Printing technology has been known for thousands of years, but until the modern era was restricted to the elites of the more advanced historic civlisations.
In the ancient civilisation of Traithe, important texts were recorded on brass discs, using the flowing continuous Taigan script. Ancient bookwheels have mostly been found in ancient tombs, and contain the only firsthand accounts of Taigan culture.
Little about their production is known, but it is likely that they were made using a stylus attached by string to a rod going through a hole in the centre of the disk. Modern scholars theorise that scholars would incise lettering by hand whilst slowly turning the wheel. As the string became wrapped around the central rod, the scribe would continue writing in a spiral, until they met the centre of the disc. The spirals were read back in a similar fashion by turning them on a device with a rectangular viewing window, also attached to a central spindle, which moved up or down to follow the type as the wheel turned.
Historians believe bookwheels were not intended for everyday use, but were a status symbol used for displaying political and cultural texts, and as a durable medium enabling the survival of important works. The archives of the Rasian Academy were believed to have thousands of bookwheels in their vaults, used as an original source from which to transcribe important works.
Wood-cut printing uses incised wooden blocks, either as individual letters or as a carved image plate. Block printing has been used for many millennia, but was historically imprecise and messy compared to hand-written manuscripts. The main problem is that every plate and letter must be individually carved by hand, requiring work by highly skilled craftsmen. Because no two carved letter punches are absolutely identical, even if carved by the same craftsman, the finished print can be uneven. Ironoke block printing has been used for most of the modern era because it gives a sharper impression, and is reliable and cheap. Ironoke is much harder to work, so it is mainly used for type printing.
Miyarrain pin-printing was a technique by which clusters of strong metal pins held vertically in a frame were used to form an image on the page, so that no printing blocks were required. The technique is referred to in ancient Miyarrain writings but only fragments of the machines survive, so that knowledge of the technique is long lost. Even the metallurgical method of reproducing the strong slim metal pins has been long lost.
Scholars have theorised that pin printing could have worked by pressing a frame of loose pins against an image, then tightening the frame so the pins remain static. Ink can then be applied with a pad, enabling printing of an image. Others have suggested that it could only have worked by thaumaturgical means.
Ceramic type is a newer method of moveable type developed in Ororr, using blocks of ceramic letters instead of wood. This only became possible with the development of high-quality vitreous ceramics in the Remel region of Ororrplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigOrorr
Ororr [o-ROARR, ɒ̝rɔ'ɾ], also called the Holy Motherland of Ororr, is a theocratic nation in Anásthias, one of the world's great powers. It the largest nation in the world, perhaps the largest empire in history, occupying the entire northwest of the continent between the mountains and the sea. Ororrlanguagelanguagelanguage. The great advantage of clay-block type is that any number of identical letters can be made from a standard mould, so printed products are more even. Ceramic type printing is highly skilled and specialised, and predominates in Ororr.
Amberplate printing is a relatively new method developed and used in Harthera. It uses sheets of semi-cured amberglass, into which arrays of ironoke blocks are pressed. The plate is then cured to a hard finish. The advantage of amberglass is that it can hold a much sharper image than wood, and additionally, can be incised by hand to enable printing of sharp images. Even though amberplate is still based on ironoke blocks, the pressing process puts little wear and tear on the wood, so the end result is a clear, consistent print. Although amberplates wear out after several hundred prints, it is fairly simple to create a new plate from a master. Modern techniques have also develop a process for thermomelting amberglass, which enables old plates to be melted down and reused.
A recent innovation is using multiple plates to build up colour images. This has only become possible with the invention of more stable inks, based on plant dyes imported from the Eastern Isles and Munatan.
Amberplate is technologically straightforward, but requires a ready supply of amberglass which is only practicable in Harthera.
A spirit duplicator is a thaumaturgical device, in which an elemental is used to reproduce an image, being a whole page or picture. Spirit duplicators were used for centuries particularly at the Rasian Academy, though they were later superseded by other printing advances. They were also used in the early days of the Mother Church of Ororr, and were for a time considered to be the only authentic means of reproducing holy texts and church-state dictats.
There have been numerous designs over the ages, but most consist of a flat bed containing the image to be reproduced, and a second with blank parchment. Most have some form of stylus with an ink reserve. Spirit duplicators could produce results finer ever than hand copying, but they were often temperamental and required regular thaumaturgical intervention. In fact the term imprinting relates to common use in this early device.