The History of the Printing Press

Throughout the past 4000 years, record keeping has been an integral part of human civilization.
Record  keeping,  which  allows  humans  to  store  information  physically  for  later  thought,  has
advanced  with  technology.  Improvements  in  material  science  improved  the  writing  surface  of
records,  improvements  with  ink  increased  the  durability  of  records,  and  printing  technology
increased the speed of recording. One such printing technology is the printing press, an invention
that allowed mass production of text for the first time. The printing press has influenced human
communication, religion, and psychology in numerous ways.

The printing press was invented by  Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, born to a
wealthy merchant family in 1398 in the German city of Mainz. He studied at the University of
Erfurt in 1419. Later in his life, in 1448, using a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, he
began developing a moveable type printing press. By 1450, the Gutenberg printing press was in
full  operation  printing  German  poems.  With  the  financial  aid  of  Johann  Fust,  Gutenberg
published his 1282 page Bible with  42 lines per page. This bible, more commonly known as the
Gutenberg  Bible,  was  considered  the  first  mass-produced  book  in  history  because  180
 copies were printed. (―Gutenberg, Johann,‖ n.d., para. 1-4).

The  printing  press  was  first  brought  to  England  by  William  Caxton.  In  1469,  Caxton
learned  how  to  use  the  press  in  order  to  sell  books  to  the  English  nobility.
The  first  book  he printed, his own translation of the History of Troy, had great success and
enabled him to craft his own printing press in Michaelmas, England in 1476. The first piece
of English printing, A Letter of Indulgence  by John Sant, was printed with this press,
thus ushering in a new era for English literature.

Printing  technology  was  brought  to  America  almost  two  centuries  later.  British  settlers  often
established printing presses to provide spiritual texts for colonists; thus, it is no surprise that a
printing press was brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1638. Printers often produced their
own paper using the same techniques that were used in England. In 1690, William Rittenhouse
(Rittenhausen),  a German printer who learned fine Dutch paper making practices, revolutionized
American  printing  when  he  established  the  first  American  paper  mill  in  Germantown,
Pennsylvania. Printers now had access to cheaper paper and had more time to work on their trade
(On printing in America, n.d., para. 3).

Even after the news of Gutenberg‘s invention spread to other European countries, people
did not adapt quickly to the new printing style. In the fifteenth century, literacy was confined to a
small elite group that was wealthier than others. With a small percentage of people who could
read, the demand for books was relatively small. The practice of hand-copying books, which was
done for centuries by monks and scalars, produced a very low output of expensive books  with
many mistakes. Still, the early printing press was slower and more expensive than hand-copying;
therefore, written word was preferred as a relatively cheap, portable, and rapid method of storing
and transmitting information (Volti, n.d., para. 1-6).

