title: History of printing

text: The history of printing starts as early as 3000 BCE, when the proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations used cylinder seals to certify documents written in clay tablets . Other early forms include block seals, hammered coinage, pottery imprints, and cloth printing. Initially a method of printing patterns on cloth such as silk, woodblock printing for texts on paper originated in China by the 7th century during the Tang dynasty, leading to the spread of book production and woodblock printing in other parts of Asia such as Korea and Japan. The Chinese Buddhist "Diamond Sutra", printed by woodblock on 11 May 868, is the earliest known printed book with a precise publishing date. Movable type was invented by Chinese artisan Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty, but it received limited use compared to woodblock printing. Nevertheless, the technology spread outside China, as the oldest printed book using metal movable type was the "Jikji", printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era.


title: History of printing

text: Woodblock printing was also used in Europe until the mid-15th century. Late medieval German inventor Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press based on previously known mechanical presses and a process for mass-producing metal type. By the end of the 15th century his invention and widescale circulation of the Gutenberg Bible became responsible for a burgeoning economical book publishing industry across Renaissance Europe and eventually among the colonial publishers and printers that emerged in the British-American colonies. This industry enabled the communication of ideas and sharing of knowledge on an unprecedented scale, leading to the global spread of the printing press during the early modern period. Alongside the development of text printing, new and lower-cost methods of image reproduction were developed, including lithography, screen printing and photocopying.


title: History of printing

text: Hand stencils, made by blowing pigment over a hand held against a wall, have been found in Asia and Europe dating from over 35,000 years ago, and later prehistoric dates in other continents. After that stencilling has been used as a historic painting technique on all kinds of materials.


title: History of printing

text: Stencils may have been used to colour cloth for a very long time; the technique probably reached its peak of sophistication in Katazome and other techniques used on silks for clothes during the Edo period in Japan. In Europe, from about 1450 AD they were commonly used to colour old master prints printed in black and white, usually woodcuts. This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be coloured by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black and white. Stencils were used for mass publications, as the type did not have to be hand-written.


title: History of printing

text: In China seals were used since at least the Shang dynasty. In the Western Zhou, sets of seal stamps were encased in blocks of type and used on clay moulds for casting bronzes. By the end of the 3rd century BC seals were also used for printing on pottery. In the Northern dynasties textual sources contain references to wooden seals with up to 120 characters.


title: History of printing

text: The seals had a religious element to them. Daoists used seals as healing devices by impressing therapeutic characters onto the flesh of sick people. They were also used to stamp food, creating a talismanic character to ward off disease. The first evidence of these practices appeared under a Buddhist context in the mid 5th century. Centuries later seals were used to create hundreds of Buddha images.


title: History of printing

text: In the West the practice of sealing documents, with an impressed personal, or official insignia, typically from a worn signet ring, became established under the Roman Empire, and continued through the Byzantine, and Holy Roman empires, into the 19th century, when a wet signature became customary.


title: History of printing

text: Stone and bronze blocks have been used to print fabric. Archaeological evidence of them have been unearthed at Mawangdui and in the tomb of the King of Nanyue, while block printed fabrics have been discovered at Mashan Zhuanchang in Jiangling, Hubei.


title: History of printing

text: Pliny the Elder described clay block printing of textiles in 1st century Egypt, with extant Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Ukrainian, and Russian examples known, dating from the 4th century CE.


title: History of printing

text: In the 4th century the practice of creating paper rubbings of stone carvings such as calligraphic models and texts took hold in East Asia. Among the earliest evidence of this is a stone inscription cut in mirror image from the early 6th century.


title: History of printing

text: Woodblock printing ("diaoban yinshua" 雕版印刷), known as xylography today, was the first method of printing applied to a paper medium. It became widely used throughout East Asia both as a method for printing on textiles and later, under the influence of Buddhism, on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to about 220 AD. "Ukiyo-e" is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the term woodcut (see below), except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century.


title: History of printing

text: According to the Book of the Southern Qi, in the 480s, a man named Gong Xuanyi (龔玄宜) styled himself Gong the Sage and "said that a supernatural being had given him a 'jade seal jade block writing,' which did not require a brush: one blew on the paper and characters formed." He then used his powers to mystify a local governor. Eventually he was dealt with by the governor's successor, who presumably executed Gong. Timothy Hugh Barrett postulates that Gong's magical jade block was actually a printing device, and Gong was one of the first, if not the first printer. The semi-mythical record of him therefore describes his usage of the printing process to deliberately bewilder onlookers and create an image of mysticism around himself.


