History of Printing Timeline: circa 3100 BCE – 1499

March 27, 2024 | Posted in: Student Resources | PGSF Blogs

History of Printing Timeline Circa 3100 - 1499

Sourceprintinghistory.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

TheCanadianEncyclopedia.com

The GATF Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications. Graphic Arts Technical Foundation GATF Press, 1998

Historyofinformation.com

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

UNESCO

Wallis, Lawerence W. A Concise Chronology of Typesetting Developments 1886–1986 , Wynkyn de Worde Society/Lund Humpheries, 1992