Basic Science and Technology
The printing press clearly relies on a medium that allows the printer to record using ink.
Dating back to 15,000 B.C.E., humans have recorded on surfaces such as cave walls, tree bark,
stone,  clay,  wood,  wax,  metal,  papyrus,  vellum,and parchment, and  paper. However,  printers
were constantly searching for new materials because many of these surfaces were not sufficient.
For example, cave paintings, in which pictures  were drawn on cave walls, were impossible to
transport and difficult to see without light. Papyrus (compressed sheets of Egyptian reed stalk),
as well as vellum and parchment (the prepared skin of cow, lamb, goat, and sheep), were high in
cost and deteriorated quickly. Clay, which dries fast, was difficult to use (―Paper,‖ n.d., para. 1).
At the end of the seventeenth century, it was necessary that printers begin exploring other
sources of paper because the worldwide production of paper lagged behind the capability of the
printing  press.  Previous  to  this  time,  the  methods  to  produce  pape were very similar  to the
methods  used  in  ancient  China  because  paper  producing  technology  was  adequate  for  the
demand. When the printing press became popular in colonial America, the mass production of
newspapers  led  to  paper  shortage.  In  order  to  remedy  this  problem,  linens  from  mummy
wrappings  were  imported  from  the  East.  Mummy wrappings and rags were  mixed and turned
into pulp to create mummy paper. On average, the linens from a single mummy could supply two
average seventeenth  century Americans for a year. Although this source nullified the scarcity of
paper,  it  had  non-ideal  qualities  such  as  brown discoloration, oils, and botanical  residue;  in
addition, this source angered archeologists and decreased in supply (Wolfe, 2004, paras. 1-3).
The most effective paper is made from pulped plant fiber. Originating from China in 105
A.D., plant fiber from the mulberry tree was used to make paper (―Paper,‖ n.d., para. 2). When
the process spread to Europe from the Arabs in the sixteenth  century, Europeans used the pulp of
cotton and linen rags because they were available in large quantities. Although these people used
different materials than the Chinese, the cloth was turned into a pulp and made into paper using a
method similar to the ancient Chinese method. Beginning in 1850, paper producers began to use
wood as the primary source of plant fiber because it was abundant. However, wood grinders at
the time were not effective enough to produce pulp: there were often solid chunks of wood which
led to low quality paper. On the other hand, the quality of wood pulp paper was still better than
the  quality  of  rag  pulp  paper.  As  grinding  machines  advanced,  the practice of manufacturing
wood pulp paper became more refined  and efficient.  In modern times,  most paper mills  grind
wood into pulp and then apply a chemical process that uses steam along with sodium hydroxide
(NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2SO3) to digest the wood chips to produce a finer pulp
 (―Paper,‖ n.d., para. 7).

As  the  population  became  more  literate  and  the  newspaper  became  more  popular  into
mid-eighteenth century, the demand for printed material skyrocketed. Printers could now make
more money by printing faster. Because the population was interested in current news, there was
a need  for printers to devise a technique to print the news faster. The first breakthrough came in
1812 when Friedrich Koenig and Friedrich Bauer invented the steam-powered press. This press
was  able  to  print  1,100  newspapers  per  hour,  approximately  four  times  the  speed  of
 manual presses.  The  greatest  printing  press  improvement  came  from  Richard  Hoe  in  1847
  when  he engineered a rotary printing press. Instead of laying movable type on a flat bed, the type
 was set onto the outside of a large cylinder. Paper was then placed on a flat bed. When the cylinder
 was rotated, paper would feed into the machine with high pressure between the flat bed and cylinder,
thus allowing contact for the ink to be imprinted onto the paper. This inventory further improved
the press, called the Hoe press or lightning press, by adding another cylinder. In addition, using
even more cylinders, Hoe devised a machine that could print of both sides of a continuous piece
of paper patented by France's Nicholas Louis Robert in 1798.

Language  is  another  important  consideration  to  printing.  Printers  who  used  moveable
type printing presses had to hand lay each letter that they wanted to print; thus, the printer needed
to cast each letter to be able to print. Moreover, the same letter was often used mu ltiple times for
each press indicating that it is necessary to cast many of the same letters. A language with more
letters,  such  as  Chinese,  requires  a  vaster  base set of letters compared  to a language  such  as
English. Movable type for languages that have fewer letters is easier to replace and manufacture.
In countries such as China, hand-copying was much more effective than the printing press until
the press became much more advanced (Printing, 2009, Original letterpress plates section, para. 3).

Impact of the Printing Press on History
The  printing  press  influenced  communication  in  numerous  ways.  Before  the  printing
press, explorers could only record manually. Because it was very expensive to have many books
copied,  maps  were  very  scarce;  therefore,  the  information  discovered by mapmakers was not
used often. When it became cheaper to print, explorers were able to share their information with
others, thus allowing increased education and easier navigation. The printing press also allowed
scientists of all fields to compare their findings with others. Scientific theories started to form on
a large scale because more supportive evidence  was accessible.  In mathematics, a  field which
relies heavily on uniform systems, mathematicians were able to build upon other works as they
became available. All people were able to educate themselves better with more accessible and
affordable text. Also, scientists were able to spend more time thinking about scientific concepts
and less time copying previous research. The printing press  clearly influenced  communication
(Volti, n.d., para. 1-3).

