Advertising

Screen printing is a printmaking technique in which ink is forced through a piece of silk onto paper or other material. The screen process is used commercially to print such items as billboard illustrations, package labels, and fabric designs. It is sometimes called silk-screen printing. In art, screen printing is called serigraphy. This article describes serigraphy.

To make a screen print, the artist uses a piece of silk stretched tightly across a wood frame to form a screen. Such materials as nylon, polyester, or wire mesh may be substituted for silk. The artist places thick ink along one edge of the screen and then spreads the ink across its surface with a rubber blade called a squeegee. The squeegee distributes the ink or paint evenly and presses it through the weave of the silk onto the material below. In most cases, the material is paper, but artists also use fabric, linoleum, glass, and wood for their prints.

The artist uses stencils to mask out parts of the design that are not to be printed. Most stencils are made of cut paper and produce designs with crisp, clean edges. Designs can also be painted on the screen with glue or lacquer. When printed, such designs appear to be made of brushstrokes rather than cutout shapes.

Many colors can be printed on a single surface. However, the screen must be cleaned, prepared with a new stencil, inked, and printed separately for each additional color.

The Chinese used stencil printing as early as A.D. 1000 to make designs on fabric. The use of silk for the screen was begun in France in the 1800’s and was primarily used for commercial purposes. Artists began exploring the screen process in the 1930’s. During the 1960’s, it became a favorite printmaking technique with members of the Pop art movement, including Robert Indiana, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol

The two oldest areas of systematic investigation into human communication are linguistics (the scientific study of language) and nonverbal communication. Linguists began their studies during the late 1700’s, when scholars first compared the world’s languages and found similarities among them. The study of nonverbal communication dates from at least the 1800’s, when teachers of acting and pantomime analyzed how facial and body movements convey emotion.

The modern study of nonverbal communication-sometimes called body language-includes both kinesics (pronounced kih NEE sihks) and proxemics (pronounced prok SEE mihks). Kinesics is the study of the body and facial movements that accompany speech. The American anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell developed kinesics. Birdwhistell used slow-motion films of speakers to analyze their gestures and expressions. Another American anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, developed proxemics. Hall studied how people in different cultures use gestures, posture, speaking distance, and other nonverbal signs to communicate their feelings and social status. People would feel uncomfortable putting most such feelings into words. But proxemics enables people to send and receive messages without the use of words.

The study of communication emerged as a special field of research in the United States from the late 1930’s through the 1950’s. Scholars who made contributions to communication focused principally on critical issues associated with emerging new media systems.

The effects of the media. The growth of film, radio, and television in the 1900’s raised cultural questions. For example, some people became concerned about the impact of media violence on children and adolescents. First radio, then television, gained a prominent role in politics and elections. As a result, American social psychologists, especially Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, began to study the effects of media on the public. Investigations by other U.S. researchers included those of the social psychologists Hadley Cantril, Carl I. Hovland, and Robert K. Merton. The research of these scholars inspired that of American social psychologist Bernard Berelson, sociologist Joseph T. Klapper, and educator Elihu Katz. Research on audience behavior and use of media by individuals continues today.

Communication and politics. Governments and other communicators have conducted extensive propaganda operations, mainly using newspapers, at least since World War I (1914-1918). During World War II, the warring nations added radio and other new media to their propaganda operations. Political scientists, most notably Harold D. Lasswell, began to study propaganda and its role in the formation of public opinion. Such study continued as the theory and practice of modern media propaganda carried over into the Cold War, a period of intense hostility between Communist and non-Communist nations following World War II.

Beginning in the late 1940’s, researchers started to study the potential contributions of radio and television services to national economic development, especially for developing nations. The U.S. analysts Wilbur L. Schramm and Daniel Lerner studied how modern media could be used in such countries to spread information about farming and crops, medical care, and education.

Dallas W. Smythe of Canada, Herbert I. Schiller of the United States, and other scholars studied the political economy of communication. The political economy approach suggests that owners of communications systems can use them to exert control over cultural expression. Control of international communications systems can have an especially significant impact on social development throughout the world.

