Printing press year. Typography in Rus' - the first book printer and the publication of the first printed book

TOPIC: HISTORY OF BOOK 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 the printing press in Europe in the mid-15th century was also logical. By that time in European countries have all the prerequisites for the emergencebook printing.

!! REMEMBER

What were the prerequisites for the emergence of printing in Europe by the mid-15th century? ? _________

Has already been accumulated great experience in use PRINTED FORM. A various ways receiving a printed PRINT have been known for a long time. The very first printed book "DiamondSutra" was prepared bymaking impressions on paper from wooden boards in China back in the 9th century.This method of printing booksThey were also used in European countries in the 13th and 14th centuries.

REMEMBER.

What was the name of this printing method? What did books printed this way look like? ________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ _________________________________________ _____

While preparing carved wooden forms for printing, the craftsmen noticed one feature of the printed impression: everything in it turns out upside down. In order for the print to be printed correctly, it must be cut as a mirror image. To print such a book, a press was created that pressed printed form to paper. This experience was very useful for the transition to more advanced book printing.

THINK.

How can letters cut out 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 to do this you need to cut out individual letters and, combining them, type any text. When you were little and learned to read, you used children’s cubes with letters to form a word, then took them apart and formed another word. This principle of using the same cubes (letters) in in different words is the basis of TYPE PRINTING.

It is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of ​​typesetting printing. 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 an entire printed form from individual clay letters depicting one sign (hieroglyph).

The Chinese blacksmith Bi Shen was the first in human history to use movable type for printing. Bi Shen took soft clay and sculpted it into rectangular blocks. Then, using a pointed stick, he squeezed out a mirror image of the hieroglyph on the upper end of the block. The printing form was an iron plate with a frame, covered with a thick mass, into which the LETTERS 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, Korea printed from type plates made up of individual metal types.

2. Many countries tried to invent printing. But only in the 15th century in Germany, the master JOHANN GUTENBERG (1399? - 1468) invented such a method, which was developed in all European countries. This man has put on real technical forms an idea that has been around for a long time. He found the best solution to the problem posed to humanity by the entire course of world history. Gutenberg thought about and implemented his great discovery, the invention of the printing press, for ten years. He was educated in the sciences and knew many crafts.

Any invention is the sum of several inventions. Gutenberg figured out how to make metal type - letters for printing, so that there were a lot of them and so that they were the same. But you can’t print anything in separate letters.

He figured out how to compose and fasten the typesetting line and how to join the typed lines into a page so that it would not fall apart when it was transferred to the printing press. He improved the press, came up with new line-up paints.

At first, Gutenberg tried to print simple publications: leaflets, brochures. Once I had gained experience, I started printing. BIBLES(1452 - 1455).

It was very beautiful and looked like a handwritten book. Only the text was printed; Headings, initials, and designs were hand-drawn in red and gold paint. The complete Bible has 1,282 pages. Based on the number of lines on a strip, it is usually called “42-line”

Several more of his printed editions have reached us.

The appearance of the printing press is a major milestone in the history of human culture. It was from this time that the spoken word, written down and then reproduced in tens, hundreds and thousands of prints, became the most important tool of education and upbringing, an instrument for the dissemination of knowledge.

3. Printing according to the method of Johannes Gutenberg over the course of several decades spread first throughout Germany and then throughout Europe. In many European cities,PRINTING. Work in printing houses of that time was very difficult. It lasted fourteen hours a day. Printing house owners severely punished workers for mistakes. Printers often suffered from chest illnesses caused by the fact that they dealt with toxic substances. Each printing house produced the paint itself; the recipe was kept strictly secret.

Wonderful printing houses appeared in Italy. The pinnacle of book printing in the 15th century was publishingALDA MANUZIA . 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 - italics . Ald put a characteristic icon on these books - an anchor with a dolphin entwined around it. It was one of the first publishing marks. The existence of the publishing brand was caused by the fight against counterfeits and imitations.

Printing houses in France were famous for their beautiful illustrations.

All the first printing houses had their own characteristics. At the same time, the first printed books of the 15th century have much in common.

Only text was printed in them. 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, and this is how the paragraph indentation 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 the publications of Aldus 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 did it appearTITLE PAGE . In handwritten and very first printed books it was replaced byCOLOPHON - page at the end of the book with some information about it. The title page of a printed book included the title of the book and information about where and when it was printed.

