The evolution of the printed page
ad 105 Paper is invented in China.
770Relief printing is practised in China.
868The world’s earliest dated printed book, a Chinese Diamond Sutra text, is created using woodblocks.
Early 15th century Professional writers join the ranks of monks in writing books as trading and wider education lead to more books for the upper and middle classes in Europe. In Paris, these writers form themselves into a guild – publishing has arrived.
1450In Mainz, Germany, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invents movable type (also known as ‘foundry type’ or ‘hot type’), and five years later uses it to begin a print run of 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible.
1457Gazette, claimed to be the first printed newspaper, is printed in Nuremberg, Germany. The earliest example of colour printing arrives with the Mainz Psalter by Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer.
1476William Caxton returns from Cologne, Germany, with a range of typefaces and sets up a printing press in Westminster, London, having already produced the first book in the English language, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, in Bruges.
1486The first English, colour-illustrated book is printed in St Albans, England.
1494Typographer, teacher and editor Aldus Manutius establishes the Aldine printing house in Venice, Italy.
1500Approximately 35,000 books have been printed, 10 million copies worldwide.
1501Italic type, designed by Francesco Griffo, is first used in an octavo edition of Virgil printed by Manutius’s Aldine Press.
1588Englishman Timothy Bright invents a form of shorthand.
1605The first regularly published weekly newspaper appears in Strasbourg.
1622Nathaniel Butter, the ‘father of the English press’, publishes Weekly Newes, the first printed English newspaper, in London.
1650Leipzig in Germany becomes home to the first daily newspaper.
1663Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (‘Edifying Monthly Discussions’), considered the world’s first magazine, is published in Germany.
1690America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts, and subsequently suspended for operating without a royal licence.
1702The first daily news-sheet, The Daily Courant, is published in England.
1703Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomasti newspaper founded by Peter the Great in Russia.
1709The Copyright Act is passed in England. Tatler, the first major magazine, is launched in London.
1714Henry Mill is granted a patent for a writing machine in London.
1719German engraver Jakob Le Blon, granted a privilege by George I of England to reproduce pictures and drawings in full colour, produces the basis of modern four-colour plate printing.
1731The Gentleman’s Magazine, considered the first modern magazine, published in England.
1741Benjamin Franklin plans to publish America’s first magazine, General Magazine, but American Magazine comes out three days earlier.
1764Pierre Fournier of France develops the point system to measure type sizes. His system is further refined by François Didot, establishing consistency in type measure throughout the world.
1784The Pennsylvania Evening Post is America’s first daily newspaper.
1785The Daily Universal Register is founded in London by John Walter. Three years later it is renamed The Times.
1790s Lithography is invented by Alois Senefelder in Bavaria, Germany, streamlining the reproduction of images by eliminating the need for engraving or carving.
1791The Observer, the country’s first Sunday newspaper, is launched in England by W.S. Bourne.
1814An early version of the cylinder press is used to produce the London Times at a rate of 1,100 copies an hour, but it is not refined and taken up universally until 1830, when Richard March Hoe perfects the drum-cylinder press, capable of producing 2,500 pages per hour. By 1847 he has expanded this to a five-cylinder press.
1828The Ladies’ Magazine is launched to become the first successful American magazine for women.
1842The Illustrated London News is founded in England by Herbert Ingram and Mark Lemon. Using woodcuts and engravings, it prompts the growth of illustrated publications.
1844The Bangkok Recorder is the first newspaper published in Thailand.
1845Scientific American launches in America. It has been published continuously since that date, making it the longest-running magazine in American history.
c.1845 Paperbacks are introduced in America (four years after their appearance in Germany) as newspaper supplements, and soon appear as small-sized reprints of existing books.
1850Heidelberg’s first press is made by Andreas Hamm in the Palatine city of Frankenthal in southwest Germany.
1851The New York Times launches, priced at one cent.
1854Le Figaro newspaper is launched in Paris, France.
1856The first African-American daily, the New Orleans Daily Creole, is published.
1867The first Japanese magazine, Seiyo-Zasshi (‘The Western Magazine’), is published.
1874E. Remington and Sons in Illinois manufactures the first commercial typewriter, invented seven years earlier by Wisconsin newspaperman Christopher Latham Sholes. It has only upper-case letters but a QWERTY keyboard. The machine is refined the following year to incorporate lower-case letters.
1875Offset litho printing – printing onto etched metal plates from a smooth surface rather than letterpress – is introduced.
1878In the United States, inventor William A. Lavalette patents a printing press that greatly improves the quality of printing, particularly in terms of legibility and quality. In Scotland, Frederick Wicks invents the typecasting machine.
1886The Linotype typesetting machine is invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Combining keyboard unit, matrix magazine and caster in one unit, it can cast letters at the rate of 17,000 per hour by compositors pressing keys to create ‘slugs’ – lines of matrices combined then redistributed for reuse.
1900An estimated 1,800 magazines are being published in America, where total newspaper circulation passes 15 million a day.
1903The first offset printing press is used by Ira Washington Rubel in America, and, separately, by Caspar Hermann in Germany.
1911Typesetting is refined further with the introduction of the Ludlow typesetting machine, developed by Washington I. Ludlow and William Reade in Chicago, Illinois.
1912Photoplay debuts in America as the first magazine for movie fans.
1917The first ‘op-ed’ (opinion and editorial) page appears in The New York Times.
1923Time magazine debuts in America.
1933Esquire launches in America as the first men’s magazine.
1934Alexey Brodovitch is hired to work on Harper’s Bazaar in New York, bringing a visual flair and dynamism to the layouts.
