The first human activity, which has got something common with a press it is the writing on the clay’s boards with so–called cuneiform (c. 4 000 years B. C.). This "writing” it was pressing signs into soft clay in reality. The real press was conditioned by Chinese inventing of paper.

About four hundreds later The Chinese gave the world next invention, it was so– called table–press. They cut a picture and text into a wooden desk, after it they rubber–stamped some paper with it: it is the first important step to the letter– press.

Pi – Seng – again in China – made a decisive step on the way to the invention of the letter-press about 1040, when he produced first letters from a stone. The stone material was not suitable for this purpose however.

The Korean invented movable metal type printing in the early 13th century. The oldest extant metal type printing is "Baegun Hwasang Chorok Buljo jikji simche yojeol," abbreviated to "Jikji," which was published in 1377 Cheungju, Korea and is currently kept in France National Library.

The speed cultural changes in Europe in a half of 15^th century gave cause for the great rising of demands for written documents. When it was dealt only with the church-writing priests attended this. Now, when the commercial demands for other writing material rose, there were turned up a lot of profane writers, however they did not be enough for the demand.

Gutenberg during printing the Bible

In next years the development continued only slowly. The print–press was been improving especially, in 1458 Italian Maso Finiguerra printed the first copper engraving (it was used only in the next century practically).

About 1470 (1468) the first book was printed in The Czech countries, ” Kronika trojanska”. In 1500 there were about 250 printing presses in Europe, which printed 40 000 copies. The printer Ludmila Sedlcanska obtained permission to printing the first newspapers in The Czech Republic (“Novalia") in 1658 (their print is added at her daughter only after 1664).

In 1796 the native of Prague Alois Senefelder invented the surface print, so – called lithography, which influenced deeply the development of the letterpress. The lithography technology became a base of so–called an offset print, which started to develop after 1880 (it started to use only from the beginning of 20^th century). Frenchmen Trottier, Missier, Mrioni and Michaud contributed to the invention of offset. It is an indirect print technology, when it is printed on cylinders, which are covered with an India–rubber facing, from printing forms first and after it from the cylinders on a paper. There is used the same principle of incompatibility of fat with water, which was used by Senefelder. This offset gave possibility to print the great printing of books with illustrations.

The hand typography of pages belonged to the lengthiest works all time. German emigrant Ottmar Mergenthaler removed this nearly last great rock in the history of print in 1886 after he had settled himself in The United States. In that time the just invented typewriter was developing and Mergenthaler was working on several its modules. It leaded him on the idea to set the letters on the page this way, that the type – setter would wrote on the key–board like at the typewriter and the typography machine would choose and set the pertinent letters itself. This way the row typography machine was constructed, which was named "linotype”, it was the greatest invention from the time of Gutenberg.

In the same time - 1882 till 1889 – the next important invention was created: the decomposition of picture into matrix of different great points, which would create the original pictures again during printing. Its author was George Meisenbach.

In the first half of 20^th century the technology of printing was not changing in a base. In 70^th there were appeared the punch ribbons at ” linotypes” and this way the process of automation was toped. The punch ribbons could be created on another place and controlled, if need be they could be sent electronically.

In that time there was coming the second revolution in the printing. There was enforced so – called photo setting and digitalization. In this day so–called DTP systems (desk–top publishing) are common, where the pages of book, journals and so on are preparing only electronically.

The partial view on DTP system
(Taken from www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/dauer/druck/e_druck1.htm)