!! Think about it.

What role did the title page play in printed books?

________________________________________ ____________________________

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 add a table of contents to the book. The book becomes more convenient to use.

Changes appearance books. It becomes stricter in design, colorful miniatures are increasingly being replaced by black and white ENGRAVINGS printed from a wooden board.

!! Remember . nbsp;  

What is this printing method called?

________________________________________ __________________________________

Then they began to use engravings on copper plates.

New style in book design.

Here is the Talian translation of the Bible, published in Venice. Simple, light and strict page style. The screensaver engraving depicts not a biblical prophet, but a writer at his literary work. On the desktop there is a candlestick (with a spike for piercing 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 to the design of a page in a handwritten book.

How do you see the difference? __________________________________

All books printed before January 1, 1501 are calledINCUNABULAMI . This word is translated as “cradle,” that is, the infancy of book printing.

Few incunabula have survived to this day. They are preserved in museums and largest libraries in the world. The incunabula are beautiful, their fonts are elegant and clear, the text and illustrations are placed very harmoniously on the pages.

Their example shows that a 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 office,” recreating the atmosphere of a Western European monastery library of the 15th century.

!! Check yourself.

1. Read the statement of the French writer Victor Hugo about the role of printing, which became the epigraph to this topic. How do you understand it?

________________________________________ ________________________________________ _____

2. In Germany, in the city of Strasbourg, in the central square there is a monument to Johannes Gutenberg. For what merits did grateful descendants perpetuate the memory of this German master?

________________________________________ ________________________________________ _____

3.Why are printed books of the 15th century called incunabula?

________________________________________ ________________________________________ _____

4. What new elements appeared in printed books in the 15th century?

________________________________________ ________________________________________ _____

5. Explain the meaning of the following concepts using reference books.

The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary (any edition) will help you

letter_________________________________ ____________________

typesetting (typing)_________________________________ ______

font___________________________________ ____________________

printing house______________________________ ____________________

engraving_________________________________ ____________________

Red line__________________________________ _____________

Books existed long before the invention of printing. But before they were written by hand and then rewritten several times, making the required number of copies. This technology was extremely imperfect and took a lot of effort and time. In addition, when rewriting books, errors and distortions almost always crept in. Handwritten ones were very expensive, and therefore could not be found widely.

The first books made by printing appeared, apparently, in China and Korea back in the 9th 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 to the sheet. The result was a print that repeated the original text.

This method, however, was not widely used in China, since each time it took a long time to cut out the entire required text on a printed board. Some craftsmen tried even then to make a form from movable signs, but the number of hieroglyphs in Chinese writing was so great that this method was very labor-intensive and did not justify itself.

The invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg

In its more modern form, printing arose in Europe in the first half of the 15th century. It was during these times that there was an urgent need for cheap and accessible books. Handwritten publications could no longer meet the needs of a developing society. The method of printing from boards, which came from the East, was ineffective and quite labor-intensive. An invention was needed that could allow books to be printed in huge quantities.

The German master Johannes Gutenberg, who lived in the mid-15th century, is rightfully considered 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 he invented. It is believed that the first printed book came out of Gutenberg's 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 indentations that looked like letters. Lead was poured into this mold, ultimately obtaining the required number of letters. These lead signs were sorted and placed in special typesetting cash registers.

A printing press was designed to make books. In essence, it was a manually driven press that had two planes. A frame with a font was placed on one plane, and blank sheets of paper were applied to the other plane. The assembled matrix was coated with a special coloring composition, the basis of which was soot and linseed oil. The productivity of the printing press was very high at that time - up to hundreds of pages per hour.

The printing method invented by Gutenberg gradually spread throughout Europe. Thanks to the printing press, it became possible to reproduce books in relatively large quantities. Now the book has ceased to be a luxury item, accessible only to a select few, but has become widespread among the masses.

An invention without which it is difficult to imagine universal literacy of the population today is the printing press. There is no doubt that this car changed the world for the better. But when did it appear in our everyday life and what is its history?

Today, the scientific world is of the opinion that the first printing press was built by a German entrepreneur. However, there are reliable facts that similar devices were used by people much earlier. Residents also stamped clay using paint and a stamp. In the first century AD, fabrics decorated with patterns were common in Asia and Europe. During ancient culture, stamps were placed on papyrus, and the Chinese had paper on which they printed prayers using wooden templates already in the second century AD.

