The Introduction and Development of Modern Printing Technology 1.1

Modern printing mainly includes direct printing with lead type typesetting and lead type printing as a master, mud or paper type casting and copying, and photolithographic printing for the production of photographic copper-zinc printing plates. Art; lithography with lithography, rouge and photolithography, indirect printing; gravure printing with engraved gravure and gravure (graphic). In the more than one hundred years since the beginning of the 19th century, these modern printing techniques were successively introduced into China, and they rapidly developed in the struggle for national peril and the Chinese nation and foreign aggressors. Its introduction time is generally based on the use of Western lead type production technology in China to produce Chinese lead type characters in 1807. Objectively, the time when Western modern printing was introduced into China and the use of Western modern printing techniques to develop Chinese lead type characters, and the use of modern gravure printing techniques to print Chinese maps and pictures were all earlier than in 1807 when Chinese characters were produced in Chinese characters. . The issue of the time of the introduction of Western modern printing into China presents a rather complicated situation.

The first section of the introduction and development of letterpress printing

Toppanography is a process technology that uses a letterpress that is partially higher than the blank. China invented and extended the use of more than one thousand years of traditional printing - engraving and movable type printing. The letterpress printing in this section refers specifically to the western printing of western modern printing techniques. The western modern letterpress printing techniques introduced to China were printed in lead type in the order of time of their introduction. The lead version was used as the master version of the cast mud version, the paper type cast type printing and the photo copper and zinc printing. Among them, the direct printing of lead type printing is the beginning.

The direct printing process of lead type printing is mainly composed of the processes of engraving, casting, typesetting, and plate printing. To introduce this technology into China and print Chinese books and periodicals, it is necessary to solve the problem of the production of Chinese lead type characters. Studies on the production of Chinese lead type had already begun before lead type printing was introduced into China. The earliest Western-style books containing Chinese characters printed in movable type were "Chinese Great Empire", dated 1585. The use of Chinese characters in the "Chinese Great Empire" did not cause much attention. In 1696, the German edition of ChTonologia Oder Zei t-Register Chinesischen Kayser by Ch. Mentzel was published in Berlin, Germany. The book contains the Chinese names of all the emperors before Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty in China. It can be seen that as early as the end of the seventeenth century, western countries have used Western law to develop Chinese lead type production techniques. Han Qi, “Development of Chinese Characters in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”, pp. 267-269, “Living Pattern Printing”, Printing Industry Press, 1990. Later, in Sir John Barrow (1764-1848)'s book "China Travel" published in London in 1804, some Chinese characters were also interspersed with English translations (Figure 13-1). The Chinese characters in the early Western texts were skewed and unsightly. The quality of the characters was incomparable with the metal type letters produced in China and even Eastern countries.

First, the introduction and development of lead type printing

Lead type printing is a process technology that uses lead type characters to print a complete layout. It has existed in ancient China. The difference is that the lead characters that were introduced into the modern lead-type printing technique in the West are made by using lead, antimony, and tin metal in a proportioned ratio and are machine-printed. It is a more advanced printing technique than Chinese traditional lead type printing. The time of arrival was generally the beginning of Morrison's employment in Guangzhou in 1807.

1. The introduction of lead type printing

In 1805 (10th year of the Qing Dynasty), the London Mission of the United Kingdom sent Christian Protestant missionary Robert Morrison (17 82-1834) to teach in China and arrived in Guangzhou on September 8, 1807. This is the first time that Western colonial countries sent Protestant missionaries to China. To teach in China, you need the Chinese Bible urgently, and you should know Chinese. As a result, Morrison continued to devote himself to learning Chinese (at that time, Morrison was one of the three people who knew Chinese and Chinese in Europe and America), imitated the Chinese way of life, and translated it into the Chinese name "Ma Morrison", and began to secretly hire in Guangzhou. The Chinese characters were carved and Chinese characters were produced. Morrison’s behavior was both hated by the old Christian churches and was forbidden by the Qing government. After the officials learned that the lettering workers were afraid of attracting disasters, they only torched the lettering to try to eliminate them. This caused Morrison’s cause to suffer major losses and setbacks. Fortunately, Mars was also an interpreter of the East India Company and was not expelled. Marx's move was based on the use of Western lead type printing technology to produce Chinese characters and cast Chinese characters in the Chinese mainland. Therefore, the historians of history used it as the beginning of Western modern printing.

In 1814 (the 19th year of Qing Jiaqing), Morrison went back to his old business and continued to use Western law to produce Chinese characters and lead type. In order to avoid repeating the mistakes, he sent his assistant, Dr. William Milne, and the newly-received Chinese scholar Cai Gao (Yiyun Cai Gaohe Liang Fa) to set up the Oriental Text Printing Press in Malacca and in 1819 (Qing Jiaqing II). In 14 years, the first "Old and New Testament Chinese Bible" was printed. This is the typography of modern Chinese lead type printing used earlier in Chinese. At the same time, the Englishman Dr.Joshus Marshman studied Chinese in India. In 1815 (the 20th year of Jiaqing), Zhang Shudong and Zhang Yaokun wrote a "Compendium of the history of Chinese printing" in Baizhang Publishing House in 1991. Translated the Old and New Testament Bible, PP Tnoms casts a letter in Macao and casts Chinese characters. This is another attempt to use the Western method to produce Chinese lead type characters in China in the early days. Since then, Western countries have followed suit and researched and produced Chinese lead type. For decades, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany and other countries have concentrated on research and development, but all have little effect. Until the British Dale (or translation desk Yoo) cast steel mold, punched copper mold with steel mold, and then use copper mold to create movable type, the development of Chinese lead characters has made a breakthrough in the development of electroplating (casting) to Jiang Beli Law, it can be said that the production of Chinese lead type characters tends to mature.

