Sic mind

How ink technology pushes print technology

E-ink, e-books, e-paper, e-readers: it’s hard to avoid the “E” word these days—and especially easy to believe that the traditional printed word is more endangered than ever. It’s also tempting to think that in harnessing such technologies, we’ve reached some sort of cultural-historical endgame, one in which the old ways are forgotten as we march ever further into uncharted textual territory. In fact, such seemingly post-modern innovations are in keeping with centuries-old tradition—cyclical developments wherein demand for ever more rapid methods of disseminating information drives innovation in printing technology, and for which ink technology serves as the catalyst.

From primitive, painstaking manuscripts to moveable metal type, from electro-photography to electronic displays, ink technology has always been the catalyst for change, driving print technology and the textual tradition forward. However, given its ubiquity, ink remains a relatively little-studied subject. Perhaps this is because, like the typography it is meant to embody (and unlike well-behaved Victorian children), ink is meant to be heard and not seen: its subtle utility eludes our notice, humbly making way for the all-important text.

According to Ruxton, “the history of ink making shows that the development of the industry followed the improvements of inks” (Ruxton 9). The quality of the printed text as a whole, he points out, depends on the quality of the materials used in the reproduction process—most especially the ink itself: “first, the ink must have a certain body; second, it must have a certain cohesion, or flow (long or short); and third, a certain adhesion or tack” (9). Ruxton’s text, part of the “Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices,” is essentially a trade manual detailing “Oils,” “Pigments,” “Driers,” “Ink Formulas,” “Manufacture and Testing of Linseed Oil,” and “Ink Requirements of the Government Printing Office” (5), among other aspects of the ink-making trade. By his time, the process had been boiled down to a science: “We thus arrive at the twentieth century,” he writes, “and find the materials for making printing inks pretty thoroughly studied, and in general very much what they were in the beginning” (Ruxton 11).

However, according to Bloy, it was not until the 19th century that “the first work devoted entirely to the subject of printing ink was published”¹ (Bloy 7). Such secrecy was born out of necessity: the nature of the printing industry during Europe’s Early Modern period was such that ink recipes were, in an era before patents and copyrights, fiercely guarded trade secrets. “What is certain is that every printer who arrived at excellence in his art paid great attention to t he quality of his ink,” he writes; “we know that Baskerville spent much time in perfecting a secret ink, on which he set great store” (9). The English printer Whitttingam, he says, “succeeded in making an ink with a more brilliant result than any other printer could obtain. He made this ink in a little room which no other person except [his] nephew was allowed to enter” (9).

Ruxton confirms that “the early printer usually made his own ink,” describing the traditional “wayzgoose” practice, before adding that “this scheme for making ink was not satisfactory. Too much time was lost and the ink did not always turn out well, so that by the seventeenth century it was quite common for the printer to buy his inks ready-made” (Ruxton 8). Likewise, Cennini, in his 15th-century Il Libro dell’ Arte, advises apprentices to leave the working up of difficult dyes such as vermillion to the alchemists—because, he says, “it would be too tedious to set forth in my discussion all the methods and receipts [… and] I advise you rather to get some of that which you find at the druggists’ for your money, so as not to lose time in the many variations of procedure” (Cennini 24).

For Cennini, ink ingredients were, apart from being fairly complex, also highly localized: in his recipe for ocher, he recounts a rural expedition he undertook with his father when he was younger:

“[He] led me through the territory of Colle di Val d’Elsa, close to the borders of Casole, at the beginning of the forest of the commune of Colle, above a township called Dometaria. And upon reaching a little valley, a very wild steep place, scraping the steep with a spade, I beheld seams of many kinds of color: ocher, dark and light sinoper, blue, and white” (27)

Explicit directions, to be sure, but of little use to a printer’s apprentice in London or Amsterdam.

Ink wasn’t always this elusive and mysterious, however: according to Arnold, “the first ‘inks’ were juices—of fruit, vegetables, or sea creatures” (Arnold 258). In other words, simple, everyday materials that were not rare, expensive, or geographically exclusive, and it was this relatively effortless innovation in ink technology that naturally spurred on the first liquid-based writing as a result (as opposed to runes, inscriptions, and other more physical and temporary media).

Mitchell writes that the oldest extant examples of ink on paper can be found on Egyptian Papyri c. 2500 BCE, but that “papyrus was employed as a writing material there from very remote times” (Mitchell 1). Carter, meanwhile, notes that the Chinese were printing on paper made of “tree bark, hemp, old rags, and fish nets” (Carter, timeline) as early as 105 CE, although large scrolls—that is, substantial quantities of written material—don’t come about until c. 400, when inks consisting of lamp-black and water were being used for the first time for printing and painting.