Communication and culture. During the late 1900’s and early 2000’s, the concept of culture became a focus of study in many academic disciplines, including that of communication. To social scientists, culture means a people’s customary way of life, including arts, beliefs, customs, inventions, and technology. Cultural studies of communication began attracting interest in Europe in the 1960’s and 1970’s and soon gained supporters worldwide. Cultural critics Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, and other scholars in the United Kingdom developed this approach. Such study focuses on how the contemporary communications media shape people’s understanding and action.

Advertising is a message designed to promote a product, a service, or an idea. In everyday life, people come into contact with many kinds of advertising. Printed advertisements make up a large part of newspapers and magazines. Poster ads appear in many buses, subways, and trains. Neon signs along downtown streets flash advertisements. Billboards dot the roadsides. Commercials interrupt TV and radio programs. Advertisements appear on many sites on the World Wide Web.

The purpose of most advertising is to sell products or services. Manufacturers advertise to try to persuade people to buy their products. Large business firms also use advertising to create a favorable “image” of their company. Local businesses use it to gain new customers and increase sales. Advertising thus plays a key role in the competition among businesses for the consumer’s dollar. In many businesses, the volume of sales depends largely on the amount of advertising done.

Advertising is also used by individuals, political parties and candidates, social organizations, special-interest groups, and the government. Many people advertise in newspapers to sell used cars, homes, or other property. Political parties and candidates use advertising to try to win votes. Social organizations and special-interest groups often advertise to promote a cause or to influence the way people think or act. For example, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America sponsors ads designed to discourage people from using illegal drugs. The United States government uses advertising chiefly to recruit volunteers for the armed forces.

Advertising is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. More than $200 billion is spent on advertising and advertising-related activities in the United States each year. About $400 billion is spent on advertising in other countries.

Advertising is common in almost all countries. In many countries, however, advertising is more restricted than it is in the United States. In most of the countries of Western Europe, for example, the governments limit the amount of advertising that appears on television. In addition, these governments make greater use of advertising for social, political, and educational purposes.

Propaganda is one-sided communication designed to influence people’s thinking and actions. A television commercial or a poster urging people to vote for a political candidate might be propaganda, depending on its method of persuasion.

Propaganda differs from education in democratic societies. But education in a dictatorship can involve teaching children and youth by techniques that could be classified as propaganda. Educators in democratic societies teach people how to think, but propagandists tell them what to think. Most educators are willing to change their opinions on the basis of new evidence, but propagandists ignore evidence that contradicts them. Educators present all sides of an issue and encourage debate. Propagandists build the strongest possible case for their views and discourage discussion.

The intention of the communicator to influence or deceive is an important issue in identifying propaganda. However, experts disagree about what is propaganda and what is not, and whether propaganda differs from other forms of persuasion, such as advertising and political campaigning. Some look upon all slanted communication as propaganda. Others believe that the method of persuasion determines whether a message is propaganda. For example, the majority of advertisers and political campaigners function openly and state their purposes truthfully. Other advertisers and political campaigners present any combination of truths, half-truths, lies, and distortions that they think will most effectively influence their audience. Some experts say all these people are propagandists. Others regard only the second group as propagandists.

Some people consider propaganda neither good nor bad. For example, many favor the use of propaganda to raise money for charity. Other individuals argue that the public needs reliable information to make wise decisions, and that propaganda blocks the spreading of such information. They also fear that propaganda deadens people’s power of reasoning. The results of some propaganda may be short term and relatively insignificant, such as the purchase of a product. Other types of propaganda can have more serious results.

The greatest use of propaganda occurs during wartime. At such times, government propaganda campaigns urge people to save resources, volunteer for military service, support the war effort, and make sacrifices necessary for victory. Psychological warfare is a type of propaganda that aims to weaken the enemy’s will to fight or belief in their government. A related technique, called brainwashing, is used against prisoners. It combines political propaganda with harsh treatment to reduce a prisoner’s resistance.

Much wartime propaganda is called covert (secret) propaganda because it comes from hidden sources. For example, a propagandist might try to discourage enemy troops by sending them counterfeit newspapers reporting huge losses among their forces. Some covert propaganda is spread by people in a country who secretly support its enemies. A group of such people is called a fifth column. The opposite of covert propaganda is called overt (open) propaganda, which comes from known sources.

