PS TEXT EDIT Reference Manual

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TEDIT Topics
058059 Tandem Computers Incorporated 2–65
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Figure 2-6. The Concept of a SECTION
The Evolution of Printing
Printing is something which can be seen, perceived with our
eyes, and reproduced in quantity. Regardless of the many
possible differences, all printed products have one thing in
common: the result is always a quantity of the same visible
image.
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Man's earliest known attempts at visual records of his life and
times dates back 30,000 years. These records were wall drawings
called pictographs, superseded by the more complex ideographs.
They in turn were succeeded by the Persian's cuneiforms and then
by hieroglyphics, perfected by the Egyptians around 2500 B.C.
Ten centuries later the Phoenicians used the first formal
alphabet.
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But pictographs, ideographs, cuneiforms, and hieroglyphics are
art forms, not printing as it is usually defined.
Evidence of the first example of printing from movable type was
discovered in 1908 by an Italian archaeologist on the island of
Crete. He found a clay disc in the ruins of the palace of
Paistos in a stratification dated about 1500 B.C.
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Printing from movable type appeared in China and Korea in the
11th century. In 1041, a Chinese, Pi-Sheng, developed type
characters from hardened clay. They were not wholly successful.
Type cast from metal in Korea was widely used in China and
Japan, and by the middle 1200s type characters were being cast
in bronze. The oldest text known was printed from such type in
Korea in 1397 A.D.
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