History of Printing Timeline: circa 3100 BCE – 1499
March 27, 2024 | Posted in: PGSF Blogs | Student Resources
Source – printinghistory.org/timeline/
circa 3100 BCE
Cuneiform, one of the earliest known writing systems developed in Sumer (modern day Iraq). Wedge-shaped marks were made on clay tablets by a blunt stylus cut from a reed.
circa 3000
Papyrus plant, paper-like material used as a writing surface in Egypt.
Ink from lamp-black made in China.
circa 500
Amate, a beaten paper-like material, made in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
circa 200
Parchment, a material made from processed animal skin, used as a writing surface in Pergamon (Anatolian Greece, Asia Minor, now Turkey).
105 CE
Invention of the papermaking process credited to Ts’ai Lun [Cai Lun] a palace advisor during the Han Dynasty of China.
circa 500
Papermaking in Samarkand (modern day Uzbekistan).
711
Moors invade Spain, introducing papermaking techniques from the east.
794
Papermill established in Baghdad, Abbasid dynasty ( present day Iraq).
circa 800
Book of Kells illuminated Latin manuscript Gospel produced in Britain and Ireland.
868
The oldest dated printed text known: The Diamond Sutra, a Chinese translation of a Buddhist text now preserved in the British Library.
932
Chinese printers adapt Wood-block printing to mass-produce classical books.
1041
Movable type, made from baked clay, invented in China.
1151
First papermill in Europe at Xàtiva (Spain).
1239
The oldest Metal-Movable-Type printed book is “The Song of Enlightenment with Commentaries by Buddhist Monk Nammyeong Cheon (南明泉和尙頌證道歌)”. (The Goryeo (高麗) Dynasty of Korea)
1282
Watermarks first used in Italian-made paper.
1298
Marco Polo reported seeing the printing of paper money in China.
1309
Paper first used in England.
1377
The world’s second oldest extant book printed with movable metal type Baekun Hwasang Chorok Buljo Jikji Simche Yojeol (Korean: 백운화상초록불조직지심체요절, 白雲和尙抄錄佛祖直指心體要節, Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings) published in Cheungju (淸州), Korea, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). It is often abbreviated to Jikji (직지, 直指).
1403
Guild of Stationers, consisting of booksellers, scribes, illustrators and bookbinders, founded in London.
1423
European wood block print: St. Christopher with the infant Christ.
1430s
Engraving, combined with drypoint, was first used for intaglio printing plates in Germany.
1438–44
Adjustable type mold developed by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz (Germany).
1454
First dated European document: a papal indulgence attributed to Gutenberg.
1455
Gutenberg’s Bible completed by his creditor Johann Fust and his own workman Peter Schoeffer.
1464
Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweinheim, first printers in Italy (Subiaco) and first to use a Roman printing type.
1465
Drypoint engraving developed in Germany.
Greek type used in Cicero’s De officiis printed by Fust and Schoeffer.
1473
The Constance Gradual, the earliest printed music (after the single line of music in the 1457 Mainz Psalter). William Caxton prints the first book in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, in Bruges in collaboration with the Flemish printer Colard Mansion. Three years later Caxton then set up a printshop in England.
1476
Intaglio used for book illustration, a printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, and the incision line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the opposite of relief printing such as letterpress.
First modern title page in Regiomontanus’s Kalendario printed by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice.
1478
Printing begins at Oxford University.
1486
Erhard Ratdolt issues earliest known type specimen in Venice.
1493
Nuremberg Chronicle one of the first books to successfully integrate illustrations and text.
1495
Paper mill established in England.
circa 1495
Etching developed by metalsmith Daniel Hopfer in Augsburg (Germany).
1498–1501
Odhecaton, book of music printed from movable type.
1499
Woodcut of a printing press appears in La Grande Danse Macabre printed by Matthias Huss at Lyon.
Contributors
Substantive comments and suggestions provided by Abby Bainbridge, George Barnum, Barbara Beeton, Terry Belanger, Charles A. Bigelow, Frank Caserta, Douglas Charles, Sarah Chute, Walter Delaney, Erik Desmyter, Sue Durrell, Paul F. Gehl, Jeffrey D. Groves, John G. Henry, Howard Iron Works Museum, Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, Fritz Klinke, Joel Larson, Keelan Lightfoot, Mathieu Lommen, Se Eum Park, Stan Nelson, Xavier Querol, John Risseeuw, Helen Robinson, Paul Romaine, Frank J. Romano, Walker Rumble, Richard Saunders, Stephen O. Saxe, Ad Stijnman, Katherine Victoria Taylor, Philip Weimerskirch, Eric M. White, Colyn Wohlmut, Woo Sik Yoo, and Corinna Zeltsman.
Sources
Berry, W. Turner and H. Edmund Poole. Annuals of Printing, Blandford 1966
Chappell Warren. A Short History of the Printing Word, Hartley & Marks, 1999
Clair, Colin. A Chronology of Printing, Praeger, 1969
The GATF Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications. Graphic Arts Technical Foundation GATF Press, 1998
Moran, James. Printing Presses, University of California Press, 1973 | ebook
[Republic of Korea] Cultural Heritage Administration
Steinberg, S. H. Five Hundred Years of Printing, Oak Knoll & The British Library, 1996
Stijnman, Ad. Engraving and Etching 1400–2000. A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes. ‘t Goy-Houten-London, 2012
Wallis, Lawerence W. A Concise Chronology of Typesetting Developments 1886–1986 , Wynkyn de Worde Society/Lund Humpheries, 1992
