day 4

1. Day Notes

01-31-12

Revolutions in printing

Industrial revolution video.

Be sure to study the things that define type such as baseline. Read a quote relating back to last weeks class about the king and his printers, but still unknown if the others were actually killed.

William Caslon released a font with rounded serifs with a Egyptian face. Vincent Figgins. 1796 lithography invented, 1804-1806nLewis and Clark, 1817 Harpers opens printing firm, 1837 chromolithography, Became Queen Victoria, 1839 Daguerre Paris Boulevard, 1840 chromolithography in America. 1846 New pictorial bible, 1850 new monthly magazine, 1857 harpers weekly, 1865 Lincoln killed.

1800 Still working with Guttenberg’s work. Then the iron press. Greatly increased quantity and quality. Only used 1/10 of power of what it took to use the wooden press. Steam power press paten, dual sided press. The first iron press could push about 250 pages while the later version pushed 400. People start to panic because they become useless compared to the printing press.

Ladite: someone who hates and wont use technology

The cost of papers price dropped dramatically. 3 pennies to 1-2 pennies. ( generally sold to anyone to gain a wider audience) They started to sell ad space within the papers. The papers tended to be more enlightening than anything.

1841 John Hooper becomes first Ad man. Ad men are basically a broker for space. Known today as a media buy.

Ottmar Mergenthaller created the linotype. Very close to our own history even though its from the 1800’s. Printing 25000 pressings an hour. 1825 First files a patent for machine that would allow people to composite. Worked in Germany in machinery and came up with the idea to cast more words or letters at a time. One linotype can do the job of 7-8 people all at once. Printing company workers kept undercutting each other with new ideas until they have to merge with another company until they become the Type Founders Company.

Joseph Nipce took the first photograph of nature 1826. The photograph of the city in Paris took so long that it couldn’t capture the people on the streets except for the two people on the corner getting their shoes shined. Henry Talbot experimented with photograms.

Photogram: taking a piece of light sensitive paper, painting something on it and then exposing it in the light. 1889 the Kodak camera for the public is released. Used to be available to only scientists because you had to understand the chemistry and how to develop the image. Photographers were sent out to take photos and then give them to illustrators who then carved the image into a block of wood that becomes a stamp for the newspapers.

Halftone needed to print tone.

1861-1865 civil war, while photography is being developed. First war to be documented and people say that many of the photos are staged because people believe that bodies don’t fall to the ground like that, so the photographer must have moved the bodies for the composition. Most of the photos were the aftermath.

Edweard Muybridge photographs a horse multiple times to win a bet. He said that the horse flies for a moment with all four hooves come off the floor and the other man didn’t believe him. 1872

1819-1901

Photograph of a Victorian parliament. The era’s graphic as known for aesthetic confusion.

The period was known for its strong moral and religious beliefs, they loved confusion.

Pencil of nature, by Talbot was one of the first examples of Victorian era graphics.

Lithography: print from stones.

You had to carry the stone to your desk; level out the piece to erase the previous image with grit and then draw with a grease pencil the image you want and then use types of acids to cut the image into the stone.

The Swedish song quartette company

Ephemera: written or printed material not intended to be retained or preserved. (ads, trading cards, greeting cards, letters)

2. Personal Thoughts

The industrial revolution may have been advancement in the world but its hygiene is absolutely disgusting. I understand the idea of sharing an apartment with another family in order to keep the rent down, but to rent just the bed seems like an impossible task. Then to add to the sickliness, the cities and towns north of the countryside would dump their bowel movement into a sewer or river where people would gather their drinking water. Diseases transferred from water into the people thus destroying the families outside the city. It’s interesting to here that people still want to use the letterpresses. I don’t know if I could ever spend hours working to print a paragraph using the machine. The experiments with the photograms creates a really neat effect and I hope I get the chance to try something like this one day in my lifetime, whether in Ringling or in the future. To spend days working on a stone to imprint an image with acid is one the dumbest career choices as an artist that I know of. Id rather clean bathrooms then do that day in and day out.

3. Questions

How many of the letterpresses from the 1800s exist if they exist at all?

What do modern people now use the letterpresses for? Is it an exploration or something that we used in the past or simply because they like the process itself?

How many people would carve an image into a wooden block and what was their time span to complete it? Was the acids that the lithographers used damage their hands or skin?