title: History of printing

text: The rise of printing was greatly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism. According to Mahayana beliefs, religious texts hold intrinsic value for carrying the Buddha's word and act as talismanic objects containing sacred power capable of warding off evil spirits. By copying and preserving these texts, Buddhists could accrue personal merit. As a consequence the idea of printing and its advantages in replicating texts quickly became apparent to Buddhists, who by the 7th century, were using woodblocks to create apotropaic documents. These Buddhist texts were printed specifically as ritual items and were not widely circulated or meant for public consumption. Instead they were buried in consecrated ground. The earliest extant example of this type of printed matter is a fragment of a dhāraṇī (Buddhist spell) miniature scroll written in Sanskrit unearthed in a tomb in Xi'an. It is called the "Great spell of unsullied pure light" ("Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing" 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經) and was printed using woodblock during the Tang dynasty, c. 650–670 AD. Radiocarbon dating by the University of Arizona confirmed that the material was likely produced sometime between 618-770. A similar piece, the "Saddharma pundarika" sutra, was also discovered and dated to 690 to 699. This coincides with the reign of Wu Zetian, under which the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, which advocates the practice of printing apotropaic and merit making texts and images, was translated by Chinese monks. From 658-663, Xuanzang printed one million copies of the image of Puxian Pusa to distribute to Buddhist devotees.


title: History of printing

text: Evidence of woodblock printing appeared in Korea and Japan soon afterward. The Great Dharani Sutra () was discovered at Bulguksa, South Korea in 1966 and dated between 704 and 751 in the era of Later Silla. The document is printed on a mulberry paper scroll. A dhāraṇī sutra was printed in Japan around AD 770. One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by Empress Shōtoku. As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the "Hyakumantō Darani" (百万塔陀羅尼, "1,000,000 towers/pagodas Darani").


title: History of printing

text: The oldest extant evidence of woodblock prints created for the purpose of reading are portions of the Lotus Sutra discovered at Turpan in 1906. They have been dated to the reign of Wu Zetian using character form recognition. The oldest text containing a specific date of printing was discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang in 1907 by Aurel Stein. This copy of the Diamond Sutra is 14 feet long and contains a colophon at the inner end, which reads: "Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11 May, AD 868 ]". It is considered the world's oldest securely-dated woodblock scroll. The Diamond sutra was closely followed by the earliest extant printed almanac, the "Qianfu sinian lishu" (乾符四年曆書), dated to 877. From 932 to 955 the Twelve Classics and an assortment of other texts were printed. During the Song dynasty, the Directorate of education and other agencies used these block prints to disseminate their standardized versions of the "Classics". Other disseminated works include the "Histories", philosophical works, encyclopedias, collections, and books on medicine and the art of war. In 971 work began on the complete Tripiṭaka Buddhist Canon ("Kaibao zangshu" 開寶藏書) in Chengdu. It took 10 years to finish the 130,000 blocks needed to print the text. The finished product, the Sichuan edition of the "Kaibao canon", also known as the "Kaibao Tripitaka", was printed in 983. During the Song dynasty, the three major centers of printing were Hangzhou, Jianyang, and Chengdu.


title: History of printing

text: In 989 Seongjong of Goryeo sent the monk Yeoga to request from the Song a copy of the complete Buddhist canon. The request was granted in 991 when Seongjong's official Han Eongong visited the Song court. In 1011, Hyeonjong of Goryeo issued the carving of their own set of the Buddhist canon, which would come to be known as the "Goryeo Daejanggyeong". The project was suspended in 1031 after Heyongjong's death, but work resumed again in 1046 after Munjong's accession to the throne. The completed work, amounting to some 6,000 volumes, was finished in 1087. Unfortunately the original set of woodblocks was destroyed in a conflagration during the Mongol invasion of 1232. King Gojong ordered another set to be created and work began in 1237, this time only taking 12 years to complete. In 1248 the complete "Goryeo Daejanggyeong" numbered 81,258 printing blocks, 52,330,152 characters, 1496 titles, and 6568 volumes. Due to the stringent editing process that went into the "Goryeo Daejanggyeong" and its surprisingly enduring nature, having survived completely intact over 760 years, it is considered the most accurate of Buddhist canons written in Classical Chinese as well as a standard edition for East Asian Buddhist scholarship.


title: History of printing

text: In Japan, from the Edo period in the 1600s, books and illustrations were mass-produced by woodblock printing and spread among the common people. This is due to economic development and a very high literacy rate for the time. The literacy rate of the Japanese in the Edo period was almost 100% for the samurai class and 50% to 60% for the "chōnin" and "nōmin" (farmer) class due to the spread of private schools "terakoya". There were more than 600 rental bookstores in Edo, and people lent woodblock-printed illustrated books of various genres. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, gardening books, cookbooks, "kibyōshi" (satirical novels), "sharebon" (books on urban culture), "kokkeibon" (comical books), "ninjōbon" (romance novel), "yomihon", "kusazōshi", art books, play scripts for the kabuki and "jōruri" (puppet) theatre, etc. The best-selling books of this period were "Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (Life of an Amorous Man)" by Ihara Saikaku, "Nansō Satomi Hakkenden" by Takizawa Bakin, and "Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige" by Jippensha Ikku, and these books were reprinted many times.


title: History of printing

text: From the 17th century to the 19th century, "ukiyo-e" depicting secular subjects became very popular among the Japanese common people and were mass-produced. "ukiyo-e" is based on kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, beautiful women, landscapes of sightseeing spots, historical tales, and so on, and Hokusai and Hiroshige are the most famous artists. In the 18th century, Suzuki Harunobu established the technique of multicolor woodblock printing called "nishiki-e" and greatly developed Japanese woodblock printing culture such as "ukiyo-e". "Ukiyo-e" influenced European Japonism and Impressionism. In the early 20th century, "shin-hanga" that fused the tradition of "ukiyo-e" with the techniques of Western paintings became popular, and the works of Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida gained international popularity.