In Europe, publishing books was the province of monasteries. At first they were copied by hand by the monks. Then they made a page template and printed it, but this process was long, and a new template was needed for a new book.

Almost immediately, carved boards were replaced by metal type, which applied oil-based ink using a press. It is believed that the technique of loose type was first used by Gutenberg (1436). It is his signature that adorns the most ancient printing press. However, the French and Dutch dispute this fact, arguing that it was their compatriots who invented such an important machine.

So, when asked who invented the printing press, most of our contemporaries will answer that it was Johannes Guttenberg. He was born in Mainz into a family from the old noble family of Gonzfleisch. It is not known for certain why he left his hometown, took up a craft and took his mother’s surname. However, in Strasbourg he made the main invention of the century.

Machine device

Gutenberg hid how his printing press worked. However, today it can be argued that at first it was made of wood. There is news that his first typeface existed back in the sixteenth century. Each letter had a hole through which a rope was threaded, connecting the typed lines. But wood is not a good material for such a thing. The letters swelled or dried out over time, making the printed text uneven. Therefore, Guttenberg began to cut a stamp from lead or tin, and then cast the letters - it turned out much easier and faster. The printing press actually acquired its modern appearance.

The book printing machine worked like this: initially, letters were made in mirror form. By hitting them with a hammer, the master received impressions on a copper plate. This is how the required number of letters were made, which were used many times. Then words and lines were put together from them. Gutenberg's first products were Donatus's grammar (thirteen editions) and calendars. Having gotten the hang of it, he ventured into a more complex task: the first printed Bible had 1,286 pages and 3,400,000 characters. The publication was colorful, with pictures, and hand-drawn by artists.

The Gutenberg case continued. In Rus', such a machine appeared in 1563, when, on the orders of Ivan the Terrible, Fedorov built his own machine.

A great cultural achievement was the beginning of book printing in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. The first Russian printer was Ivan Fedorov: born in the 20s of the 16th century, died on December 6, 1583 in Lvov.

The construction of the first state printing house in Moscow ended in 1563, and on March 1, 1564, the first book “Apostle” was published here, the technical and artistic execution of which was excellent. Subsequently, the printing house printed several more books of religious content, then its activities were interrupted. Ivan Fedorov and his assistant Pyotr Mstislavets, persecuted by church and secular reactionaries, were forced to leave their homeland and settle outside its borders, becoming the founders of book printing in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Afterword to "The Apostle", printed by Ivan Fedorov in Lvov. 1574. The first failure did not stop Ivan the Terrible, and he opened a new printing house in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. But printing developed relatively slowly.

Along with Ivan Fedorov, among the first Russian printers one should also name Marusha Nefedyev, Nevezha Timofeev, Andronik Nevezha and his son Ivan, Anisim Radishevsky, Anikita Fofanov, Kondrat Ivanov. Many of them were both engravers and type foundries.

In 1803, when it was 250 years since the beginning of Russian book printing and 100 years since the publication of the first Russian newspaper, the historian Karamzin said: “The history of the mind represents two main eras: the invention of letters and printing.”

To call Ivan Fedorov the creator of the first Russian printing press is not enough.

He is a pioneer. The beginning of book printing in Russia is associated with his name.

The date and place of birth of Ivan Fedorov are unknown. He was born around 1520. The version about his origin from the Novgorod masters of handwritten books can be considered reliable. Historical information related to the origins of Russian book printing is as follows. The first printed Slavic books appeared in the Balkans, but these were Glagolitic letters, which in Russia in the 15th-16th centuries. there were no walks. By the end of the 15th century. the first four books in Cyrillic were printed in Krakow; two of them are dated 1491. The name of their printer is known - Schweipolt Feol. The Belarusian educator Francis Skaryna began printing books in his native language in Prague in 1517. Moreover, there are seven known books printed directly in Russia in the 50s of the 16th century, that is, ten years before the first printed “Apostle”.

However, neither the place nor the date of publication of these books, nor the names of their printers have yet been established. “The Apostle” by Ivan Fedorov, published in 1564 in Moscow, is the first printed Russian book about which it is known who, where, why and when it was printed. This information is contained in the chronicle on the weekend, or title, as we now say, page of the book and in the afterword by Ivan Fedorov.