Marketing is the process by which sellers and buyers find each other and by which goods and services move from producers to consumers. Marketing has produced the vast array of products available to consumers in most countries of the world. Marketing activities are so important that, in some industries, they may account for half the cost of a product or service.

Businesses typically engage in five main marketing activities: (1) market research, (2) product development, (3) distribution, (4) pricing, and (5) promotion.

Market research is the study of the probable users of a product. This pool of potential customers is called a market. Many firms use surveys to determine what customers say they need or want. Other firms carefully observe what customers actually buy to learn about their habits. There are many other sources of valuable market information. For example, government statistics about population and income can indicate the size of a market and its purchasing power.

Since the 1990’s, businesses have used the Internet to sell nearly every type of product. Marketing over the Internet generates more detailed information about customer interests and buying behavior than ever before. Some people believe that this information is unreliable or that it puts customers’ privacy at risk. Others argue it helps companies to better meet consumers’ needs.

Product development includes the design, creation, and modification of products and services, usually based on market research. Firms continually introduce new products, modify existing ones, and drop unprofitable products to meet the demands of the public.

Distribution is the movement of goods and services from the producer to the consumer. Manufacturers create systems, called channels of distribution, to keep goods moving. Participants in a channel of distribution include wholesalers, who sell large quantities of goods to retailers. Retailers, in turn, sell the goods in smaller quantities to consumers. Marketing channels may involve other companies that provide such services as financing, transportation, and storage.

The Internet has created electronic alternatives to some of the traditional physical channels of distribution. For example, many Internet marketers sell directly to the public, lessening the need for local retailing.

Pricing. If an item’s price is too high, it will not sell. If an item’s price is too low, the producers will not earn a profit. The pricing function must balance these extremes. When setting the price of an item, many manufacturers start with its unit production cost, the expense of making one unit of the item. They then add a percentage of this cost, called a markup, to provide a profit for themselves. Every other firm in the channel of distribution also adds a markup to cover expenses and to provide a profit. Therefore, the final selling price is the unit production cost plus the total of all the markups.

Other manufacturers try to determine what an item’s price should be through market research. Then, manufacturing and other costs are managed to ensure that the company will make a profit. Certain Internet marketplaces allow customers to state the price they want to pay and then let sellers choose whether to compete for that business.

Promotion includes advertising, coupons, direct mailings, in-store displays, Web pages, telemarketing calls, and personal sales efforts. Companies engage in a wide range of promotional activities designed to inform customers about products and services and to persuade them to buy.

Advertising greatly influences many aspects of life in the United States. This section deals with some of its economic, social, and political effects.

Economic effects. Advertising plays a major role in the distribution of goods from manufacturers to consumers. It provides an effective way for sellers to inform buyers about products. Advertising thus helps manufacturers sell their products and benefits consumers by providing them with shopping information.

Advertising also helps the economy grow by stimulating demand for new products. Manufacturers spend much money to develop new products. Through advertising, they can speed up the process of creating a market for a product and so recover their costs more quickly. Fewer new products would be developed if manufacturers could not use advertising to help sell the products.

Some economists believe that a large amount of the money spent on advertising is wasted. They argue that much advertising simply leads consumers to switch from one brand of a product to another brand. Brand-switching may increase the profits of a particular firm but has no positive effect on the overall economy.

Advertisers include the expense of advertising in the sales price of a product. In some cases, advertising raises the price of a product. In other cases, advertising helps lower prices by creating the mass demand that supports mass production. Successful advertising makes many people want a product. By mass producing a product and developing a large volume of sales, the manufacturer can charge less per unit.

Social effects. Perhaps the most important social contribution of advertising is that it supports the mass communication media. Advertising pays all the costs of commercial television and radio. It provides viewers with free entertainment and news programs, though viewers are often irritated by commercial interruptions. Advertising also pays three-fourths of the costs of newspapers and magazines. Without advertising, readers would have to pay a higher price for newspapers and magazines, and many of the publications would go out of business.

Because the mass media depend on advertising to stay in business, many people question whether advertisers control the media. Generally, media do not allow advertisers to influence their programming or editorial content. However, many broadcasters and publishers do not hesitate to run favorable information about their advertisers, and they sometimes refuse to run unfavorable information. Critics of commercial television maintain that dependence on advertising lowers the quality of TV programming. In order to sell advertising time at high prices, TV stations try to attract the largest possible audience. Critics argue that the stations therefore broadcast too many general entertainment programs and not enough informational and cultural programs.

