The beginning of printing

During the Tang Dynasty (618–907) between the 7th and 9th century AD, wood blocks were cut to print on textiles and later to carbon copy Buddhist texts. A Buddhist scripture printed in 868 is the original identified printed book. start in the 11th century, longer scrolls and books were shaped using movable type printing making books widely available during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Although printing from moveable type had been introduced a couple of centuries earlier, the handbills or trade cards of the 17th-18th Century were printed from wood or copper engravings. They generally announced the business and its location. Hogarth, a famous painter from England also doubled his skill in engraving being one of the first to design for business trade. A new age dawned in Mainz Germany, in the year 1448, Johann Gutenberg introduce moveable type in a new metal alloy. The invention of the printing press opened up a new era of business and trade. Beforehand the most logical way of advertising was word of mouth; print expedited advertising methods in an explosive way. In cities such as France and London, criers announced products for sale just as ancient Romans had done, this new invention replaced the maddening street noise. Visual representations were on the horizon as tradesmen desired to use this method to convey to the business public the items they had for sale and their need to persuade the purchasers to use their crop. The Printing press made books widely available in Europe. The book design of Aldus Manutius developed the book structure which would become the foundation of western publication design. This era of graphic design is called Humanist or Old Style. Additionally, it was William Caxton, England's first owner of a printing press that printed Religious books and had trouble selling them that brought him to discover the use of the left over pages and utilize them in announcing the sale of the books and post them on the church doors. This meticulous form of posting to the doors was termed "squis" or "pin up" posters, in roughly 1612 as the first form of print advertising in Europe. The term Siquis actually came from the Roman era when community notices were posted stating "if anybody...", which is Latin for "si quis". These printed announcements were followed by later public registers of wants called want ads and in some areas such as the first periodical in Paris advertising was termed "advices". The "Advices" were what we know today as want ad media or advice columns. Later in 1638, British North America gets a printing press, from England. The printing press arrived at Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts. There were more than 52 years before another printing press would arrive in Boston to Benjamin Harris, a London Bookseller who had immigrated to Boston. Benjamin Harris tries his hand at publishing a newspaper in serial form. Harris' attempt a publishing produced a paper entitled Public Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic, it was four pages long and was censored by the government after its first copy. It was however, John Campbell that gets the credit for the first newspaper, The Boston News-Letter that appeared in 1704. The paper was known during the rebellion as "Weeklies", it was termed so as it took 13 hours for the print ink to dry. Therefore, printing both sides of the paper would have compulsory more than a day of drying time alone-plus the time to set the type, print and distribute. "The solution was to first, print the ads and then to print the news on the other side the day before publication. The paper was for pages long having ads on at least 20%-30% of the total paper, (pages one and four) the hot news was located on the inside." The early use of the Boston News-Letter carried Campbell's own solicitations for marketing from his readers. Campbell's first paid advertisement was in his third edition, May 7 or 8th, 1704. Two of the first ads were for stolen merchandise which were two anvils and the third was for real estate in Long Island Oyster Bay, Owned by William Bradford, a pioneer printer in New York, the first to sell something of value. William Bradford, later publishes his first newspaper in 1725, New York's first, The New-York Gazette. William Bradford's son, preceded him in Philadelphia publishing the American Weekly Mercury, 1719. The Mercury and William Brooker's Massachusetts Gazette, available a day earlier were the 2 newspapers to be published following the Boston News-Letter.