Religion was impacted by the printing press in several ways. As the amount of written
communication increased, ideas spread easily. Religious ideas were no exception. Martin Luther,
the leader of the protestant reformation, utilized print technology in order to spread his views.
The Christian church had no control over the spread of such religious ideas. To halt the spread of
these ideas, the Church would have to bring to a standstill the production of all printing presses.
However, this would mean halting the printing of the Bible, a message that the Church did not
want  to  send.  In  order  to  read  the  Bible,  many  people  became  literate.  It  is  evident  that  the
printing press affected religious movements (Volti, n.d., para. 7-9).

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. Since the printing press became popular at the end of the
eighteenth  century,  everything  from  medical  textbooks  to  treaties  on  astrology  were  widely
distributed.  With  so  much  original  research  circulating,  it  is  no  surprise  that  much  of  it  was
contradictory.
People  became  less  willing  to  accept  the  judgment  of  a  single  individual  or  a group
of  individuals.  As  a  result,  a  more  critical  approach  to  understanding  emerged.  The
printing of newspapers also impacted the psychology of people worldwide. The farther away that
a reader was to a newspaper printing business, which were often located in cities, the more time
it would take to get a newspaper. When newspapers first came out, travel was relatively slow;
thus, it took even longer to get a newspaper. People lived closer to cities in order to improve their
access to newspapers. Thus, urbanization increased. In addition, a culture based on print media
was more individualistic than a culture based on collective means of communication. Because
the  printing  press  caused  a  movement  away  from  the  church,  people  had  less  collective
communication  and  more  individual  thought.  The  printing  press  brought  about  fundamental
change in the psychology of educated people (Volti, n.d., para. 4).

How to charge the battery of the iPhone, iPad or Android faster

It's a problem that we all suffer them, you're on your way out of the door in a short time, but your iPhone or Android will not remain the battery before closing the door. The problem is that any of our organs charge the battery as quickly as we would like.

Of course, if you find yourself in dire need of more than that, and charge the battery more quickly on the iPhone or Android, there is a way you can do to try to shorten the shipping periods and make it faster.

Our organs come with a variety of sensors, network, 3G and LTE, Aadhan GPS, NFC and many others. There are a lot of things taking place inside, and all of this needs to save energy..

Therefore, there will be not a surprise, extinguish all those things and disabled can have a significant effect on battery consumption. This also means that if you turn them all at the same time you are trying to get more shipping to the device's battery, the charging device will be faster, in fact, could theoretically be up to 50% faster in shipping.

Of course this is only convert your iPhone or iPad or Android to Airplane Mode, certainly faster shipping with shut off, which is great.

internet invention

The Sputnik Scare

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite into orbit. The satellite, known as Sputnik, did not do much: It tumbled aimlessly around in outer space, sending blips and bleeps from its radio transmitters as it circled the Earth. Still, to many Americans, the beach-ball-sized Sputnik was proof of something alarming: While the brightest scientists and engineers in the United States had been designing bigger cars and better television sets, it seemed, the Soviets had been focusing on less frivolous things—and they were going to win the Cold War because of it.

After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more seriously about science and technology. Schools added courses on subjects like chemistry, physics and calculus. Corporations took government grants and invested them in scientific research and development. And the federal government itself formed new agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to develop space-age technologies such as rockets, weapons and computers.

The Birth of the ARPAnet

Scientists and military experts were especially concerned about what might happen in the event of a Soviet attack on the nation’s telephone system. Just one missile, they feared, could destroy the whole network of lines and wires that made efficient long-distance communication possible. In 1962, a scientist from M.I.T. and ARPA named J.C.R. Licklider proposed a solution to this problem: a “galactic network” of computers that could talk to one another. Such a network would enable government leaders to communicate even if the Soviets destroyed the telephone system.
In 1965, another M.I.T. scientist developed a way of sending information from one computer to another that he called “packet switching.” Packet switching breaks data down into blocks, or packets, before sending it to its destination. That way, each packet can take its own route from place to place. Without packet switching, the government’s computer network—now known as the ARPAnet—would have been just as vulnerable to enemy attacks as the phone system.