title: History of printing

text: Prior to the introduction of printing, the size of private collections in China had already seen an increase since the invention of paper. Fan Ping (215–84) had in his collection 7,000 rolls ("juan"), or a few hundred titles. Two centuries later, Zhang Mian owned 10,000 "juan", Shen Yue (441–513) 20,000 "juan", and Xiao Tong and his cousin Xiao Mai both had collections of 30,000 "juan". Emperor Yuan of Liang (508–555) was said to have had a collection of 80,000 "juan". The combined total of all known private book collectors prior to the Song dynasty number around 200, with the Tang alone accounting for 60 of them.


title: History of printing

text: Following the maturation of woodblock printing, official, commercial, and private publishing businesses emerged while the size and number of collections grew exponentially. The Song dynasty alone accounts for some 700 known private collections, more than triple the number of all the preceding centuries combined. Private libraries of 10–20,000 "juan" became commonplace while six individuals owned collections of over 30,000 "juan". The earliest extant private Song library catalogue lists 1,937 titles in 24,501 "juan". Zhou Mi's collection numbered 42,000 "juan", Chen Zhensun's collection lists 3,096 titles in 51,180 "juan", and Ye Mengde (1077–1148) as well as one other individual owned libraries of 6,000 titles in 100,000 "juan". The majority of which were secular in nature. Texts contained material such as medicinal instruction or came in the form of a "leishu" (類書), a type of encyclopedic reference book used to help examination candidates.


title: History of printing

text: Imperial establishments such as the Three Institutes: Zhaowen Institute, History Institute, and Jixian Institute also followed suit. At the start of the dynasty the Three Institutes' holdings numbered 13,000 "juan", by the year 1023 39,142 "juan", by 1068 47,588 "juan", and by 1127 73,877 "juan". The Three Institutes were one of several imperial libraries, with eight other major palace libraries, not including imperial academies. According to Weng Tongwen, by the 11th century, central government offices were saving tenfold by substituting earlier manuscripts with printed versions. The impact of woodblock printing on Song society is illustrated in the following exchange between Emperor Zhenzong and Xing Bing in the year 1005:


title: History of printing

text: In 1076, the 39 year old Su Shi remarked upon the unforeseen effect an abundance of books had on examination candidates:


title: History of printing

text: Woodblock printing also changed the shape and structure of books. Scrolls were gradually replaced by concertina binding (經摺裝) from the Tang period onward. The advantage was that it was now possible to flip to a reference without unfolding the entire document. The next development known as whirlwind binding ("xuanfeng zhuang" 旋風裝) was to secure the first and last leaves to a single large sheet, so that the book could be opened like an accordion.


title: History of printing

text: Around the year 1000, butterfly binding was developed. Woodblock prints allowed two mirror images to be easily replicated on a single sheet. Thus two pages were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a codex with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages. In the 14th century the folding was reversed outwards to give continuous printed pages, each backed by a blank hidden page. Later the sewn bindings were preferred rather than pasted bindings. Only relatively small volumes ("juan 卷") were bound up, and several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a "tao", with wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close up the book when not in use. For example, one complete Tripitaka had over 6,400 "juan" in 595 "tao".


title: History of printing

text: The rise of woodblock printing technology led to a decline in book prices by about one tenth what they had been before the 11th century. Not all areas experienced the same price reductions, which was also dependent on other factors besides the technology, resulting in regional variations in the price of print works by as high as 600 percent during the 12th century. Woodblock printing did not replace manuscripts either, which continued to remain commercially viable through substantially reducing their prices. According to the Ming dynasty author Hu Yinglin, "if no printed edition were available on the market, the hand-copied manuscript of a book would cost ten times as much as the printed work," also "once a printed edition appeared, the transcribed copy could no longer be sold and would be discarded." The result is that despite the mutual co-existence of hand-copied manuscripts and printed texts, the cost of the book had declined by about 90 percent by the end of the 16th century. As a result, literacy increased. In 1488, the Korean Choe Bu observed during his trip to China that "even village children, ferrymen, and sailors" could read, although this applied mainly to the south while northern China remained largely illiterate. Manuscripts also gained new cultural value as imprints became more common, and were even "preferred" by elite scholars and collectors. The age of printing gave the act of copying by hand a new dimension of cultural reverence. Those who considered themselves real scholars and true connoisseurs of the book did not consider imprints to be real books. Under the elitist attitudes of the time, "printed books were for those who did not truly care about books."


title: History of printing

text: In Buddhism, great merit is thought to accrue from copying and preserving texts. Asanga, the 4th-century master listed the copying of scripture as the first of ten essential religious practices. The importance of perpetuating texts is set out with special force in the longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, which urges the devout not only to hear, learn, remember and study the text but to obtain a good copy and to preserve it. This "cult of the book" led to techniques for reproducing texts in great numbers, especially the short prayers or charms known as "dhāraṇīs". Stamps were carved for printing these prayers on clay tablets from at least the 7th century, the date of the oldest surviving examples.