In this afterword, and in even more detail in the preface to the second edition of the Apostle, Ivan Fedorov sets out the history of the creation of the Russian printing house, the history of the troubles and adversities that befell the first printer of the Russian book.

The first printing house in Moscow was opened in 1.563, and on April 19 of the same year, Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets were there.

Unlike Western European ones, the Moscow printing house was not private, but state enterprise, funds for the creation of the printing house were allocated from the royal treasury. The establishment of the printing house was entrusted to the deacon of the St. Nicholas Church in the Moscow Kremlin, Ivan Fedorov, an experienced bookbinder, book copyist and carver-artist. The printing house required a special room, and it was decided to build a special Printing Yard, for which a place was allocated near the Kremlin, on Nikolskaya Street. Ivan Fedorov, together with his assistant Pyotr Mstislavets, a Belarusian from Mstislavl, took an active part in the construction of the Printing House.

After construction was completed, the organization of the printing house itself began, the design and manufacture of the printing press, the casting of the font, etc. Ivan Fedorov fully understood the principle of printing with movable type from the words of others.

Perhaps Fedorov visited Maxim the Greek at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, who lived in Italy for a long time and personally knew the famous Italian typographer Aldus Manutius. However, it is unlikely that anyone could explain to him in detail the technique of printing. Fedorov made numerous tests and eventually achieved success; he learned to cast high-quality type, type them and make impressions on paper. Fedorov was undoubtedly familiar with Western European printed books. But when creating the shape of his printed letters, he relied on the traditions of Russian writing and Russian handwritten books. . First printed "Apostle" - highest achievement typographic art of the 16th century. Masterfully crafted font, amazingly clear and even typesetting, excellent page layout. In the anonymous publications that preceded the Apostle, the words, as a rule, are not separated from each other. The lines are sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, and the right side of the page is curvy. Fedorov introduced spacing between words and achieved a completely straight line on the right side of the page. The book contains 46 ornamental headpieces engraved on wood (black on white and white on black). The lines of script, also engraved on wood, were usually printed in red ink, highlighting the beginning of the chapters. The same role is played by 22 ornamental “cap letters”, that is, initial or capital letters. Ivan Fedorov used a completely original method of two-color printing from one printing plate, which has never been found anywhere else.

In 1565, in Moscow, Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets published another book - “The Book of Hours”. Ivan Fedorov and his comrade in Moscow were very prominent and respected people. But the oprichnina introduced by Ivan the Terrible caused them great concern. “For the sake of envy, many heresies were plotted against us,” Ivan Fedorov later wrote, explaining his and Metislavets’s departure to Belarus, which then belonged to the Polish Lithuanian state. So Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets published only two books in Moscow, but this is quite enough for Ivan Fedorov to forever remain the first printer of Rus'. Having the ecclesiastical rank of deacon, Ivan Fedorov took from Moscow not only his wife and children, but also the tools and materials necessary to continue printing books.

Soon Fedorov and Mstislavets were able to resume work in Lithuania, on the estate of Hetman Khodkevich in Zabludov. Here in 1569 the “Teaching Gospel” was printed. Unlike the Moscow ones, this book was not liturgical and was intended for home reading. From Khodkevich's estate, Ivan Fedorov moved to Lvov in 1572, despite the fact that Khodkevich, as a reward for his work, gave Fedorov a village where the pioneer printer could engage in farming and live comfortably. But Fedorov abandoned settled life, considering his printing activity an apostolic ministry. (Apostles, which means “sent” in Greek, were the disciples of Christ whom he sent throughout the world to tell about himself.)

In Lvov, on February 14, 1574, the first accurately dated printed book in Ukraine, the so-called Lvov “Apostle”, was published; the font and some of the headpieces in this book were borrowed from the Moscow "Apostol", but the endings and patterned initials were made anew. In the same year, in Lvov, Ivan Fedorov first published a book for Russian children - "ABC".

The second edition of the ABC was published in 1576 in the city of Ostrog, where Fedorov was invited by Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky. In 1580, Fedorov released the New Testament Psalter in a small format, easy to read. This is the first book in Russian history that is accompanied by an alphabetical subject index.

But the real feat of Ivan Fedorov was the colossal work on the complete Slavic Bible. This gigantic Work occupied 1256 pages. Fedorov and his assistants used not only the Greek, but also the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, as well as Czech and Polish translations. And the basis was the text of the Gennady Bible.

