Even if you’ve never thought about wide-format printing once in your life, you’ve likely seen its results. Wide-format printing is “truth in advertising.” It involves printing large images on paper, film, or other materials in sheets that can be 18 to 100 inches wide. Wide-format printers allow the creation of billboards and banners, murals, vehicle wraps, blueprints and schematics, theatrical backdrops, and more. Without wide-format printers, life would look a lot smaller. Here’s a brief history of wide-format printing through the years and how the practice has evolved.
Where It Began
Humans have been practicing the art of printing for thousands of years, going back to the days of stamps and clay tablets. The Chinese developed woodblock printing sometime in the 600s, and movable type was later devised in the same place in the 11th century. Many years later, Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press with movable and easily reproduced type in the 1500s. Printing technology continued to perfect itself through the centuries. Lithography became a way to reproduce prints and photos sometime in the 1870s, eventually inspiring and giving way to offset printing in the early 1900s. Wide-format printing, by comparison, is a newcomer, appearing and developing in the last part of the 20th century.
The First Wide-Format Printer
The first indisputable wide-format printer was the one-of-a-kind device Iris Graphics Model 3047, built in 1985 by Iris Graphics, Inc. of Stoneham, Massachusetts. The printer could print images on a sheet of paper measuring 34″ × 44″. Not huge, but not small. Later printers cost as much as $126,000 and professional photographers most often purchased and used them. The prints weren’t created with long-term display in mind by most accounts. The pigments in the ink tank would fade rapidly in normal light.
Fun fact
Graham Nash, a skilled and ardent photographer and member of the famous singing group Crosby, Stills, and Nash, bought and developed the first Iris Graphics Model 3047.
Testing and Refining
The Nash Edition printers competed with Epson and Durst in printer production, but in time, Nash and Epson formed a collaboration. They eventually produced the more efficient and reliable Epson Stylus Pro 9500 printer in 1999. The new printer also used more reliable and stable inks that lasted longer under bright light. Then, another printing titan entered the ring: Hewlett Packard. The company produced printers offering wider formats and employing thermal head printers with even more stable multi-color ink systems. This advancement led to another revolution, wide-format printing becoming more affordable and, therefore, more available to a wider audience.
This has been a brief history of wide-format printing through the years. Contact us for a consultation today if you have any questions about wide-format printing or any of our other services!