title: History of printing

text: The Golden Age of Islam witnessed text printing, including passages from the Quran and hadith, embracing the Chinese craft of paper making, developed it and adopted it widely in the Muslim world, which led to a major increase in the production of manuscript texts. The printing technique in Egypt was adopted reproducing texts on paper strips and supplying them in various copies to meet the demand. Block printing, known as "tarsh" in Arabic, was also developed during the ninth and tenth centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. Evidences tell that the print blocks made from non-wood materials, possibly tin, lead, or clay. Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Islamic world, at first for fabric, the method of metal block printing remained unknown in the West. Block printing later went out of use in the Muslim Timurid Renaissance.


title: History of printing

text: Printing with a press was practiced in Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onwards.


title: History of printing

text: Around the mid-century, "block-books", woodcut books with both text and images, usually carved in the same block, emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed with movable type. These were all short heavily illustrated works, the bestsellers of the day, repeated in many different block-book versions: the Ars moriendi and the Biblia pauperum were the most common. There is still some controversy among scholars as to whether their introduction preceded or, the majority view, followed the introduction of movable type, with the range of estimated dates being between about 1440–1460.


title: History of printing

text: Movable type was invented in the Northern Song dynasty around the year 1041 by the commoner Bi Sheng. Bi Sheng's movable type was fired in porcelain. After his death, the ceramic movable-type passed onto his descendants. The next mention of movable type occurred in 1193 when a Southern Song chief counselor, Zhou Bida (周必大), attributed the movable-type method of printing to Shen Kuo. However Shen Kuo did not invent the movable type but credited it to Bi Sheng in his "Dream Pool Essays". The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan's councilor Yao Shu, who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method.


title: History of printing

text: The ceramic type did not hold the water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had the additional disadvantage of the size of the type sometimes changing during the baking process, resulting in uneven matching of the type, and preventing it from becoming popular.


title: History of printing

text: Bi Sheng also developed wooden movable type, but it was abandoned in favor of ceramic types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. However wooden movable type had evidently reached the Tangut Western Xia to the west by the 12th century. There, the Tanguts printed the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union, a 449-page text considered to be the earliest extant example of a text printed using the wooden movable type. The Uyghurs too seem to have used wooden movable type although it is unknown where they got the technology. In 1908, more than a thousand pieces of Uyghur type made of wood, engraved in Sogdian script, were discovered in Dunhuang. They are believed to date to the 12th century when the Uyghurs also made use of woodblock printing. To date no manuscripts or fragments of Uyghur movable type have been found.


title: History of printing

text: Wang Zhen, who lived in the Yuan dynasty, also described the wooden movable type in his "Book of Agriculture" ("Nongshu" 農書) of 1313.


title: History of printing

text: Wang Zhen used two rotating circular tables as trays for laying out his type. The first table was separated into 24 trays in which each movable type was categorized based on a number corresponding with a rhyming pattern. The second table contained miscellaneous characters.


title: History of printing

text: Using more than 30,000 wooden movable types, Wang Zhen printed a hundred copies of his county gazetteer, "Records of Jingde County" ("Jingde xianzhi" 旌德縣志), a text containing more than 60,000 characters.


title: History of printing

text: Wooden movable type printing became relatively common during the Ming dynasty and became widespread during the Qing era.


title: History of printing

text: Metal movable type appeared in the late Song and Yuan dynasties. Bronze movable types were used to print banknotes and official documents by both the Song and Jin.


title: History of printing

text: In the Jin dynasty, copper-block prints were slotted with two square holes for embedding bronze movable type characters, each selected from 1000 different characters, such that each printed paper money had a different combination of markers. A copper block printed paper banknote dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu's "Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties", 1914, shows two special characters: one called "Ziliao", the other called "Zihao", for the purpose of preventing counterfeit. Over the "Ziliao" there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the "Zihao" there is an empty square hole; apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above "Ziliao" as well as "Zihou", due to the loss of two copper movable types.


title: History of printing

text: In 1234, cast metal movable type was used in Goryeo (Korea) to print the 50-volume "Prescribed Texts for Rites of the Past and Present", compiled by Choe Yun-ui, but no copies survived to the present. Choe Yun-ui built on an earlier Chinese method of creating movable type, he adapted a method for minting bronze coins to cast 3-dimensional characters in metal. Because of the length of the text Choe Yun-ui did not complete the project until 1250. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type is the Jikji of 1377. This form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as "extremely similar to Gutenberg's".


title: History of printing

text: Tin movable type is mentioned in Wang Zhen's "Zao Huozi Yinshufa" (造活字印書法) of 1298, but it was considered unsatisfactory due to incompatibility with the inking process. Only in the late 15th century did bronze movable type begin to be widely used in China.


