How Ink Developed
Printing work was also invented in China. Wei Dan is credited with developing an ink for block printing about 400 A.D. He made ink from plant substances mixed with colored earth and soot.
By the time of Gutenberg, inks were being made by mixing varnish with lampblack. The varnish was made by boiling linseed oil. These inks were used, with little modification, until the end of the eighteenth century.
During the nineteenth century, advances were made in the use of driers to speed the drying of ink. Various new pigments for producing colored inks were also developed.
It was in the twentieth century, however, that major developments in ink making came about. Rapid technological advances in printing during the past fifty years brought about changes in the composition and manufacture of printing ink. Today, thousands of chemists are constantly working to improve old inks and develop new ones.
From Internet
2 April, 2012