It is to this “Ostrog Bible,” as historians now call it, that the Slavic biblical text that exists in modern editions dates back. Only an extraordinary person was capable of such heroic work, and for the first time in the history of Russia, and Ivan Fedorov was just that. He was fluent in several languages ​​- Greek, Latin, Polish. He was well versed in the intricacies of Church Slavonic grammar.

The Ostrog Bible, published in 1580-1581, was the last printing work Fedorov. After the Bible, Fedorov released only Andrei Rymsha's "Chronology" - the first work of a secular nature printed in Ukraine. Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky lost interest in Fedorov’s publishing activities, and the pioneer printer again had to look for funds to continue his life’s work.

During these years, Ivan Fedorov invents a collapsible cannon and is engaged in

improvement of hand bombards. In search of a customer, he sets off from Lvov on a long and difficult journey for those times - to Krakow and Vienna, where he meets Emperor Rudolf II and demonstrates his invention to him. Rudolf II was completely satisfied with it, but he refused the conditions put forward by Fedorov. Then Ivan Fedorov wrote a letter to the Saxon Kurfürth August: “...So, I master the art of making folding cannons... each, without exception, of this kind of cannon can be disassembled into separate, strictly defined parts, namely fifty, one hundred and even, if necessary, into two hundred parts...” The letter speaks unclearly about the invention; one can only judge that it was a multi-barreled mortar with interchangeable parts.

Returning to Lvov, Fedorov fell ill and on August 3, 1583, “fell ill to the point of death.” Ivan Fedorov died in one of the outskirts of Lviv, which is called Podzamche. He died in poverty, without the funds to redeem the printing property and printed books pledged to the moneylender.

He was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St. Onuphrius, the temple belonged to the Lviv Orthodox Brotherhood. A tombstone was placed on Fedorov’s grave with the inscription: “Drukar of books never seen before.” These words contain, perhaps, the most accurate description of the great deed accomplished by Ivan Fedorov.

Not much is known about the life and work of Ivan Fedorov. What we know about him is known from the books published by the master, or rather from the afterwords to them, which he wrote for each of his publications. The first accurately dated printed book in Russian, “Acts of the Apostles” (“Apostle”), was published in Moscow at the state printing house. This great event for Rus' took place in March 1564. By order of Ivan IV, a large state printing house was created in Moscow in 1553 - the Sovereign Printing House. Its leader was the deacon of the St. Nicholas Church in the Moscow Kremlin, Ivan Fedorov.

Work on the book continued from April 19, 1563 to March 1, 1564. The publication of the “Apostle” marked the beginning of book printing in Rus'. At the same time, a number of publications of the “anonymous” printing house that worked in Moscow in the early 50s are known. XVI century, and, thus, Ivan Fedorov should be considered only the continuer of book printing in Russia. In the publication and design of the book, Ivan Fedorov was helped by Pyotr Timofeev Mstislavets (i.e., a native of the Belarusian city of Mstislavl). The book is printed in the “old printing” style, which was developed by Ivan Fedorov himself on the basis of the Moscow semi-statutory letter of the mid-16th century, and is richly ornamented. At the end of the “Apostle” there was a detailed afterword, which described who printed, where, how and when the Moscow printing house was founded. In October 1565, Ivan Fedorov’s next book, “Chasovnik” (“Book of Hours”), was published in two editions. The “Book of Hours” was a collection of prayers that was used during worship; It was also used to teach children to read and write in Rus'.

In 1566, with the consent of Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich, the printers, taking with them some of the printing materials, left Moscow forever and moved to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The reason for his departure was attacks from the zemstvo clergy and boyars, as Fedorov himself later wrote in the preface to the Lvov edition of the “Apostle” in 1574; he experienced persecution from “many bosses and priests.” Another reason for the departure of printers from Moscow was, in the face of the threat of creating a union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kingdom of Poland, the spread of the printed word for the purpose of Orthodox propaganda in Belarus and Ukraine. In 1569, on the estate of the Great Hetman Grigory Aleksandrovich Khodkevich, Zabludov, printers at the expense of the latter founded a new printing house, where the “Teacher's Gospel” (1569) was printed - a collection of patristic words and teachings for Sundays and holidays and "Psalter" with "Speaker of Hours" (1570). In these books, Ivan Fedorov for the first time called himself “Ivan Fedorovich Moskovitin”, i.e. a native of Moscow. The last book was published by Ivan Fedorov alone, since Pyotr Mstislavets left for Vilna. From Lithuania, having experienced “all kinds of troubles and hardships, the worst,” Ivan Fedorov moved to Lvov. Here, in 1574, he published “The Apostle” and the first Slavic printed textbook, “ABC” (only one copy of the edition of “ABC” has survived, which is currently stored in the library of Harvard University in the USA).