title: History of printing

text: Movable type printing was hardly used for the first 300 years after its invention by Bi Sheng. Even in Korea where metal movable type was most widespread, it still never replaced woodblock printing. Indeed, even the promulgation of Hangeul was done through woodblock prints. The general assumption is that movable type did not replace block printing in places that used Chinese characters due to the expense of producing more than 200,000 individual pieces of type. Even woodblock printing was not as cost productive as simply paying a copyist to write out a book by hand if there was no intention of producing more than a few copies. Although Sejong the Great introduced Hangeul, an alphabetic system, in the 15th century, Hangeul only replaced Hanja in the 20th century. And unlike China, the movable type system was kept mainly within the confines of a highly stratified elite Korean society:


title: History of printing

text: Only during the Ming and Qing dynasties did wooden and metal movable types see any considerable use, but the preferred method remained woodblock. Usage of movable type in China never exceeded 10 percent of all printed materials while 90 percent of printed books used the older woodblock technology. In one case an entire set of wooden type numbering 250,000 pieces was used for firewood. Woodblocks remained the dominant printing method in China until the introduction of lithography in the late 19th century.


title: History of printing

text: In Japan the first Western style movable type printing-press was brought to Japan by Tenshō embassy in 1590, and was first printed in Kazusa, Nagasaki in 1591. However, western printing-press were discontinued after the ban on Christianity in 1614. The moveable type printing-press seized from Korea by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces in 1593 was also in use at the same time as the printing press from Europe. An edition of the Confucian "Analects" was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei. Tokugawa Ieyasu established a printing school at Enko-ji in Kyoto and started publishing books using domestic wooden movable type printing-press instead of metal from 1599. Ieyasu supervised the production of 100,000 types, which were used to print many political and historical books. In 1605, books using domestic copper movable type printing-press began to be published, but copper type did not become mainstream after Ieyasu died in 1616. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, craftsmen soon decided that the running script style of Japanese writings was better reproduced using woodblocks. By 1640 woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes. After the 1640s, movable type printing declined, and books were mass-produced by conventional woodblock printing during most of the Edo period. It was after the 1870s, during the Meiji period, when Japan opened the country to the West and began to modernize, that this technique was used again.


title: History of printing

text: Traditionally it has been assumed that the prevalence of woodblock printing in East Asia as a result of Chinese characters led to the stagnation of printing culture and enterprise in that region. S. H. Steinberg describes woodblock printing in his "Five Hundred Years of Printing" as having "outlived their usefulness" and their printed material as "cheap tracts for the half-literate, [...] which anyway had to be very brief because of the laborious process of cutting the letters." John Man's "The Gutenberg Revolution" makes a similar case: "wood-blocks were even more demanding than manuscript pages to make, and they wore out and broke, and then you had to carve another one – a whole page at a time."


title: History of printing

text: Recent commentaries on printing in China using contemporary European observers with first hand knowledge complicate the traditional narrative. T. H. Barrett points out that only Europeans who had never seen Chinese woodblock printing in action tended to dismiss it, perhaps due to the almost instantaneous arrival of both xylography and movable type in Europe. The early Jesuit missionaries of late 16th century China, for instance, had a similar distaste for wood based printing for very different reasons. These Jesuits found that "the cheapness and omnipresence of printing in China made the prevailing wood-based technology extremely disturbing, even dangerous." Matteo Ricci made note of "the exceedingly large numbers of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold." Two hundred years later the Englishman John Barrow, by way of the Macartney mission to Qing China, also remarked with some amazement that the printing industry was "as free as in England, and the profession of printing open to everyone." The commercial success and profitability of woodblock printing was attested to by one British observer at the end of the nineteenth century, who noted that even before the arrival of western printing methods, the price of books and printed materials in China had already reached an astoundingly low price compared to what could be found in his home country. Of this, he said:


title: History of printing

text: Other modern scholars such as Endymion Wilkinson hold a more conservative and skeptical view. While Wilkinson does not deny "China's dominance in book production from the fourth to the fifteenth century," he also insists that arguments for the Chinese advantage "should not be extended either forwards or backwards in time."


title: History of printing

text: Eastern metal movable type was spread to Europe between the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P. McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive."


title: History of printing

text: It is traditionally surmised that Johannes Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European movable type printing technology with the printing press around 1439 and in just over a decade, the European age of printing began. However, the evidence shows a more complex evolutionary process, spread over multiple locations. Also, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented with Gutenberg in Mainz.


title: History of printing

text: Compared to woodblock printing, movable type page-setting was quicker and more durable. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.


title: History of printing

text: Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously used water-based inks. Having worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of his knowledge of metals. He was also the first to make his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, known as type metal, printer's lead, or printer's metal, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books, and proved to be more suitable for printing than the clay, wooden or bronze types used in East Asia. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention: a special matrix which enabled the moulding of new movable types with an unprecedented precision at short notice. Within a year of printing the Gutenberg Bible, Gutenberg also published the first coloured prints.


title: History of printing

text: The invention of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production, leading to the spread of knowledge.  Printing was rapidly spread from Germany by emigrating German printers, but also by foreign apprentices returning home. A printing press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. In 1473 Kasper Straube published the "Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474" in Kraków. Dirk Martens set up a printing press in Aalst (Flanders) in 1473. He printed a book about the two lovers of Enea Piccolomini who became Pope Pius II. In 1476 a printing press was set up in England by William Caxton. The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. The first printing press in Southeast Asia was set up in the Philippines by the Spanish in 1593. The Rev. Jose Glover intended to bring the first printing press to England's American colonies in 1638, but died on the voyage, so his widow, Elizabeth Harris Glover, established the printing house, which was run by Stephen Day and became The Cambridge Press.