Many critics also charge that advertising persuades people to buy products they do not need or want through the use of psychological techniques. Advertisers reply that they do not have the means to make people buy unwanted products. They argue that adults freely choose what to buy or what not to buy. Most experts agree, however, that advertising is particularly persuasive to young children, who do not have the ability or experience to judge advertising critically. For this reason, the Federal Trade Commission has strict regulations governing advertising aimed at children.

Political effects. Little attention was paid to political advertising until 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully ran for the U.S. presidency. Advertising executives, rather than politicians, directed Eisenhower’s presidential campaign. Much of Eisenhower’s campaign consisted of a flood of spot announcements on television stations.

Since 1952, advertising executives have played an increasingly important role in political campaigns. In addition, TV spot announcements have become a major feature of campaigns for public offices at the national and state levels. The chief criticism of political advertising concerns the use of such spot announcements, which may concentrate on creating an image of a candidate and tend to oversimplify the issues. Critics object to candidates being “sold” through advertising methods like those used to sell products. Another complaint is that candidates with the most money to spend on advertising have an unfair advantage over their opponents. Because of this complaint, Congress passed a law in 1974 that limits the amount of money candidates may spend in presidential campaigns.

Most business firms hire advertising agencies to create their advertisements and place them in the various media. In most cases, individual advertisements form part of an advertising campaign. A campaign is an organized sales effort that may run for several months and that usually involves more than one medium.

In planning an advertising campaign, the agency must first determine the objective of the campaign. The objective may be to prove a product’s superiority over competing brands, to change the image of the company, or to achieve some other goal. The agency must also determine the target market-that is, the people who are likely users of a product and at whom the advertising will be aimed. Finally, the agency has to estimate how much money and time will be needed to carry out the campaign.

Large advertising agencies generally assign a team of persons from the various departments of the agency to handle all the advertising for a specific advertiser, or client. The typical agency includes a research department, creative department, media department, and production department. An account manager, or account executive, has overall responsibility for planning and directing a client’s advertising. The following discussion describes in broad terms the way an agency creates advertisements. The main steps in the process include (1) research, (2) media selection, (3) creative work, and (4) production.

Research. Information gathered from consumers provides the basis for many advertising decisions. It helps an agency determine the kinds of people at whom to aim advertisements, the types of appeals to use, and in which media to place the ads. The chief kinds of research include (1) market research, (2) motivation research, and (3) media research.

Market research seeks information about consumers and their buying habits. The information is obtained from a sample of consumers by means of surveys. The information includes the age, sex, income, and occupation of potential consumers. Researchers may also learn how consumers rate various brands of a product, including the advertiser’s brand. Such information helps advertisers decide on the best way to present the features of their products.

Motivation research tries to find out why people buy certain products. Motivation researchers gather such information in personal interviews, during which they use techniques developed by psychologists and sociologists. By discovering the motives for people’s buying behavior, advertisers hope to find the most effective appeal to use in their advertisements. For example, advertisers may learn that many people buy certain kinds of automobiles chiefly to impress their friends. The motivations of consumers are complex, and the study of motivations is therefore more difficult than most other types of research.

Media research. Various research firms measure the size and makeup of radio and TV audiences at different times of the day. The Audit Bureau of Circulations-an organization of advertisers, advertising agencies, and publishers-measures the circulations of publications. Advertisers use information on audience size and makeup in selecting media in which to place ads.

Media selection. The members of an agency’s media department compare the various media in terms of audience size and makeup. They decide which particular magazines, newspapers, and radio and television stations or networks to use to reach the target market. They then prepare a media plan that will give an effective combination of reach and frequency within the limitations of the budget. Reach is the number of people who will see or hear the advertisement. Frequency is the number of times that they will see or hear it. The media planners may decide to reach a large number of people a few times or to reach fewer people more often.

The recommendations of the media department must be approved by the client. The media planners then buy time and space from the media and schedule the advertisements for specific dates.