Subsequently, Ivan Fedorov founded a new, fourth printing house on the family estate of the Kyiv governor, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich Ostrozhsky - Ostrog. Here he published five editions - “The ABC” (1578), “The New Testament” and “The Psalter” (1580), an alphabetical index to the New Testament. “The book is a collection of the most necessary things, briefly, for the sake of finding the New Testament in the book according to the words of the alphabet” (1580), together with Gerasim Smotritsky - a wonderful monument of world typographic art, the first complete Slavic Bible, called the “Ostrozh Bible” (1580-1581 .) and the first printed calendar-leaflet on two pages "Chronology". Compiled by the Belarusian poet Andrei Rymsha, a close associate of Prince Radziwill (1581). Ivan Fedorov’s books amaze with their artistic perfection; many of them are now stored in museums and private collections in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Lvov, as well as in Poland (Warsaw and Krakow), Yugoslavia, Great Britain, Bulgaria and the USA.

According to UNESCO, today about 4 billion inhabitants of our planet are literate, that is, able to read and write at least one language. On average, one reader “swallows” about 20 pages of printed text per day. Imagine modern society It is impossible to live without books, and yet for most of its history, humanity managed without them.

However, the amount of knowledge accumulated by people became larger and larger every year and decade. In order to transmit information to future generations, it was necessary to record it on a reliable medium. As such a carrier in different time were used different materials. Rock inscriptions, baked clay tablets of Babylon, Egyptian papyri, Greek wax tablets, handwritten codices on parchment and paper were all the predecessors of printed books.

Printing (from the Greek polys “many” and grapho “I write”) is the reproduction of text or drawing by repeatedly transferring paint to paper from a finished printing plate. The modern meaning of this term implies the industrial reproduction of printed materials, not only books, but also newspapers and magazines, business, and packaging. However, in the Middle Ages, people needed books. The work of a copyist took a lot of time (for example, one copy of the Gospel in Rus' was copied in about six months). For this reason, books were very expensive; they were purchased mainly by rich people, monasteries and universities. Therefore, like any other labor-intensive process, the creation of books sooner or later had to be mechanized.

Woodcut board. Tibet. XVII-XVIII centuries

C. Mills. Young Benjamin Franklin masters printing. 1914

Of course, book printing did not arise out of nowhere; its inventors used many technological solutions that already existed by that time. Carved signet stamps, which allow one to imprint relief designs on a soft material (clay, wax, etc.), have been used by people since ancient times. For example, the signets of the Mohenjo-Daro civilization belong to III millennium BC e. In Babylon and Assyria, cylinder signets were used and rolled over the surface.

Another component of book printing, the process of ink transfer, has also been known to mankind for a long time. First, the technology of printing patterns on fabric arose: a pattern cut out on a smoothly planed wooden plate was covered with paint, and then pressed onto a tightly stretched piece of fabric. This technology was used back in Ancient Egypt.

Traditionally, China is considered the birthplace of printing, although the oldest printed texts discovered in China, Japan and Korea date back to approximately the same time in the mid-8th century. The technology for their production differed from modern ones and used the principle of woodcut (from the Greek xylon “wood”). The original text or drawing, made in ink on paper, was ground onto the smooth surface of the board. The engraver cut wood around the strokes of the resulting mirror image. The form was then covered with paint, which only applied to the protruding parts, pressed tightly onto a sheet of paper, and a straight image remained on it. However, this method was used to print mainly engravings and small texts. The first accurately dated major printed text is a Chinese woodcut copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, published in 868.

Real book printing began in China only in the middle of the 11th century, when the blacksmith Bi Sheng invented and put into practice movable type. As the Chinese wrote in the treatise “Notes on the Stream of Dreams” statesman Shen Ko, Bi Sheng carved characters on soft clay and burned them on fire, with each hieroglyph forming a separate seal. An iron board covered with a mixture of pine resin, wax and paper ash, with a frame to separate the lines, was filled with seals arranged in a row. After the process was completed, the board was heated, and the letters themselves fell out of the frame, ready for new use. Bi Sheng's clay type was soon replaced by wooden and then metal type; the principle of printing from typesetting turned out to be very fruitful.