title: History of printing

text: The Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying. It remained largely unchanged in the eras of John Baskerville and Giambattista Bodoni, over 300 years later. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had constructed a press completely from cast iron, reducing the force required by 90% while doubling the size of the printed area. While Stanhope's "mechanical theory" had improved the efficiency of the press, it was only capable of 250 sheets per hour. German printer Friedrich Koenig was the first to design a non-manpowered machine—using steam. He moved to London in 1804, and met Thomas Bensley; he secured financial support for his project in 1807. With a patent in 1810, Koenig designed a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine." The first production trial of this model occurred in April 1811.


title: History of printing

text: A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. Printing methods based on Gutenberg's printing press spread rapidly throughout first Europe and then the rest of the world, replacing most block printing and making it the sole progenitor of modern movable type printing. As a method of creating reproductions for mass consumption, the printing press has been superseded by the advent of offset printing.


title: History of printing

text: Johannes Gutenberg's work in the printing press began in approximately 1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehen—a man he had previously instructed in gem-cutting—and Andreas Heilmann, owner of a paper mill. It was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that official record exists; witnesses testimony discussed type, an inventory of metals (including lead) and his type mold.


title: History of printing

text: Others in Europe were developing movable type at this time, including goldsmith Procopius Waldfoghel of France and Laurens Janszoon Coster of the Netherlands. They are not known to have contributed specific advances to the printing press. While the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition had attributed the invention of the printing press to Coster, the company now states that is incorrect.


title: History of printing

text: Early printing houses (near the time of Gutenberg) were run by "master printers." These printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution. Some master printing houses, like that of Aldus Manutius, became the cultural center for literati such as Erasmus.


title: History of printing

text: The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the "Dance of Death" by Matthias Huss, at Lyon, 1499. This image depicts a compositor standing at a compositor's case being grabbed by a skeleton. The case is raised to facilitate his work. At the right of the printing house a bookshop is shown.


title: History of printing

text: According to court records from the city of Mainz, Johannes Fust was for some time Gutenberg's financial backer. By the 16th century jobs in printing were becoming increasingly specialized. Structures supporting publishers were more and more complex, leading to division of labour. In Europe between 1500 and 1700 the role of the Master Printer was dying out and giving way to the bookseller—publisher. During this period, printing had a stronger commercial imperative than previously. Risks associated with the industry however were substantial, although dependent on the nature of the publication.


title: History of printing

text: Bookseller publishers negotiated at trade fairs and at print shops. Jobbing work appeared: some printers performed menial tasks at the beginning of their careers to support themselves.


title: History of printing

text: The "Mechanick Exercises", by Joseph Moxon, in London, 1683, was said to be the first publication in installments.


title: History of printing

text: Publishing trade organizations allowed publishers to organize business concerns collectively. These arrangements included systems of self-regulation. For example, if one publisher did something to irritate other publishers he would be controlled by peer pressure. Such systems are known as cartels, and are in most countries now considered to be in restraint of trade. These arrangements helped deal with labour unrest among journeymen, who faced difficult working conditions. Brotherhoods predated unions, without the formal regulations now associated with unions.


title: History of printing

text: In most cases, publishers bought the copyright in a work from the author, and made some arrangement about the possible profits. This required a substantial amount of capital in addition to that needed for the physical equipment and staff. Alternatively, an author with some capital available would sometimes keep the copyright himself, and simply pay the printer to print the book.


title: History of printing

text: In a rotary printing press, the impressions are carved around a cylinder so that the printing can be done on long continuous rolls of paper, cardboard, plastic, or a large number of other substrates. Rotary drum printing was invented by Richard March Hoe in 1843 and patented in 1847, and then significantly improved by William Bullock in 1863.


title: History of printing

text: Intaglio () is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate. Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint. Collographs may also be printed as intaglio plates. To print an intaglio plate the surface is covered in thick ink and then rubbed with tarlatan cloth to remove most of the excess. The final smooth wipe is usually done by hand, sometimes with the aid of newspaper or old public phone book pages, leaving ink only in the incisions. A damp piece of paper is placed on top and the plate and paper are run through a printing press that, through pressure, transfers the ink from the recesses of the plate to the paper.


title: History of printing

text: Invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder in 1796, lithography is a method for printing on a smooth surface. Lithography is a printing process that uses chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the positive part of an image would be a hydrophobic chemical, while the negative image would be water. Thus, when the plate is introduced to a compatible ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows for a relatively flat print plate which allows for much longer runs than the older physical methods of imaging (e.g., embossing or engraving).


title: History of printing

text: High-volume lithography is used today to produce posters, maps, books, newspapers, and packaging — just about any smooth, mass-produced item with print and graphics on it. Most books, indeed all types of high-volume text, are now printed using offset lithography.