Creative work. An agency’s creative department develops the central theme of an advertising campaign. The department then designs individual advertisements. The theme, and the ideas for carrying it out, must be approved by the account manager and the client.

For printed advertisements, a copywriter prepares the copy (written words) and an artist prepares a layout of the advertisement. A layout is a sketch that shows the placement of the copy and illustrations. The illustrations may consist of artwork or photographs or both. The copy, illustrations, and layout may be revised several times. The finished artwork may be prepared by an artist in the agency or by a free-lance (independent) artist. Most photographs are taken by professional photographers who are hired by the agency.

For radio commercials, a copywriter prepares the script, which may consist simply of a sales message to be read by a radio announcer. Some scripts are skits that feature dialogue and perhaps sound effects or background music. Original music or songs are written by composers commissioned by the agency.

For television commercials, a copywriter creates the script and an artist designs a storyboard, which is a series of drawings of the planned action. The storyboard is combined with the script and includes directions for filming the commercial.

Production. The production of printed advertisements, radio commercials, and TV commercials is arranged by the production department of an advertising agency. The production department deals with advertising service and supply houses, which include graphic arts firms and producers of radio and TV commercials. In each case, the client has to approve the final advertisements before they are printed or broadcast.

For printed advertisements, the production department works with graphic arts firms, which set the copy in type and prepare the film or other material for printing the type and illustrations. This material is then sent to the publications in which the ads will appear. Newspaper advertisements are sometimes produced by the newspaper printers themselves.

For radio commercials, the production department may simply deliver the script to the radio station where it will be read by an announcer. If the script has dialogue, the commercial must be prerecorded, and so the agency hires a radio producer. The producer selects performers to read the commercial and sets up rehearsals. If necessary, a musical director and an orchestra are also hired. The commercial is then recorded on tape in a studio and delivered for broadcasting.

The agency also uses a producer for television commercials. If the commercial is to be filmed or videotaped, the producer may work with a director. These two individuals select performers and arrange rehearsals. After the commercial is shot in the studio or on location, the production department combines it with the sound track and edits it. After the producer has approved the finished commercial, the commercial is sent to the TV stations or network where it will be aired.

Some TV commercials consist of stop-motion films or animated cartoons. Stop motion is a method of photographing objects in different positions so that, when the film is run, they appear to move. For example, bottles may seem to dance across a table.

Animated cartoons produced in the traditional way require many individual drawings that must be filmed in sequence. Modern computer-generated animation and special effects are much easier to produce. For example, an electronic device called a scanner can convert the colors and shades of illustrations or photos into digital (numerical) code, then feed this code to a computer. An animator can then use the computer to manipulate the illustrations.

If the commercial is a live announcement, the producer makes sure the script, product, and furniture or other objects are supplied to the station. The producer also supervises the rehearsals. Today, live announcements are rare.

Most historians believe that outdoor signs above shop doors were the first form of advertising. As early as 3000 B.C., the Babylonians, who lived in what is now Iraq, used such signs to advertise their stores. The ancient Greeks and Romans also hung signs outside their shops. Few people could read, and so merchants used symbols carved in stone, clay, or wood for the signs. For example, a bush indicated a wine shop, and a boot advertised a shoemaker’s shop.

In ancient Egypt, merchants hired criers to walk through the streets and announce the arrivals of ships and their cargo. By the A.D. 900’s, town criers, who called out the news, were common in European countries. They also were hired by merchants to direct customers to shops and to tell them about goods and prices in the marketplace.

The impact of printing. About 1440, Johannes Gutenberg of Germany invented movable type in Europe. His invention led to the first forms of mass advertising-printed posters, handbills, and newspaper ads. William Caxton, who introduced printing into England, produced the first printed advertisement in English in 1472. It was a poster announcing the sale of a book and was tacked on church doors.

The first newspaper regularly printed in England, a weekly newssheet, appeared in 1622. In the years that followed, more English newspapers were started, and advertising soon became a standard feature of newspapers.

The first newspaper advertisement in the American Colonies appeared in The Boston News-Letter in 1704. Many of the early magazines in the United States either refused to print advertisements or carried only certain kinds of ads. But in the mid-1800’s, more and more magazines began to accept advertising, and magazine advertising grew quickly. Some magazines were started chiefly to earn advertising money.

