Throughout time it has been very important to people to write things down and to record different information. A long, long time ago people would use a feather and papyrus to write important information. Also, stone tablets were utilized in centuries past as forms of writing things down. Finally, the printing press was invented so it was possible to get large books and novels out in mass production fairly easily. Most recently there is the imagesetter and platesetters, both of which are items that help people to use computer technology to make plates and by way of the plates, images. While hard to explain, these tools are important to anyone in the field of imaging and art.

Back long ago people had to just use a stone tablet and a chisel like metal block and a piece of rock to etch images into things. This was horribly inefficient and time consuming. People would often have to work for days on end to just write a few little words. This must have been horribly frustrating and annoying because of it’s inefficiency. In addition to taking a long time, this method was ineffective because of the faint writing that it produced. To make a word deep enough to actually read people would have to go very far into the rock, rendering the process horribly draining.

After the rock and chisel on stone tablet method, people began to use feathers and papyrus, or paper, to write things and capture pictures. Ink back then was generally made up of different dyes, allowing for different colors. This is equivalent to the modern day pen and paper. In fact, feathers, or quills as they are otherwise known, were much like pens because they couldn’t be erased and required ink. This was a far more effective system of imaging and writing because it didn’t takenearly as long to write things as with a stone tablet. This was a popular way of imaging and writing in Europe and America for an extremely long time .

Finally, the precursor to current technology was the printing press. The printing press was given its start in Germany by goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. Although several parts of the world (most of Asia) already had this technology, Gutenberg was thefirst man to bring the printing press to Western Europe. The printing press replaced most forms of block printing on a global scale. However, eventually the printing press became irrelevant as all things do and it’s place was taken by offset printing, which was developed in 1903 by Ira Rubel.

Printing, imaging and writing technology has always and will always be critical and immensely valuable to the world. Without the invention of such cutting edge items as the printing press and offset printing, the world would still be stuck in the dark ages with using stone tablets or papyrus and quills. Because of the invention of these things it has been far easier for people to mass produce prints and images, an important part of the world.