could not satisfy the growing need for books from year to year. Then book printing arose - a whole complex of production processes that made it possible to produce books mechanically.
In fact, this is not one, but several inventions. It is based on the so-called printing form; it is a relief mirror image of text and illustrations that need to be reproduced in a large number of copies. The form is rolled with paint, and then a sheet of paper is pressed against it with force. In this case, the paint transfers to paper, reproducing a page or group of pages of a future book.
When creating book printing, people also took care to simplify and facilitate the process of making a printing plate in every possible way. It was made up of metal blocks - letters, on the ends of which embossed mirror images of letters, numbers, punctuation marks are reproduced ... Letters were preliminarily cast using a simple word-casting form.
The first experiments in book printing were carried out as early as 1041-1048. Chinese blacksmith Bi Sheng; he made letters from clay. In the 12th-13th centuries. in Korea, metal letters were already used. The great German innovator Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1399-1468) became the creator of the European printing system. It was he who managed to find the best technical forms for the embodiment of ideas that were partially expressed before him. Gutenberg printed textbooks of Latin grammar - "Donates", all kinds of calendars, works of medieval literature. His masterpiece is a 42-line Bible printed in 1452-1455.
The emergence of printing has played a colossal role in the socio-political and cultural life of mankind. Typography contributed to the development of science and culture, contributed to the fact that education lost its religious character, became secular, and made it possible to unify the grammatical norms of the language and graphic forms of writing. Books became cheaper, access to knowledge was easier, and they themselves became more democratic. “We can and must begin the history of our scientific worldview with the discovery of book printing,” said the great Russian thinker Academician V. I. Vernadsky.
Johannes Gutenberg mechanically reproduced only the text; all kinds of decorations and illustrations were drawn in ready-made prints by hand. In 1457, the inventor's student Peter Scheffer (c. 1425 - c. 1503) on the pages of the "Psalter" managed to reproduce multi-colored initials - initials and his publishing mark. Another student of Gutenberg, Albrecht Pfister (c. 1410-1466), first printed illustrations in a book published in 1461. Ornamentation and illustrations were reproduced at first by the so-called woodcut - woodcut, which appeared even earlier than printing. Later, the book included an engraving on copper, based on a different principle: the drawing to be reproduced is engraved here not in sublime, but in deep relief.
The printing press was an amazingly timely invention; it spread very quickly throughout Europe. In 1465, the printing press started working in Italy, in 1470 - in France, in 1473 - in Belgium and Hungary, around 1473 - in Poland, in 1474 - in Spain, in 1476 - in Czechoslovakia and England. In Slavic script - Cyrillic, Schweipolt Fiol (d. 1525) began to print for the first time in 1491 in Krakow.
Scientists have calculated that in about 50 years - until January 1, 1501, printing houses began to work in 260 cities of Europe. Their total number reached 1,500, and they published approximately 40,000 publications with a total circulation of over 10 million copies. These first books are called incunabula by historians; they are carefully collected and stored in the largest libraries in the world.
In the history of domestic book printing, the name of the great Belarusian educator Francysk Skaryna (c. 1486 - c. 1541) should be the first to be named. In 1517, he founded a Slavic printing house in Prague, where he printed the Old Testament books of the Bible in separate editions. In 1522, Skorina created the first printing house in Vilnius and printed here the "Small travel book" and "Apostle".
The first printing house in Moscow was founded around 1553. It is called anonymous, since seven editions issued by it do not indicate the name of the printer, nor the time and place of printing. The first accurately dated Russian printed book, The Apostle, was published on March 1, 1564 by the great Russian educator Ivan Fedorov (c. 1510 - 1583) and his colleague Pyotr Timofeev Mstislavets. The initiator of the emergence of book printing in Moscow was the so-called Chosen Rada - a government circle under the young Tsar Ivan IV. Later, however, under the influence of reactionary religious circles, Ivan Fedorov was forced to leave Moscow and move to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on the eastern lands of which lived Ukrainians and Belarusians who professed Orthodoxy. The pioneer printer works in the Belarusian city of Zabludovo, and then moves to Lvov, where in 1574 he publishes the first Ukrainian printed books - the ABC and the Apostle. In 1581 Ivan Fedorov printed the first complete East Slavonic Bible in Ostrog.
In the 17th century the typographic workshop was replaced by a printing manufactory with a well-developed division of labor. The Moscow Printing Yard was such an enterprise. Reformed book printing Peter I, who in 1702-1703. began to publish the first Russian newspaper, and in 1708 he introduced a new civil font, which still exists today.
Johannes Gutenberg and Ivan Fedorov printed their books on a manual printing press, which was entirely made of wood, its productivity was small. At the beginning of the 19th century German inventor Friedrich Koenig (1774-1833) designed a printing press. The day of November 29, 1814, is memorable in the history of printing, when the number of the London newspaper The Times was first printed on a printing press. Thus began the industrial revolution in the book business. Its result was the introduction of machines in the printing industry. The hand typesetter, for example, was replaced by the "linotype" invented in 1886 by Otmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899). High-performance rotary printing machines, units, bookbinding and binding books appear in printing houses. Illustrations, starting from the 2nd half of the 19th century, are reproduced using photomechanical processes, which are based on the method invented in 1839 by L. J. M. Daguerre (1787-1851) and J. N. Niepce (1765-1833) photo. The same method allowed to improve the typesetting processes; we are talking about a phototypesetting machine created in 1895 by V. A. Gassiev.
The 20th century was a period of transition in book printing from machines mechanizing individual production operations to automatic systems. Inventors put forward projects for fully automated printing houses. Recently, portable printing houses have appeared, which are based on microcomputer and microprocessor technology. Such printing houses are called desktop; they enable everyone to produce books at relatively low cost.
Modern book printing is a highly developed branch of culture and industry. Here is some data on the circulation of published books. In 1955, 269 thousand publications were published all over the world, in 1965 - 426 thousand, in 1975 - 572 thousand, in 1986 - 819.5 thousand. About the total circulation of books published annually in the world there is no exact information. In China, in 1985, almost 6 billion copies were published.
In our country, 80-85 thousand publications were published annually with a total circulation of over 2 billion copies.
“The history of the mind represents two main eras,” argued the Russian writer and historiographer N. M. Karamzin, “the invention of letters and typography; all others were their consequence. Reading and writing open up a new world for a person, especially in our time, with the current progress of the mind. These words were written almost two centuries ago, but they are still true today.