"Diamond Sutra" 868

In Europe, the woodblock printing method was mastered in the 13th century. As in China, at first they used it to print mainly engravings and small texts, then they also mastered books, in which, however, there were more drawings than text. A striking example of such a publication were the so-called Biblia pauperum (“Poor Man’s Bibles”), anthologies of biblical texts illustrated in the manner of modern comics. Thus, in Europe XIII-XV centuries. Two types of book production coexisted: parchment manuscripts for religious and university literature and paper woodcuts for the poorly educated common people.

In 1450, the German jeweler Johannes Gutenberg entered into an agreement with the moneylender Fust to obtain a loan to organize a printing house. The printing press he invented combined two already known principles: typesetting and printing. The engraver made a punch (a metal block with a mirror image of letters on the end), the punch pressed out a matrix into a soft metal plate, and any required number of letters was cast from the matrices inserted into a special mold. Gutenberg fonts contained very a large number of(up to 300) different characters, such an abundance was necessary in order to imitate the appearance of a handwritten book.

Johannes Gutenberg examines the first printing press. 19th century engraving

Typesetting cash register with letters.

The printing press was a manual press, similar to a wine-making press, which connected two horizontal planes using a pressure screw: a typesetting board with letters was placed on one, and a slightly moistened sheet of paper was pressed against the other. The letters were covered with printing ink made from a mixture of soot and linseed oil. The design of the machine turned out to be so successful that it remained virtually unchanged for three centuries.

In six years, Gutenberg, working almost without assistants, cast no less than five different types, printed the Latin grammar of Aelius Donatus, several papal indulgences and two versions of the Bible. Wanting to defer loan payments until the enterprise began to generate income, Gutenberg refused to pay interest to Fust. The moneylender sued, by court decision the printing house was transferred to him, and Gutenberg was forced to start the business from scratch. However, it was the trial protocol, discovered at the end of the 19th century, that put an end to the question of the authorship of the invention of the printing press; before that, its creation was attributed to the German Mentelin, the Italian Castaldi and even Fust.

The official history of book printing in Rus' began in 1553, when the first state printing house was opened in Moscow by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. During the 1550s it published a number of "anonymous" (non-imprinted) books. Historians suggest that deacon Ivan Fedorov, known as the Russian pioneer printer, worked in the printing house from the very beginning. The first printed book in which the name of Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets, who helped him, is indicated was the Apostle, work on which was carried out, as indicated in the afterword, from April 1563 to March 1564. The following year, his second book, The Book of Hours, was published in Fedorov’s printing house.

Gutenberg's printing press.

By the middle of the 18th century. There was a need not only for more books, but also for the rapid production of newspapers and magazines in large circulations. A manual printing press could not satisfy these requirements. The printing machine invented by Friedrich König helped radically improve the printing process. Initially, in a design known as the "Zul press", only the process of applying ink to the printing plate was mechanized. In 1810 Koenig replaced the flat pressure plate with a rotating cylinder - this was a decisive step towards creating a high-speed printing machine. Six years later, a double-sided printing machine was created.

Although the flatbed printing press was a truly revolutionary invention, it still had serious disadvantages. Its printing form performed reciprocating movements, significantly complicating the mechanism, while the reverse motion was idle. In 1848, Richard Howe and Augustus Applegate successfully applied the rotary (i.e., based on the rotation of the device) principle for printing needs, which was successfully used for printing designs on fabric. The most difficult thing was to secure the printing form on the cylindrical drum so that the letters did not fall out when it rotated. The first rotary press installed in the printing house of the Times newspaper could make up to 10 thousand impressions per hour.

Improvements in the printing process continued throughout the 20th century. Already in its first decade, first two-color and then multi-color rotary machines appeared. In 1914, the production of machines for intaglio printing was mastered (their printing elements are recessed in relation to the whitespace), and six years later for flat or offset printing (the printing and whitespace elements are located in the same plane and differ in physical and chemical properties, with In this case, the ink only lingers on the printers). Nowadays, all printing operations are automated and controlled using computers. There has long been no shortage of printed paper books, but now they are competing with electronic books.

With the invention of offset printing, the printing cycle accelerated significantly.