But as Arnold points out, there is an important distinction between any writing fluid and printer’s ink in particular: “Later writing fluids,” he writes, “were actually paints, pigments of mineral, animal or vegetable matter in various solvents. The first true printer’s ink was boiled linseed-oil varnish with carbon black. When printed, the pigment was well varnished onto the paper and it is still a delight to see how brilliant and legible are the earliest books printed” (Arnold 258).

Gutenberg, whose 42- and 36-line Latin vulgate editions of the Bible are the printing standard to which other such works are compared, is often erroneously credited as having invented the printing press; others will note that, rather, he invented moveable type. In fact, it was the Chinese who, by a margin of several centuries, first invented moveable type—according to Carter, by one Pi Sheng c. 1041CE. But Sheng’s combination of water-based ink, earthenware materials, and a near-limitless number of symbols that would have needed to be cut meant that this early advancement was largely unsuitable for use in China. Instead, it was Gutenberg’s innovation in perfecting and applying oil-based ink to moveable metal type that allowed for the crisp, enduring impressions that Arnold describes.

And as any book historian will tell you, it is the quality of his work that was—and remains—his lasting legacy. According to Bloy, “in view of the superb quality of his printed matter, there can be no doubt that he was meticulously careful in the production of his varnish and black. Clearly, only the best materials were used” (Bloy 86). Determining precisely what these materials were, Bloy says, is largely conjectural, but it is likely that Gutenberg used aged nut oil rather than linseed oil, as it yellowed less when heated; that lamp-black still would have been used as the blackening pigment; and that the resulting oil-based mixture would have dried quickly on vellum or paper as a result of oxidization (86). As a result printing—that is, copying—speed increased dramatically, rendering book production economical and manuscript production obsolete.

EVENTUALLY, HOWEVER, the need for printing speed would catch up with printing technology again—and it was another important advancement in ink technology that would lead the way.

Xerography, or “Electrophotography,” was invented by Chester Carlson in 1938 and patented in 1942. Unlike earlier advances in printing technology, which came about as the result of relatively natural advances in science and art, xerography was driven purely by market demand. As Mort puts it, “as is characteristic of most inventions, it was stimulated by the perceived shortcomings of the existing technologies; specifically in this case those for making copies” (Mort xiii).

Carlson’s efforts, having taken place in the 20th century, are much more well documented than those of Gutenberg, but many similarities between the two remain. Returning to Mainz to set up a shop in 1448, Man writes, Gutenberg “faced a permanent problem of cash flow […]. He needed a bestseller, and if possible more than one” (Man 143)—a bestseller that came in the unlikely form of the Bible. But whereas Gutenberg laboured for months over dozens of copies of his most famous work, Carlson, a patent attorney and a scientist, was also an unabashed entrepreneur who saw an unmet demand in the marketplace.

Only, Carlson wasn’t working with ink—in fact, he was trying to avoid it at all costs. Ink was what was slowing him down: even with quick-drying oils, binders, and papers, printing a page still meant making a time-consuming impression. As Mort puts it, “during the course of his daily work, Carlson must have been constantly aware of the need for more and more copies of documents relating to patent applications” (Mort 49). That is, unlike the high-minded artisans of 16th-century Europe, Carlson simply saw a demand in the 20th-century marketplace and attempted to meet it. “At that time,” Mort says, “there were only two alternatives” (49).

The first was to have photographic copies made. This was very time-consuming, labor-intensive and consequently expensive to use in any routine way. The second, but equally unsatisfactory approach, was to have a typist or graphic artist produce more original copies which in turn required additional, painstaking proofreading for mistakes. Thus the idea was born of a small machine in the office which could make low cost copies of an original document with acceptable quality at a rate of one every few seconds (49).

He was aware that numerous unsuccessful attempts involving light, ions, and dust particles had already been made, going back as early as 1777. Thus Carlson, like Gutenberg, prevailed not necessarily by inventing something new but by perfecting previously unsuccessful attempts. The inventor described his breakthrough moment this way:

October 22, 1938, was an historic occasion. I went to the lab that day and Otto had a freshly-prepared [sic] sulfur coating on a zinc plate. Otto took a glass microscope slide and printed on it in India ink the notation, 10.–22,–38 Astoria. We pulled down the shade to make the room as dark as possible, then he rubbed the sulfur surface vigorously with a handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge, laid the slide on the surface (of the sulfur) and placed the combination under a bright incandescent lamp for a few seconds. The slide was then removed and lycopodium powder was sprinkled on the sulfur surface. By gently blowing on the surface all the loose powder was removed and there was left on the surface a near-perfect duplicate in powder of the notation which had been printed on the glass slide. Both of us repeated the experiment several times to convince ourselves it was true, then we made some permanent copies by transferring the powder images to wax paper and heating the sheets to melt the wax. Then we went out to lunch and to celebrate (Carlson, qtd. in Mort 53).