title: History of printing

text: In offset lithography, which depends on photographic processes, flexible aluminum, polyester, mylar or paper printing plates are used in place of stone tablets. Modern printing plates have a brushed or roughened texture and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After development, the emulsion shows a reverse of the negative image, which is thus a duplicate of the original (positive) image. The image on the plate emulsion can also be created through direct laser imaging in a CTP (Computer-To-Plate) device called a platesetter. The positive image is the emulsion that remains after imaging. For many years, chemicals have been used to remove the non-image emulsion, but now plates are available that do not require chemical processing.


title: History of printing

text: According to Michael Sullivan, the earliest known example of color printing "is a two-color frontispiece to a Buddhist sutra scroll, dated 1346". Color printing continued to be used in China throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasty.


title: History of printing

text: Chromolithography became the most successful of several methods of colour printing developed by the 19th century; other methods were developed by printers such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon, George Baxter and Edmund Evans, and mostly relied on using several woodblocks with the colors. Hand-coloring also remained important; elements of the official British Ordnance Survey maps were colored by hand by boys until 1875. Chromolithography developed from lithography and the term covers various types of lithography that are printed in color. The initial technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each color, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colors present, a chromolithograph could take months to produce, by very skilled workers. However much cheaper prints could be produced by simplifying both the number of colors used, and the refinement of the detail in the image. Cheaper images, like the advertisement illustrated, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a lithograph), on which colors were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print as what was once referred to as a "’chromo’", a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers.


title: History of printing

text: Aloys Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, introduced the subject of colored lithography in his 1818 "Vollstaendiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey (A Complete Course of Lithography)", where he told of his plans to print using color and explained the colors he wished to be able to print someday. Although Senefelder recorded plans for chromolithography, printers in other countries, such as France and England, were also trying to find a new way to print in color. Godefroy Engelmann of Mulhouse in France was awarded a patent on chromolithography in July 1837, but there are disputes over whether chromolithography was already in use before this date, as some sources say, pointing to areas of printing such as the production of playing cards.


title: History of printing

text: Offset printing is a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a film of water, keeping the non-printing areas ink-free.


title: History of printing

text: Screenprinting has its origins in simple stencilling, most notably of the Japanese form (katazome), used who cut banana leaves and inserted ink through the design holes on textiles, mostly for clothing. This was taken up in France. The modern screenprinting process originated from patents taken out by Samuel Simon in 1907 in England. This idea was then adopted in San Francisco, California, by John Pilsworth in 1914 who used screenprinting to form multicolor prints in a subtractive mode, differing from screenprinting as it is done today.


title: History of printing

text: Flexography (also called "surface printing"), often abbreviated to "flexo", is a method of printing most commonly used for packaging (labels, tape, bags, boxes, banners, and so on).


title: History of printing

text: A flexo print is achieved by creating a mirrored master of the required image as a 3D relief in a rubber or polymer material. A measured amount of ink is deposited upon the surface of the printing plate (or printing cylinder) using an anilox roll. The print surface then rotates, contacting the print material which transfers the ink.


title: History of printing

text: Originally flexo printing was basic in quality. Labels requiring high quality have generally been printed by offset printing until recently. Great advances have been made to the quality of flexo printing presses.


title: History of printing

text: The greatest advances though have been in the area of photopolymer printing plates, including improvements to the plate material and the method of plate creation. Usually, photographic exposure followed by chemical etch or water washout. Direct laser engraving of an ablative surface allows direct-to-plate exposure of photopolymer plates.


title: History of printing

text: A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like a typewriter. Unlike a typewriter or daisy wheel printer, letters are drawn out of a dot matrix, and thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. Because the printing involves mechanical pressure, these printers can create carbon copies and carbonless copies.


title: History of printing

text: Each dot is produced by a tiny metal rod, also called a "wire" or "pin", which is driven forward by the power of a tiny electromagnet or solenoid, either directly or through small levers (pawls). Facing the ribbon and the paper is a small guide plate (often made of an artificial jewel such as sapphire or ruby) pierced with holes to serve as guides for the pins. The moving portion of the printer is called the print head, and when running the printer as a generic text device generally prints one line of text at a time. Most dot matrix printers have a single vertical line of dot-making equipment on their print heads; others have a few interleaved rows in order to improve dot density.


title: History of printing

text: The first dot-matrix printers were invented in Japan. In 1968, Japanese manufacturer Epson released the EP-101, the world's first dot-matrix printer. The same year, Japanese manufacturer OKI introduced the first serial impact dot matrix printer (SIDM), the OKI Wiredot.


title: History of printing

text: A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image.


title: History of printing

text: The laser printer, based on a modified xerographic copier, was invented at Xerox in 1969 by researcher Gary Starkweather, who had a fully functional networked printer system working by 1971. Laser printing eventually became a multibillion-dollar business for Xerox.


title: History of printing

text: The first commercial implementation of a laser printer was the IBM model 3800 in 1976, used for high-volume printing of documents such as invoices and mailing labels. It is often cited as "taking up a whole room," implying that it was a primitive version of the later familiar device used with a personal computer. While large, it was designed for an entirely different purpose. Many 3800s are still in use.