Many early ads in both the United States and England paid little heed to the truth. Advertisers made wildly exaggerated claims. Ads for nonprescription drugs, for example, boasted cures for all kinds of ailments.

The development of advertising agencies. The first advertising agencies acted as brokers-that is, they bought space at a discount from newspapers and resold it to advertisers. The ads were prepared by the advertisers themselves or by hired writers.

Volney B. Palmer started the first U.S. advertising agency in Philadelphia in 1841. Palmer worked as an agent for newspaper publishers. He received 25 percent commission on the space that he sold to advertisers.

In 1875, N. W. Ayer & Son, another Philadelphia advertising agency, began to emphasize agency services to advertisers. In time, the firm hired writers and artists and carried out complete advertising campaigns for clients. N. W. Ayer & Son thus became the first “modern” advertising agency. By 1900, most agencies in the United States were writing copy for advertisers. By the 1920’s, they had assumed responsibility for complete advertising campaigns.

The rise of radio and television provided advertisers with new, powerful media. Commercial radio stations began operating in the United States in the 1920’s. Radio soon became a major medium for national advertisers. It enabled them to reach the large, captive audiences that tuned in to popular programs. Many of the radio shows were produced by advertising agencies. The popularity of radio soared for about 20 years, until television began to boom after World War II (1939-1945). Radio then lost much of the business of national advertisers, though it continued to be an important medium for local advertisers. The rise of coast-to-coast TV broadcasts in the 1950’s provided national advertisers with access to mass audiences far larger than those reached by radio. By 1955, advertisers were spending over $1 billion a year on television.

Recent developments. Advertising expenditures in the United States have increased tremendously since World War II. In 1950, about $5.7 billion was spent on advertising. Advertising expenditures are now more than $200 billion a year.

The growth of advertising since the 1950’s has been accompanied by criticism of advertising practices. Much of the criticism has focused on the use of psychological techniques in advertising. Advertising has also been criticized for its stereotypical portrayal of women, elderly people, and racial minorities. As a consequence, many advertisers have broadened the variety of roles played by members of these groups in ads. In addition, some advertisers have used people with physical disabilities in commercials for products and services not related to the disabilities.

Since the 1980’s, many new advertising media appeared. For example, advertisements are now seen in motion-picture theaters and on videotapes prior to the featured movie. In addition, they appear in high school classroom news programming. Supermarket shoppers may be exposed to in-store radio and grocery carts with miniature billboards or video screens advertising various products.

Advertising on the Internet began after the creation of the World Wide Web in the early 1990’s. On the whole, businesses spend only a small percentage of their advertising budgets on the Internet, but this medium is growing rapidly.

Advertisers also began to spend more money on promotional campaigns. Promotions involving coupons, rebates, premiums, or sweepstakes awards may provide a short-term boost in sales. But some industry experts believe the increase in sales comes at the expense of the long-term image of the brand or product.

The history of printing can be traced back thousands of years, to when people in the Middle East learned to press carved designs into wet clay. More than 2,000 years ago, the Chinese invented paper. By the 700’s, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans were using block printing. They carved symbols and pictures on wood blocks, inked the raised images, and transferred the ink to paper.

The invention of movable type. About 1045, a Chinese printer named Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng) made the first movable type. He made a separate piece of clay type for each Chinese symbol or character. But the Chinese language required so many different characters for printing that the method was difficult and fell into disuse. Printers found it easier to print from wood blocks.

While the people of East Asia were printing from wood blocks, the people of Europe still copied books by hand. Many monks spent their lives copying books with quills and reeds. In the late 1300’s, Europeans discovered wood-block printing. The earliest dated European wood-block print is a picture of Saint Christopher, printed in 1423. About this time, Europeans began to produce block books by binding prints together.

Meanwhile, a major revival of art and learning called the Renaissance was sweeping through Europe. The great desire for learning created a huge demand for books that hand copying and block printing could not satisfy. Movable type solved the problem.

