Throughout time it has been vitally critical 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 a long time ago 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 simply and efficiently. 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 make do with 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 hours at a time 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 make images. Ink back then was generally made up of select items, allowing for different colors. This is equivalent to the current times pen and paper. In fact, feathers, or quills as they are sometimes called, 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 take days to write a page. 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 invented 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 around the world. However, eventually the printing press became irrelevant as all things do and was replaced 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 top of the line 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 much simpler for people to mass produce prints and images, an important part of the world.