2. Foreigners' further study on the production of Chinese lead type

The introduction of Western lead type printing into China and the printing of books and periodicals in China are the most important issues in the production of tens of thousands of Chinese lead type characters. In 1807 Morrison was in Guangzhou and in 1815 Maschmanto Tom hired people in Macau to engrave Chinese characters and began his work. Since then, Western countries have followed suit. In general, the outline is as follows:

In August 1827, British Rev. Dale came to Penang and began to develop Chinese lead type. In 1828, he arrived in Malacca and was engaged in printing Chinese books.

In 1833 (the 13th year of Daoguang), the Chinese Repository published a letter from Morrison to the editor of the "China Library." The letter talked about the issue of how to economically cast Chinese type and published the discussion of Dell. Metal movable type long text. Dell's argument is divided into five parts: first, the characteristics of the Chinese type of movable type; second, the necessity of Chinese metal movable type; third, the shortcomings of the trial production of metal movable type in the past; fourth, the improvement of the proposal of the metal movable type; Steel mold. Han Qi: "Development of Chinese Characters in the First Half of the 19th Century", 267 pages of "Living Printing", Printing Industry Press, 1990. Dell suggested that the steel mold be engraved because he first got a set of engravings to cast lead plates and then saw them into a single typeface; these typefaces were made of wood because they were soft and the typefaces that were cast were vulgar and could only be used for five or six years. Recast, the cost is higher Han Qi: "the development of Chinese characters in the first half of the nineteenth century," "Living Printing" 267 pages, printing industry press 1990 edition.

In the same year, the German Karl Friedrich August Giitzlaff (Cnarles Gutzlaff 1803-1851) sculpted 4,000 Chinese characters for anti-intaglio carvings for casting.

In 1834 (Dowteenth year of the 14th year), the American Church acquired a Chinese-language woodcut version in China for the purpose of teaching in China and sent it to Boston. It used the method of casting lead plates to produce Chinese characters and then sent it back to China to be printed. Chinese church newspaper.

In 1836 (Daoguang sixteenth year), the legal person Gelande advocated the adoption of the Chinese “stacked words” because of the voluminous Chinese characters, the inscription on the Chinese characters, and the casting of Chinese characters. The Chinese characters are divided and engraved, and then they are combined to form a complete text. For example, characters such as 蜿, 碗, 妒, 、, 秋, etc. are engraved with characters such as worms, stones, women, and 禾, etc., respectively, and then they are spelled and combined as required. The American Presbyterian Church was interested in this. It ordered more than 3,000 characters from more than 5,000 yuan and sent it to the printing office of the Macau Presbyterian Church for printing church publications. Although this method can reduce the number of typefaces and typefaces, it is complicated in typesetting, and the sizes and lengths of characters that are discharged are not uniform, nor are they aesthetically beautiful.

In 1838 (Daoguang 18 years), the Royal French Printing Office (located in Paris) purchased a pair of woodcut Chinese characters in China to cast lead plates, saw them into single type letters, sent them back to China, and printed church reports. It is said that the use is quite convenient.

In the same year, the Pastor Dell of the London Church in Singapore, under the financial support of friends from the United Kingdom and the United States, developed the steel mold and cast words. After the Opium War, he moved to Hong Kong and started printing. He died in 1843. In his lifetime, he engraved 1845 Chinese characters and a small amount of small fonts.

In 1844 (DoGong Twenty-four years), the American Presbyterian Church established the "Huahua Bible Study" in Macau, hosted by American Gu Li (A Gu Xuan, Richard Cole). It is said that a Chinese teenager who had studied printing in the United States returned to China with Gu Li. At the beginning, a small number of fonts were shipped from the United States. There was one typewriter and two printers. Later used Dell's lead type. In order to print the needs of Chinese books and magazines, Gu Li inherited Dell's industry, continue to engrave the fonts, and make small prints and number of character fonts, widely printed books. The fonts and type characters produced by Gu Li are sold to other printers in addition to their typographical needs, and they are even sold to Bangkok in Thailand. In 1845, Hua Hua's Bible study moved to Ningbo and was renamed Meihua Bookstore. In 1846, a new furnace and other materials were shipped from the United States. In 1847, Gu Li resigned and the Meihua Bookstore was replaced by others.

In 1858 (eight years in Xianfeng), the American Presbyterian sent William Gamble to China to preside over the affairs of the American Library. Jiang Bie Li had studied and printed in Philadelphia in the United States. After arriving in China, he created a typeface in Ningbo in 1859 in view of the complexity of Chinese characters and the large number of characters. The method is to use boxwood to make a stencil to engrave the anti-yang text, and then to plate the copper intaglio. Then, the copper and the masculine characters are modeled as a single word and set in a brass shell. This method not only greatly reduces the number of man-hours for engraving, but also has a very good quality. Since then, Jiang has made Chinese characters in seven different sizes of Chinese characters in accordance with the Western style specifications. They are named: "No.1", "No.2", "No.3" and "No.4". The line "words", the fifth "solution" word, the sixth "note" word, the seventh "zhen" word. Because the sizes of the seven Chinese characters are equivalent to the seven type characters in the Western alphabet (the height of the characters is 23.546mm and 0.927 inches respectively), the problem of mixing Chinese and Western languages ​​is solved.