History of Digital Printing

The history of digital printing is young as compared to the history of printing but is rich and illustrious in its own regard. Printing dates back to the 1370s when books were copied by hand onto parchment or vellum. The next stage was the evolution of woodblock printing in Europe where the entire text for a page was cut into wood and printed. Then came the invention of printing using moveable type and the first books, which were printed using this method, were extremely beautiful and well illustrated. After that printing press was invented where special equipment was used for faster processes and better accuracy. Next evolved the electric typesetting machines that set inroads for the use of technology in print. History then accelerated and electronic systems intruded in every aspect of print. Finally with the advent of computers, digital printing evolved as one of the latest and fastest mode of printing.

The history of digital printing is ten years old. After the ink-jet printers, digital printing brought in machines that had no levers, no gears and no oil baths like a regular printing press. These printing machines were totally enclosed with just a computer monitor to control them. What was more amazing was the fact that these machines could provide high quality printing in shorter time frames. Today digital printing machines can become a part of a network. They can be used to send and receive data from any part of the world. These machines can give a visual picture of how the book would finally look once it is printed. And most importantly digital printing can print at much faster rates; give more optimum quality and print pages in order.

The main setbacks that digital printing faced during the decade were the facts that people were more attuned to using the regular printing presses. They were new to technology and manually operated printing presses seemed the easier way out. While digital printing machines were being developed, printing presses were also undergoing a change. Today the printing presses available do not have as many levers and gears and are much easier to operate also.

While the two names that come into focus in the history of printing are Gutenberg and Koster, there are few names like Xerox that form a part of the history of digital printing.

The revolution of digital printing is not over as yet. We at Ambient Graphics hope to take it forward by implementing our razor-edge technologies to make digital printing a simpler, easier and much more faster process.