"LOGIN"

In 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.)  The message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.

The Network Grows

By the end of 1969, just four computers were connected to the ARPAnet, but the network grew steadily during the 1970s. In 1971, it added the University of Hawaii’s ALOHAnet, and two years later it added networks at London’s University College and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway. As packet-switched computer networks multiplied, however, it became more difficult for them to integrate into a single worldwide “Internet.”

By the end of the 1970s, a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf had begun to solve this problem by developing a way for all of the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks to communicate with one another. He called his invention “Transmission Control Protocol,” or TCP. (Later, he added an additional protocol, known as “Internet Protocol.” The acronym we use to refer to these today is TCP/IP.)  One writer describes Cerf’s protocol as “the ‘handshake’ that introduces distant and different computers to each other in a virtual space.”

The World Wide Web

Cerf’s protocol transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. Throughout the 1980s, researchers and scientists used it to send files and data from one computer to another. However, in 1991 the Internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an Internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.

Since then, the Internet has changed in many ways. In 1992, a group of students and researchers at the University of Illinois developed a sophisticated browser that they called Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Mosaic offered a user-friendly way to search the Web: It allowed users to see words and pictures on the same page for the first time and to navigate using scrollbars and clickable links. That same year, Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial purposes. As a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites of their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the Internet to sell goods directly to customers. More recently, social networking sites like Facebook have become a popular way for people of all ages to stay connected.

famous scientists

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi

Early Life:

Al-Farabi completed his earlier education at Farab and Bukhara but, later on, he went to Baghdad for higher studies, where he studied and worked for a long time. During this period he acquired mastery over several languages as well as various branches of knowledge and technology. Farabi contributed considerably to science, philosophy, logic, sociology, medicine, mathematics and music, but the major ones are in philosophy, logic and sociology and for which he stands out as an Encyclopedist.

Contributions and Achievements:

As a philosopher, Farabi was the first to separate philosophy from theology. It is difficult to find a philosopher both in Muslim and Christian world from Middle Ages onwards who has not been influenced by his views. He believed in a Supreme Being who had created the world through the exercise of balanced intelligence. He also asserted this same rational faculty to be the sole part of the human being that is immortal, and thus he set as the paramount human goal the development of that rational faculty. He considerably gave more attention to political theory as compared to any Islamic philosopher.
Later in his work, Al-Farabi laid down in Platonic fashion the qualities necessary for the ruler, he should be inclined to rule by good quality of a native character and exhibit the right attitude for such rule. At the heart of Al-Farabi’s political philosophy is the concept of happiness in which people cooperate to gain contentment. He followed the Greek example and the highest rank of happiness was allocated to his ideal sovereign whose soul was ‘united as it were with the Active Intellect’. Therefore Farabi served as a tremendous source of aspiration for intellectuals of the middle ages and made enormous contributions to the knowledge of his day, paving the way for the later philosopher and thinkers of the Muslim world.
Farabian epistemology has both a Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian dimension. The best source for al-Farabi’s classification of knowledge is his Kitab ihsa al-ulum. This work neatly illustrates Al-Farabi’s beliefs, both esoteric and exoteric. Through all of them runs a primary Aristotelian stress on the importance of knowledge. Thus al-Farabi’s epistemology, from what has been described may be said to be encyclopedic in range and complex in articulation, using both a Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian voice.
Farabi also participated in writing books on early Muslim sociology and a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music) which is in reality a study of the theory of Persian music of his day, although in the West it has been introduced as a book on Arab music. He invented several musical instruments, besides contributing to the knowledge of musical notes. It has been reported that he could play his instrument so well as to make people laugh or weep at will. Al-Farabi’s treatise Meanings of the Intellect dealt with music therapy, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.

Later Life:

Farabi traveled to many distant lands throughout his life and gained many experiences a lot, due to which he made so many contributions for which he is still remembered and acknowledged. Inspite of facing many hardships, he worked with full dedication and made his name among the popular scientists of history. He died a bachelor in Damascus in 339 A.H. /950 A.D. at the age of 80 years.