title: History of printing

text: The first laser printer designed for use with an individual computer was released with the Xerox Star 8010 in 1981. Although it was innovative, the Star was an expensive ($17,000) system that was only purchased by a small number of laboratories and institutions. After personal computers became more widespread, the first laser printer intended for a mass market was the HP LaserJet 8ppm, released in 1984, using a Canon engine controlled by HP software. The HP LaserJet printer was quickly followed by other laser printers from Brother Industries, IBM, and others.


title: History of printing

text: Most noteworthy was the role the laser printer played in popularizing desktop publishing with the introduction of the Apple LaserWriter for the Apple Macintosh, along with Aldus PageMaker software, in 1985. With these products, users could create documents that would previously have required professional typesetting.


title: History of printing

text: Inkjet printers are a type of computer printer that operates by propelling tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper. There are two types of inkjet technologies: Continuous and Drop-On-Demand.


title: History of printing

text: Continuous inkjet flows a continuous pressurized stream of ink toward a paper. Electrically charged droplets are deflected by an electrical field to print on paper or go into a basin and reused.


title: History of printing

text: A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub printer) is a computer printer which employs a printing process that uses heat to transfer dye to a medium such as a plastic card, printer paper or poster paper. The process is usually to lay one color at a time using a ribbon that has color panels. Most dye-sublimation printers use CMYO colors which differs from the more recognized CMYK colors in that the black dye is eliminated in favour of a clear overcoating. This overcoating (which has numerous names depending on the manufacturer) is effectively a thin laminate which protects the print from discoloration from UV light and the air while also rendering the print water-resistant. Many consumer and professional dye-sublimation printers are designed and used for producing photographic prints.


title: History of printing

text: Digital printing is the reproduction of digital images on a physical surface, such as common or photographic paper or paperboard-cover stock, film, cloth, plastic, vinyl, magnets, labels etc.


title: History of printing

text: It can be differentiated from litho, flexography, gravure or letterpress printing in many ways, some of which are;


title: History of printing

text: Frescography is a method for reproduction/creation of murals using digital printing methods, invented in 1998 by Rainer Maria Latzke, and patented in 2000. The frescography is based on digitally cut-out motifs which are stored in a database. CAM software programs then allow to enter the measurements of a wall or ceiling to create a mural design with low resolution motifs. Since architectural elements such as beams, windows or doors can be integrated, the design will result in an accurately and tailor-fit wall mural. Once a design is finished, the low resolution motifs are converted into the original high resolution images and are printed on canvas by Wide-format printers. The canvas then can be applied to the wall in a wall-paperhanging like procedure and will then look like on-site created mural.


title: History of printing

text: Three-dimensional printing is a method of converting a virtual 3D model into a physical object. 3D printing is a category of rapid prototyping technology. 3D printers typically work by 'printing' successive layers on top of the previous to build up a three dimensional object. 3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier to use than other additive fabrication technologies.


title: History of printing

text: Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges. The areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block is cut along the grain of the wood (unlike wood engraving where the block is cut in the end-grain). In Europe beechwood was most commonly used; in Japan, a special type of cherry wood was popular.


title: History of printing

text: Woodcut first appeared in ancient China. From 6th century onward, woodcut icons became popular and especially flourished in Chinese Buddhism. Since the 10th century, woodcut pictures appeared as illustrations in Chinese books, on banknotes such as Jiaozi (currency), and as single sheet images. Woodcut New Year pictures are also very popular with the Chinese.


title: History of printing

text: In China and Tibet printed images mostly remained tied as illustrations to accompanying text until the modern period. The earliest woodblock printed book, the Diamond Sutra contains a large image as frontispiece, and many Buddhist texts contain some images. Later some notable Chinese artists designed woodcuts for books, the individual print develop in China in the form of New Year picture as an art-form in the way it did in Europe and Japan.


title: History of printing

text: In Europe, woodcut is the oldest technique used for old master prints, developing about 1400, by using on paper existing techniques for printing on cloth. The explosion of sales of cheap woodcuts in the middle of the century led to a fall in standards, and many popular prints were very crude. The development of hatching followed on rather later than in engraving. Michael Wolgemut was significant in making German woodcut more sophisticated from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich was the first to use cross-hatching (far harder to do than in engraving or etching). Both of these produced mainly book-illustrations, as did various Italian artists who were also raising standards there at the same period. At the end of the century Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to a level that has never been surpassed, and greatly increased the status of the "single-leaf" (i.e. an image sold separately) woodcut.


title: History of printing

text: Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold or steel are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper, which are called engravings. Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper, both in artistic printmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by photography in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques. Other terms often used for engravings are "copper-plate engraving" and "Line engraving". These should all mean exactly the same, but especially in the past were often used very loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by totally different techniques, such as etching.


title: History of printing

text: In antiquity, the only engraving that could be carried out is evident in the shallow grooves found in some jewellery after the beginning of the 1st Millennium B.C. The majority of so-called engraved designs on ancient gold rings or other items were produced by chasing or sometimes a combination of lost-wax casting and chasing.


title: History of printing

text: In the European Middle Ages goldsmiths used engraving to decorate and inscribe metalwork. It is thought that they began to print impressions of their designs to record them. From this grew the engraving of copper printing plates to produce artistic images on paper, known as old master prints in Germany in the 1430s. