A Brief History of Mass Media and Culture

Until Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press,
books were painstakingly handwritten, and no two copies were exactly the same. The
printing press made the mass production of print media possible. Not only was it much
cheaper to produce written material, but new transportation technologies also made it
easier for texts to reach a wide audience. It’s hard to overstate the importance of
Gutenberg’s invention, which helped usher in massive cultural movements like the
European Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. In 1810, another German printer,
Friedrich Koenig, pushed media production even further when he essentially hooked the
steam engine up to a printing press, enabling the industrialization of printed media. In
1800, a hand-operated printing press could produce about 480 pages per hour; Koenig’s
machine more than doubled this rate. (By the 1930s, many printing presses had an output
of 3000 pages an hour.) This increased efficiency helped lead to the rise of the daily
newspaper.

As the first Europeans settled the land that would come to be called the United States of
America, the newspaper was an essential medium. At first, newspapers helped the
Europeans stay connected with events back home. But as the people developed their own
way of life—their own culture—newspapers helped give expression to that culture.
Political scientist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers also helped forge a sense
of national identity by treating readers across the country as part of one unified group with
common goals and values. Newspapers, he said, helped create an “imagined community.”

The United States continued to develop, and the newspaper was the perfect medium for the
increasingly urbanized Americans of the 19th century, who could no longer get their local
news merely through gossip and word of mouth. These Americans were living in an
unfamiliar world, and newspapers and other publications helped them negotiate the
rapidly changing world. The Industrial Revolution meant that people had more leisure time
and more money, and media helped them figure out how to spend both.

In the 1830s, the major daily newspapers faced a new threat with the rise of the penny
press—newspapers that were low-priced broadsheets. These papers served as a cheaper,
more sensational daily news source and privileged news of murder and adventure over the
dry political news of the day. While earlier newspapers catered to a wealthier, more
educated audience, the penny press attempted to reach a wide swath of readers through
cheap prices and entertaining (often scandalous) stories. The penny press can be seen as
the forerunner to today’s gossip-hungry tabloids.

The penny press appealed to readers’ desires for lurid tales of murder and scandal.

In the early decades of the 20th century, the first major non-print forms of mass media—
film and radio—exploded in popularity. Radios, which were less expensive than telephones
and widely available by the 1920s, especially had the unprecedented ability of allowing
huge numbers of people to listen to the same event at the same time. In 1924, President
Calvin Coolidge’s preelection speech reached more than 20 million people. Radio was a
boon for advertisers, who now had access to a large and captive audience. An early
advertising consultant claimed that the early days of radio were “a glorious opportunity for
the advertising man to spread his sales propaganda” thanks to “a countless audience,
sympathetic, pleasure seeking, enthusiastic, curious, interested, approachable in the
privacy of their homes.”Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From
Gutenberg to the Internet (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005).

The reach of radio also further helped forge an American culture. The medium was able to
downplay regional differences and encourage a unified sense of the American lifestyle—a
lifestyle that was increasingly driven and defined by consumer purchases. “Americans in
the 1920s were the first to wear ready-made, exact-size clothing…to play electric
phonographs, to use electric vacuum cleaners, to listen to commercial radio broadcasts,
and to drink fresh orange juice year round.”Digital History, “The Formation of Modern
American Mass Culture,” The Jazz Age: The American 1920s, 2007,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?hhid=454 (accessed July
15, 2010). This boom in consumerism put its stamp on the 1920s, and, ironically, helped
contribute to the Great Depression of the 1930s.Library of Congress, “Radio: A Consumer
Product and a Producer of Consumption,”
http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/inradio.html (accessed July 15, 2010).

The post-World War II era in the United States was marked by prosperity, and by the
introduction of a seductive new form of mass communication: television. In 1946, there
were about 17,000 televisions in the entire United States. Within seven years, two-thirds of
American households owned at least one set. As the United States’ gross national product
(GNP) doubled in the 1950s, and again in the 1960s, the American home became firmly
ensconced as a consumer unit. Along with a television, the typical U.S. family owned a car
and a house in the suburbs, all of which contributed to the nation’s thriving consumer-
based economy.

Broadcast television was the dominant form of mass media. There were just three major
networks, and they controlled over 90 percent of the news programs, live events, and
sitcoms viewed by Americans. On some nights, close to half the nation watched the same
show! Some social critics argued that television was fostering a homogenous, conformist
culture by reinforcing ideas about what “normal” American life looked like. But television
also contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Vietnam War was the nation’s first
televised military conflict, and nightly images of war footage and war protestors helped
intensify the nation’s internal conflicts.

Broadcast technology, including radio and television, had such a hold of the American
imagination that newspapers and other print media found themselves having to adapt to
the new media landscape. Print media was more durable and easily archived, and allowed
users more flexibility in terms of time—once a person had purchased a magazine, he could
read it whenever and wherever he’d like. Broadcast media, in contrast, usually aired
programs on a fixed schedule, which allowed it to both provide a sense of immediacy but
also impermanence—until the advent of digital video recorders in the 21st century, it was
impossible to pause and rewind a television broadcast.

The media world faced drastic changes once again in the 1980s and 1990s with the spread
of cable television. During the early decades of television, viewers had a limited number of
channels from which to choose. In 1975, the three major networks accounted for 93
percent of all television viewing. By 2004, however, this share had dropped to 28.4 percent
of total viewing, thanks to the spread of cable television. Cable providers allowed viewers a
wide menu of choices, including channels specifically tailored to people who wanted to
watch only golf, weather, classic films, sermons, or videos of sharks. Still, until the mid-
1990s, television was dominated by the three large networks. The Telecommunications Act
of 1996, an attempt to foster competition by deregulating the industry, actually resulted in
many mergers and buyouts of small companies by large companies. The broadcast
spectrum in many places was in the hands of a few large corporations. In 2003, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) loosened regulation even further, allowing a single
company to own 45 percent of a single market (up from 25 percent in 1982).

A Short History of Print Media

It’s safe to say that advertising, the media, even life itself, would not be the same without
the printed word. We learn about our world through shared writings: newspapers,
magazines, and books. We decide what we want to buy from looking through
advertisements that come in the mail. Printed media has shaped the way we learn, think,
and act in modern society.

Yet it all began simply. Ts’ai Lun, a Chinese official, is attributed with the invention of paper
in A.D. 105. Forty years later, Pi Sheng would invent the first movable type. It would take
literally hundreds of years later, in 1276, for printing to reach Europe in the form of a paper
mill in Italy, and another two hundred years until Johannes Gutenburg refined a method to
efficiently print books and pamphlets on his Gutenburg press.

Following the printing press, the next improvements in print media came through the
developments of different typefaces. Nicolas Jenson invented a “Roman” typeface for
publications around 1470, one that was far easier to read than the blackletter typefaces
Gutenburg had used, which had copied the handwritten books of the time. In 1530, Claude
Garamond opened the first type foundry. After Garamond’s death in 1561, his typefaces (in
the form of punches and matrixes) were sold and distributed across Europe, popularizing
his designs.
The Industrial Revolution would usher in a new era for type and publication, particularly
with Lord Stanhope’s invention of the first all cast-iron printing press, doubling the usable
paper size and drastically reducing the use of manual labor.

In 1880 the halftone process was developed, allowing for the first photo to be printed in a
range of full tones. This in turn introduced a wave of sensationalist tabloids and the launch
of a new craze: celebrities. Tabloids like the New York Daily News and the New York Daily
Mirror published photo spreads (sometimes real, sometimes composographs, or
manipulations) of stars like Rudolph Valentino, with immense success.

The late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were an important time for
print media and graphic design. Movements in style and technology would propel the print
world into the modern age. The Art Nouveau movement began in 1890 and began an
influence that would rule over all types of design, from layout to fonts to illustrations. Some
companies that fueled the popularization of the style, like Liberty & Co. (Liberty of
London), live on in modern society, still in vogue. The movements’ weight in print media is
seen primarily in the posters of the period, characterized with lavish curves, leaf and plant
motifs centered around beautiful women, flowers or birds.

Also in the late 1800’s began the rise of media barons in the print industry. Men like Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst would run publishing companies which proved that
there was a profit in advertising and journalism. Both Pulitzer and Hearst would go on to
have political careers. Even when fierce competitions rose between print houses and
newspapers, it only seemed to stir the public’s interest and the popularity of print media.

In 1935 the electric typewriter came onto the market. After World War II, these
typewriters would become tremendously popular, in both the personal and business
worlds, changing the way people wrote forever. Some typewriters accommodated different
fonts with exchangeable cartridges, and offered variable leading.

Typefaces and fonts continued to evolve in the 20th century as the first extended font
families (which would include different variations of a particular font) were developed.
This trend started with Cheltenham (developed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Ingalls
Kimballin and Morris Fuller Benton in 1902-1913), and later examples include typefaces
like Futura (designed in 1927 by Paul Renner) and Lucida (designed by Charles Bigelow
and Kris Holmes in 1985).

An important institution in the media world during the beginning of the 20th century was
the Bauhaus in Germany. The first of the modern art schools that would produce the new
centuries’ designers, dancers, and engineers, the Bauhaus’ professors and alumni would
include numerous graphic artists working in print media. Typography and color theory
would be explored at the Bauhaus throughout its existence. In the late 1900’s, after the rise
of the communist party in Germany prompted the dissolution of the Bauhaus itself, the
name would be immortalized in a typeface developed by Edward Benguiat and Victor
Caruso, based on an earlier font created by the Bauhaus graduate Herbert Bayer.

Understandably, the digitalization of design would irrevocably affect print media. As

computers took over more of the modern workload and graphic design began to shift into
the computer world in the 1960’s, great changes were set in motion. Type design’s
evolution would continue, no longer being hand cut or mechanically cast, but instead
digitized character by character as either a bitmap or outline (vector) computer file.
Companies like General Electric realized early on that computer graphics would give them
an edge in advertising, and subsequently IBM released the first commercially available
graphics computer, starting a cycle that would keep designers and computer
manufacturers interlocked as both grew and began to expand. As new software and
computers were released, more businesses started converting to digital advertising, and
designers began taking advantage of the new products to do their jobs.

Although digital design and the computer age have been blamed for negatively affecting
print media, in some ways it has only made the print world stronger. Print houses for
magazines and newspapers would be unable to publish relevant stories and photos fast
enough without the advances in software that allow designers to complete their jobs and
meet publication deadlines. Computer software has even made print media more accessible
to small business owners and companies than ever before. Even with the advent of the
world-wide web and online blogs and news sites, the printed word has not lost its power.
Ad campaigns assail us from our mailboxes, from store-front windows and are handed to
us by salesmen. We perhaps take for granted the hundreds of years of development that led
to our perfectly leaded and kerned newspaper headlines and the bright color photos
blazoned underneath. Print media has evolved continuously over its long history, and
hasn’t stopped yet.

HISTORY OF PRINT MEDIA

1. 1. History of printing. Saliha Abubakr Sunesh parayil Ameer Salman OM Presented by;
2. 2. We take for granted newspapers, magazines, books, posters, and other printed material.
3. 3. None of the printed items we enjoy today would be around without a number of persons
in the history !
4. 4. Printing was developed based on early principles of printing, and it has undergone many
modifications over the years to meet the needs of people in different eras.
5. 5. Woodblock printing was a technique which was used in the Mesopotamian civilization
before 3000 BC.
6. 6. Invention of paper in the second century AD by China was the first major milestone in the
history of printing press
7. 7. The prime name associated with the history of printing press is Johann Gutenberg The
inventor of the Printing Press in 1450
8. 8. He created individual pieces of type, which involve creating a master copy of each letter,
devising the moulds in which multiple versions can be cast, and developing a suitable alloy
(type metal) in which to cast them. - Movable type printing press.
9. 9. Dry point engravings and Handwritte n form of printing was invented in the year 1465
10. 10. By the 16th century, the printing press had been in existence for around 50 years. It had
spread throughout Europe and more than 10 million copies of nearly 3500 works had
already been printed.
11. 11. During the first decade of 16th Century, Aldus Manutius came up with a printer that
gave smaller, more portable books. He is also the first to use Italic type. In 1507 Lucas
Cranach invented the chiaroscuro woodcut, a technique in which drawings are reproduced
using two or more blocks printed in different colors.
12. 12. It is Jakob Christoph Le Blon - German painter and engraver founded the basic form of
CMYKprinting. He used the mezzotint method to engrave three metal plates for printing.
Here each plate is inked with a different color, using Red, yellow and blue. Later on he adds
a fourth plate, bearing black lines
13. 13. American inventor Richard March Hoe builds the first Lithographic Rotary printing
press. Here a press in which the type is placed on a revolving cylinder instead of a flatbeds.
This speeds up the printing process dramatically.
14. 14. the invention of the Linotype composing machine is a major step forward in the process
of printing. With this typesetter an operator can enter text using a 90-character contained
keyboard. The machine outputs the text as slugs having lines of metal type.
15. 15. The 21st century have more to talk about digital revolution rather than print technology
except some few innovations like CTP printing with plates and CMYK coloring by the help of
digital technology.
16. 16. Later , technology has made several changes in PRINTING TECHNOLOGY Here is a small
timeline of the further technological progress of print…..
17. 17. 1906 • Photostat and Rectigraph 1938 • Xerography 1951 • Inkjet printing 1968 •Dot
matrix printing 1969 •Laser printing 1972 •Thermal printing 1984 •3D printing 1993
•Digital printing
18. 18. The printing press has influenced psychology in several major ways. Before the printing
press, people were apt to believe that the text they were reading was true because only the
most noteworthy information was recorded.
19. 19. That’s all about the brief history of printing and itscontributions to the world…. Sources;
The Crombergers of Seville : the history of printing and merchant dynasty by Griffin Clive
Oxford university press The printing press as a agent of change by Eisenstein Elizabeth L
Cambridge university press Beginning to read : thinking and learning about print by Adams
Marilyn Jager MIT press