Printing as we know it today began about 1440 with the first use of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg and his associates in Germany. Gutenberg brought together several inventions to create a whole new system of printing. He made separate pieces of metal type, both capitals and small letters, for each letter of the alphabet. He assembled the pieces of type in a frame to form pages. Finally, his press, based on the idea of a wine press, became the first printing press in Europe. Gutenberg had found it hard to produce evenly printed copies by pressing the paper against the type by hand. By turning a huge screw on the press, he could put uniform pressure on the paper. The Gutenberg press could print about 300 copies a day. By 1456, the famous Gutenberg Bible was completed.

Many people feared that the new art of printing was a “black” art that came from Satan. They could not understand how books could be produced so quickly, or how all copies could look exactly alike. In spite of people’s fears, printing spread rapidly. By 1500, there were more than 1,000 print shops in Europe, and several million books had been produced.

Early printing in North America. In 1539, an Italian printer, Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli), set up a print shop in Mexico City. This was the first print shop in North America. In 1639, Stephen Daye and his son Matthew set up the first press in the American Colonies, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Printing spread quickly through the colonies, though the colonial authorities often placed strict controls on printers. The early printers were America’s first publishers of newspapers, books, and magazines. In 1704, John Campbell established The Boston News-Letter, the first regularly published paper in the colonies. In 1751, Bartholomew Green of Boston set up Canada’s first print shop in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Green died that same year, and his former assistant, John Bushell, took over the shop. In 1752, Bushell began publishing the Halifax Gazette, Canada’s first newspaper.

New presses and typecasting machines. There were few changes in the printing press from Gutenberg’s time until the 1800’s. An English nobleman, the Earl of Stanhope, built the first all-iron press about 1800. In 1811, the German printer Friedrich Konig invented a steam-powered cylinder press. This press used a revolving cylinder that pressed the paper against a flat bed of type. The Times of London used the press for the first time in 1814. It could print 1,100 sheets per hour.

In 1846, Richard M. Hoe of the United States, a manufacturer of printing presses, invented the rotary press. He attached type to a revolving cylinder and used another cylinder to make the impression. The first Hoe presses printed 8,000 sheets per hour. Later models turned out 20,000 sheets per hour. In 1865, William A. Bullock, an American inventor and machinist, found a way to print from a continuous roll of paper and invented a high-speed web-fed rotary press.

Until the 1880’s, printers set all type by hand, just as Gutenberg had done over 400 years before. In 1884, Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German instrument maker living in the United States, patented the Linotype. This machine uses a keyboard to cast a full line of type in one piece of metal, thus eliminating the need for hand-setting. In 1887, Tolbert Lanston, an American inventor, developed the Monotype, which casts and sets separate pieces of type.

Developments in platemaking. In 1826, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a French physicist, produced the world’s first photograph. This achievement, and further developments in photography, made possible photoengraving, the halftone process, and photolithography and modern offset printing.

In 1852, William H. Fox Talbot, an English photographer, patented photoengraving. Two American photoengravers, Max and Louis Levy, perfected the halftone screen in the 1880’s. Alphonse Louis Poitevin, a French chemist, engineer, and photographer, invented photolithography in 1855. By the late 1800’s, offset presses appeared in Europe. These early presses were used to print tin sheets for making cans and boxes.

About 1905, Ira Rubel, U.S. papermaker and printer, accidentally discovered the offset method for printing on paper. While running his press, Rubel unintentionally transferred the inked images onto the rubber-covered impression cylinder, instead of onto paper. Then, when he ran paper through the press, the impression cylinder offset the images onto the paper. Rubel noticed that the offset images were unusually sharp. Improvements in the offset press followed, and offset printing quickly came into general use.

The electronic age. Since the 1930’s, more advances have been made in printing than in all the years since Gutenberg. By the mid-1940’s, advances in photolithography and offset printing made it possible to print with better quality, consistency, and cost-efficiency than the relief process could offer. The combination of photographic processes and offset printing brought more complex illustrations and photographs to printed pieces, as well as more brilliant and lifelike colors. By the 1960’s, photoengraving and offset printing had become so simplified that certain kinds of printing could be done in minutes, giving rise to a new kind of commercial printing called quick printing.

Desktop publishing began in the mid-1980’s. New computers, computer printers, and software enabled people to design, edit, and print material that traditionally would have been produced on printing presses. In the late 1900’s, inventors developed processes for putting images onto paper and other materials directly from computer files, without an intermediate step.