Printing Press & Book Printing vs. Printers & Book Factories
Books, newspapers, and flyers are all made in bulk now, in automated factories where it requires no dangerous worker interactions. Back in the day (around 1440s – 1970s), they had to make it all by hand or simple machines like the printing press. Printing presses are dangerous too, especially if not in expert hands. You can get your fingers caught, or you can get burnt with lead. There’s a high possibility of burns when dealing with hot metal typesetting, especially back before OSHA was founded in 1970. People would melt and mold lead and other alloys into the words put into the printing press, eventually gaining burns and/or injuries due to the dangerousness of the machine. People die around and from the printing press itself too. A 19-year old temporary worker in Massachusetts was crushed to death from the printing press reversing far too fast during an emergency stop in 1994. I would give more information on this, but the links on the OFFICIAL OSHA website aren’t maintained and instead bring me to a page not found link as of July 28th, 2026.
Printing has been a very common job from the 1400s to now, where modern printers came to life towards the end of the 20th century. Printing nowadays is so much safer: It’s in an enclosed machine, which can print out hundreds to thousands of papers an hour, with a few presses of buttons and ink replacements. There’s even some printers where it quite literally uses a laser to engrave the letters into the paper, and then a powder is rolled into the paper to color it. This happens all in a small little machine that costs around $150 for this insane machine! It replaces days, months, even years of work from several people to do one machine job! It took a man a year to print 180 copies of his 42-line bible using a printing press, to now where you can print out copies of that book in seconds! But big corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy industrial printers, where they charge low amounts for black and white, usually around 25¢ per page!
This is why evolution and change is such a great thing sometimes, because such great things can come from it! Imagine if you had to work as a print worker. Would you rather use a printing press or a modern printer? You’d most likely use the modern printer and that’s great! But, it still comes with consequences. With the higher availability and accessibility of paper, it has contributed to around 35% of deforestation in the world. The worst part is that it’s not all the cons… But I’ll go over some more pros first!
Pros & Cons of the Modern Printer!
Pros
- Ease of use and access (when working)
- Bulk Production
- Cheap to use
- Physical copies
- Swift production
Cons
- Expensive to buy the actual design
- Connection issues (Bluetooth and HDMI)
- A lot of malfunctions and maintenance
- Frequent issues with actual quality of what’s printed
- Incorrect formatting of printing design
- Jamming
- Crashing
- Ads get printed out of your computer without your consent
- Uses a lot of paper (bad for the environment)
- Can get hacked easily!
Now, here’s the thing, printing may be different now, but I’d like to ask you to think about something: If you had a printing press, would you use it? Why? For what?