Carlson’s understated reaction was clearly without the benefit of hindsight or historical context. But by the time he patented for “electrophotography” four years later, his sales pitch was well-rehearsed:

An outstanding advantage of the process described herein is its simplicity and rapidity. It is a matter of only a few seconds to make a complete permanent copy of any original. No complex chemical development process is required. This gives the process a further advantage in that it may readily be performed by mechanical means, it being only necessary to provide an apparatus for performing the necessary operations in sequence (Carlson 7).

He then goes on to describe the practical uses of the invention—uses that met what he perceived as a great demand, and which he now owned the sole copyright to:

The present process is suitable for copying letters, drawings, printed matter, books, typewritten matter, enlarging matter from films such as microfilm, pictorial photography, color photography, half-tone production and as a means for producing masters for lithographic, hectographic or typographical production of multiple copies” (7).

With one invention, Carlson slashed reproduction time significantly once again. Only, unlike Gutenberg, he hadn’t developed and refined ink technology so much as apparently rendered it obsolete.

By 1967, with xerography well established, Bloy was musing about an inkless future: “it has been prophesied by present-day experts that the printing of the future will not utilize ink, and that some sort of photographic technique will be used to reproduce the image on a sensitized paper in full colour” (Bloy 95). In fact, Carlson described in his 1942 patent exactly how his invention could be applied for colour reproduction, but by the 1960s, bold futurist predictions were widespread. Bloy himself gets caught up in it, speculating that “we hear of a machine in America which will print at a fantastic rate by using a series of hot needles which rise and fall to burn the image into the special paper where required” (95). Of course, such a contraption never came into being, and Bloy also admits that “the search to print without ink is by no means a new one, and indeed had started over a hundred years ago [in 1863]” (95).

This future may have arrived in 2000, when the E Ink Corporation, along with Lucent Technologies, revealed the world’s first flexible electronic ink display. At 25 square inches and only millimeters thick, the “flexible display prototype” represents a profound revelation for print technology—and unlike so many unfulfilled prognostications of a technological doomsday when the printed word will be eradicated, electronic displays are here to stay.

Historians like Bloy and Ruxton marvel at the crispness and longevity the works of Gutenberg, Baskerville, Whittingham, and other traditionally printed works, remarking on the quality of the ink and its interaction with the paper and vellum and speculating on what were often the secret recipes they used. Likewise, E-ink, is designed for display on e-paper, or Electronic Paper Display technology, an “imaging film” that renders the electronic particles visible. And, in keeping with the tradition of trade secrecy, the exclusive manufacturer of both technologies is the E Ink Corporation. And like the entrepreneurial Carlson, E Ink has its sights set on creating a futuristic product that meets an emerging demand.

According to the company’s website, “the vision of E Ink is to combine these attributes to create RadioPaperTM, a lightweight, flexible display with the readability of ink on paper but with the added benefit of digital technology to download newspaper headlines or a best-selling novel at the user’s command.” Both of these are very real possibilities: in 2007, the New York Times, in collaboration with Microsoft, released the first version of the Times Reader, a handheld device that brings the reader a customized electronic version of all the news that’s fit to display. According to Print magazine, “the Reader runs as a stand-alone application … and pulls the Times’ web feeds into a custom-designed interface, with beautifully rendered versions of the print newspaper’s Cheltenham headlines, body text laid out in columns that adjust to fit the window size, and generous images” (Blum 96). Similar readers have been developed for book lovers, including the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, as well as several other competitors plying their respective secret trades.

GUTENBERG MADE PRINT PRODUCTION VIABLE; Carlson made it rapid and expedient; now, e-ink promises to render physical copying obsolete altogether, since digital copying is virtually instantaneous. In each case, such innovation was driven by demand for the rapid dissemination of information, and in each case, the development of a new ink technology made it possible.

Yet while e-ink may play a large role in determining the future of text, it is also very much grounded the past. While e-readers wouldn’t be possible without e-ink, they still need electronic text to display. And apart from commercial retailers such as Amazon, perhaps the most bountiful source of e-texts is an online database that features a large selection of works whose copyright has expired and which are therefore available to download for free. Dubbing itself “the first producer of electronic books,” Project Gutenberg currently boasts 20,000 titles, many in dozens of languages as well. It took an enterprising German goldsmith named Johannes Geinsfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg years to produce several hundred copies of the Bible in the 1450s, employing about a dozen printers and typesetters (Füssel 20), whereas the Project that bears his name draws from a small army of tens of thousands of volunteers—and one can only imagine that, if he were alive today, Gutenberg himself would be among them.