Woodblock printing—-200

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD, and woodblock printing remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century.

Movable type—-1040

 

movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation) usually on the medium of paper.

Printing press—-C 1440

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts.

Etching—-C 1515

Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called engravings.

Mezzotint—-1642

Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a “rocker.” In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. A high level of quality and richness in the print can be achieved.

Aquatint—-1772

In intaglio printmaking, the artist makes marks on the plate (in the case of aquatint, a copper or zinc plate) that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper. This can be repeated a number of times, depending on the particular technique.

Lithography—-1796

Lithography, the image is made of a polymer coating applied to a flexible plastic or metal plate. The image can be printed directly from the plate (the orientation of the image is reversed), by transferring the image onto a flexible sheet (rubber) for printing and publication.

Chromolithography—-1837

Chromolithography is a unique method for making multi-colour prints.

Rotary printing press—-1843

The images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on a large number of substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic.

Hectograph—-1869

The hectograph, gelatin duplicator or jellygraph is a printing process that involves transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame.

Offset printing—-1875

Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface.

Hot metal typesetting—-1884

mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing.

Mimeograph—-1886

The stencil duplicator

Photostat machine—-1907

Projection photocopier

Screen printing—-1911

Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of polyester or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance.

Spirit duplicator—-1923

Ditto machine

Dot matrix printing—-1925

Typewriter

Xerography—-1938

Xerography or electrophotography is a dry photocopying technique.

Phototypesetting—-1949

The process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper

Inkjet printing—-1951

Dye-sublimation printer—-1957

Laser printing—-1969

Thermal printing—-C 1972

3D printing—-1981

Solid ink—-1986

Digital printing—-1991

4D printing—-Around 2013