The history of the printing press

The invention and development of the printing press has played a significant role in the dissemination of human civilization and culture.
In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg of Germany created a wooden movable type printing press, a vertical spiral hand-cranked press. Although simple in structure, it remained in use for 300 years; in 1812, Koenig of Germany made the first rotary flat-bed printing press; in 1847, Hoe of the United States invented the rotary printing press; in 1900, a six-color rotary printing press was produced; and in 1904, Rubel of the United States invented the offset printing press.
Before the 1950s, traditional letterpress printing dominated the printing industry, and the development of printing presses was mainly focused on letterpress printing. However, lead alloy letterpress printing had drawbacks such as high labor intensity, long production cycles, and environmental pollution. From the 1960s onwards, offset lithography, characterized by short cycles and high productivity, began to rise and develop, gradually replacing lead alloy letterpress printing. Flexographic printing, screen printing, electrostatic printing, and inkjet printing have also developed in packaging and advertising printing.

World printing machinery has made significant progress since the 1980s. Over 20 years, the development of printing machinery has gone through three stages:

The first stage was from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, the peak period of offset printing technology development. During this period, the maximum printing speed of sheet-fed offset presses reached 10,000 impressions per hour. The pre-press adjustment time for a four-color printing press was generally around 2 hours. Automatic control of the printing press mainly focused on automatic paper feeding, automatic paper stacking, automatic cleaning, automatic ink detection and adjustment, and remote register control. During this period, in addition to monochrome and two-color machines, almost every sheet-fed offset press manufacturer also had the capacity to manufacture four-color machines; most manufacturers could manufacture paper turning mechanisms for double-sided printing.
The second stage was from the early 1990s to the end of the 20th century. Entering the 1990s, marked by sheet-fed offset presses, the international level of printing machinery design and manufacturing took a big step forward. Compared with the first-stage models, the speed of the new generation of models was further improved, from 10,000 impressions per hour to 15,000 impressions per hour, and the pre-press adjustment time was greatly shortened from about 2 hours in the first stage to about 15 minutes. The automation level and production efficiency of the machines were also greatly improved.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, printing machinery has entered a third stage of development. Some models of sheet-fed offset presses can reach 17,000-18,000 impressions per hour, but manufacturers are not striving to improve the maximum printing speed, but rather to achieve higher production efficiency by applying information technology to further shorten pre-press preparation time and plate changing time.

In terms of printing machinery automation, networking, integrated production, digital workflows, and links with Management Information Systems (MIS) have become the focus of development. Heidelberg's CP2000 automatic control system, in addition to presetting, controlling, and diagnosing faults in each working process of the entire machine, from paper feeding, paper conveying and guiding, ink delivery, water delivery, plate changing, register, cleaning, drying, coating, powdering, and paper stacking, also has the function of realizing the networking of all production processes of printing enterprises and online transmission of pre-press image processing data (CIP3/PPF or CIP4/JDF data). Entering the new century, most offset press manufacturers have developed corresponding DI digital printing presses.
In addition, to meet the demand for high-end color printing, multi-color sets with 8 or even 10 colors for double-sided printing, and additional inline post-press processing functions have become a development trend for various sheet-fed offset presses (including small offset presses, DI direct platemaking machines, and large offset presses), and the technology is becoming increasingly mature. This type of printing press has begun to encroach on a part of the market that originally belonged to web presses.