The ink with which history is written has a long and distinguished history all of its own.
No one nation or culture can claim to have been the originator of this most important of inventions. It appeared and grew independently in many regions of the world.
Since the 4th century BC the Indians used a creation called masi, which was made from burnt bones, pitch, tar and a blend of other substances.
The ancient Romans used atramentum, which as well as being a component in shoe dyes, paint and varnish was an early form of black writing ink.
In medieval Europe scribes set ink mainly to parchment or vellum, made from animal skin. The ink itself was sometimes derived from the bark of hawthorn branches soaked in water which was then boiled until it thickened and turned black. This was then finally added to wine and salt to create the finished product.
However it was in China that the oldest known inks have been identified, made from natural plant dyes, soot and animal glue and dated as far back as the 18th century BC.
The first printer ink was developed in Europe during the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. The existing handwriting inks were found to be quite useless for industrial purposes, and so an oily, varnish-like ink was created using soot, walnut oil and turpentine solely for use in printing presses.
Inkjet printing is a particular genre of the art, based upon the creation of a digital image that serves as the original from which the copies are made. Incredibly the concept of inkjet printing itself actually dates back to the nineteenth century, although the technology was first extensively used in the 1950s, developed in the 1970s and used in the mainstream from the very end of the twentieth century.
Since the 1990s the inkjet printer has been considered a common household item. Many if not most users of personal computers have a printer and in most cases that would be an inkjet. This is because it is cheap to buy and provides the most economic use of short-run printer technology in both colour and black and white printer ink.
In addition to these common household printers inkjet technology is also used for industrial purposes, some for "page-width" format printing and some for wide format printing. The most popular application of page-width printers is in printing high-volume communications for business that do not specifically require high-quality layout and colour.
No one nation or culture can claim to have been the originator of this most important of inventions. It appeared and grew independently in many regions of the world.
Since the 4th century BC the Indians used a creation called masi, which was made from burnt bones, pitch, tar and a blend of other substances.
The ancient Romans used atramentum, which as well as being a component in shoe dyes, paint and varnish was an early form of black writing ink.
In medieval Europe scribes set ink mainly to parchment or vellum, made from animal skin. The ink itself was sometimes derived from the bark of hawthorn branches soaked in water which was then boiled until it thickened and turned black. This was then finally added to wine and salt to create the finished product.
However it was in China that the oldest known inks have been identified, made from natural plant dyes, soot and animal glue and dated as far back as the 18th century BC.
The first printer ink was developed in Europe during the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. The existing handwriting inks were found to be quite useless for industrial purposes, and so an oily, varnish-like ink was created using soot, walnut oil and turpentine solely for use in printing presses.
Inkjet printing is a particular genre of the art, based upon the creation of a digital image that serves as the original from which the copies are made. Incredibly the concept of inkjet printing itself actually dates back to the nineteenth century, although the technology was first extensively used in the 1950s, developed in the 1970s and used in the mainstream from the very end of the twentieth century.
Since the 1990s the inkjet printer has been considered a common household item. Many if not most users of personal computers have a printer and in most cases that would be an inkjet. This is because it is cheap to buy and provides the most economic use of short-run printer technology in both colour and black and white printer ink.
In addition to these common household printers inkjet technology is also used for industrial purposes, some for "page-width" format printing and some for wide format printing. The most popular application of page-width printers is in printing high-volume communications for business that do not specifically require high-quality layout and colour.
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