1936Allen Lane’s Penguin Press reintroduces the paperback book in the UK. In America, photojournalism magazine Life is founded by Henry Luce for Time Inc. It was to dominate the American news market for 40 years, selling more than 13.5 million copies a week.
1941–44 Documentary photography reports back from WWII and magazines publish stories led by reportage. Some images are restricted and questioned.
1945Ebony, the first magazine for the African– American market, is founded in the US by John H. Johnson.
1953The first issue of TV Guide magazine hits the newsstands on April 3 in ten American cities, with a circulation of 1,560,000. Playboy magazine appears, its cover featuring Marilyn Monroe.
1955Dry-coated paper is developed at the Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbia, Ohio.
1955Esquire magazine in the US publishes bold cover with minimal cover lines due to the strong sense of brand. Only a few other publications are able to use colour.
1958Henry Wolf becomes Art Director at Harper’s Bazaar and pushes graphic language to connect photoshoots and typography.
1956The first hard-disk drive is created at IBM.
1962British national newspaper The Sunday Times launches a full-colour magazine supplement designed by Michael Rand.
1964In America, statistics show that 81 per cent of adults read a daily newspaper.
1965Teen magazine Twen is launched by German publishing giant Springer. Designed by Willy Fleckhaus, it comes to be regarded as a ground-breaking example of editorial design. In the UK, the Daily Mirror’s magazine division launches Nova, with Dennis Hackett as editor and David Hillman as designer.
1967The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system starts in the UK. Rolling Stone debuts in the US, followed by New York Magazine in 1968, spawning the popularity of special-interest and regional magazines.
1969Andy Warhol launches Interview magazine.
1971Newspapers worldwide begin the switch from hot-metal letterpress to offset.
1975Nova magazine closes.
1977Apple Computer launches the Apple II microcomputer.
1980At the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee takes the first steps towards a worldwide web, creating a software program called ‘Enquire Within Upon Everything’ after a Victorian-era encyclopaedia remembered from his childhood. The Face is launched in the UK by Nick Logan as a style and culture alternative to women’s glossy magazines
1981The cover of Rolling Stone shows a naked John Lennon and clothed Yoko Ono. This iconic Annie Leibovitz image epitomizes the power of magazines within the music business.
1982Daily newspaper USA Today launches. Taking its visual lead from television, it uses colour throughout, features numerous graphics, and is an immediate success. Innovative techniques assist distribution, enabling the final edition to be printed in multiple locations across the country.
1983The Apple Lisa is launched by Apple Computer, ushering in a new Graphic User Interface (GUI) that makes home computing – and publishing – accessible and affordable.
1984The Apple Macintosh, or the Mac, is introduced, marking the first successful commercial implementation of a GUI, which is now used in all major computers. Emigre magazine launches in California and is soon to be a creative showcase for digital fonts and imagery.
1985The first desktop-publishing program, Aldus Pagemaker 1.0, is created by Paul Brainerd and Aldus and released for the Macintosh. This desktop-publishing program leads to a new type of publishing and puts design and editing tools into the hands of everyone.
1987QuarkXPress is launched. Despite the release of Aldus Pagemaker two years earlier, it quickly becomes the pre-eminent desktop-publishing program.
1991The World Wide Web debuts. Using Tim Berners-Lee’s HTML (hyper-text mark-up language), anyone can now build a website and share it with at first hundreds, but quickly millions, of people worldwide.
1994In Italy, an A5 handbag-sized version of Glamour is launched by Condé Nast. In America, the first beta version of the Netscape browser Mosaic is released. The first wiki is developed in Portland Oregon by Ward Cunningham. Wikis enable users to create and link pages of content in a non-linear and collaborative way on the web.
1995Salon, a US liberal magazine published in online form only. This format challenges the traditional business model for print media.
1997The New York Times introduces colour photos to its news pages.
2004In the UK, The Independent newspaper moves from a broadsheet to a tabloid format. Within a year, The Times also produces a daily tabloid.
2005The Guardian newspaper moves to a Berliner format and to full colour. The First Post online news magazine launches in the UK.
2006Video-sharing website YouTube purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in stock. Online newspaper websites in the US attract over 58 million readers, according to a report for the Newspaper Association for America.
2007UK online publication Financial Times reports a 30 per cent increase in advertising sales. The wireless Kindle e-book reader goes on sale.
2008In America the number of adults who say they read a daily newspaper the day before is 30 per cent.
2009Newspaper sales fall following world financial crisis. The Faster Times is launched in the US by Sam Apple as an experiment to find a model for ‘on-demand journalism’. thetimesonline.co.uk has a daily readership of 750,000
2010The Apple iPad goes on sale; 3 million units are sold within 30 days. Amazon Books announces that sales of ebooks have surpassed the sale of paperbacks for the first time. WIRED magazine releases its tablet edition for the iPad. The Times launches an interactive issue for the tablet market. Wikileaks publishes classified documents from anonymous new sources and upsets the news media by bypassing usual established practices. In light of the demise of large news publishers the validity of news stories on the web is challenged by this activism.
2011The Guardian tablet editions launches. iPad2 goes on sale. Over 15 million units are sold in the first year. The New York Times’ publisher announces that it will charge frequent readers for access to its online content in the US. News International introduces a paywall for the London Times.
2012Cross-platform magazines like Little White Lies and Letter to Jane branch out into different formats and leave print behind.
2013Independent magazines start to thrive due to low cost of production on the internet. Following the Leveson Inquiry into press misconduct in the UK, a Royal Charter aimed at underpinning self-regulation of the British press is proposed and meets opposition from many editors. At the Modern Magazine Conference in London, the term ‘Golden Age’ is used to refer to the industry as publishing activity starts to normalize following the impact of three years of the iPad. Large publishers and small independents develop the freedom that digital media brings to the industry.