Invention of the PC

Invention of the PC: The Computer Age

The earliest electronic computers were not “personal” in any way: They were enormous and hugely expensive, and they required a team of engineers and other specialists to keep them running. One of the first and most famous of these, the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), was built at the University of Pennsylvania to do ballistics calculations for the U.S. military during World War II. ENIAC cost $500,000, weighed 30 tons and took up nearly 2,000 square feet of floor space. On the outside, ENIAC was covered in a tangle of cables, hundreds of blinking lights and nearly 6,000 mechanical switches that its operators used to tell it what to do. On the inside, almost 18,000 vacuum tubes carried electrical signals from one part of the machine to another.

Invention of the PC: Postwar Innovations

ENIAC and other early computers proved to many universities and corporations that the machines were worth the tremendous investment of money, space and manpower they demanded. (For example, ENIAC could solve in 30 seconds a missile-trajectory problem that could take a team of human “computers” 12 hours to complete.) At the same time, new technologies were making it possible to build computers that were smaller and more streamlined. In 1948, Bell Labs introduced the transistor, an electronic device that carried and amplified electrical current but was much smaller than the cumbersome vacuum tube. Ten years later, scientists at Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor came up with the integrated circuit, an invention that incorporated all of the computer’s electrical parts–transistors, capacitors, resistors and diodes–into a single silicon chip.

But one of the most significant of the inventions that paved the way for the PC revolution was the microprocessor. Before microprocessors were invented, computers needed a separate integrated-circuit chip for each one of their functions. (This was one reason the machines were still so large.) Microprocessors were the size of a thumbnail, and they could do things the integrated-circuit chips could not: They could run the computer’s programs, remember information and manage data all by themselves.

The first microprocessor on the market was developed in 1971 by an engineer at Intel named Ted Hoff. (Intel was located in California’s Santa Clara Valley, a place nicknamed “Silicon Valley” because of all the high-tech companies clustered around the Stanford Industrial Park there.) Intel’s first microprocessor, a 1/16-by-1/8-inch chip called the 4004, had the same computing power as the massive ENIAC.

The Invention of the PC

These innovations made it cheaper and easier to manufacture computers than ever before. As a result, the small, relatively inexpensive “microcomputer”–soon known as the “personal computer”–was born. In 1974, for instance, a company called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) introduced a mail-order build-it-yourself computer kit called the Altair. Compared to earlier microcomputers, the Altair was a huge success: Thousands of people bought the $400 kit. However, it really did not do much. It had no keyboard and no screen, and its output was just a bank of flashing lights. Users input data by flipping toggle switches.

In 1975, MITS hired a pair of Harvard students named Paul G. Allen and Bill Gates to adapt the BASIC programming language for the Altair. The software made the computer easier to use, and it was a hit. In April 1975 the two young programmers took the money they made from “Altair BASIC” and formed a company of their own—Microsoft—that soon became an empire. 

The year after Gates and Allen started Microsoft, two engineers in the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley named Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak built a homemade computer that would likewise change the world. This computer, called the Apple I, was more sophisticated than the Altair: It had more memory, a cheaper microprocessor and a monitor with a screen. In April 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II, which had a keyboard and a color screen. Also, users could store their data on an external cassette tape. (Apple soon swapped those tapes for floppy disks.) To make the Apple II as useful as possible, the company encouraged programmers to create “applications” for it. For example, a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc made the Apple a practical tool for all kinds of people (and businesses)–not just hobbyists.

The PC Revolution

The PC revolution had begun. Soon companies like Xerox, Tandy, Commodore and IBM had entered the market, and computers became ubiquitous in offices and eventually homes. Innovations like the “Graphical User Interface,” which allows users to select icons on the computer screen instead of writing complicated commands, and the computer mouse made PCs even more convenient and user-friendly. Today, laptops, smart phones and tablet computers allow us to have a PC with us wherever we go.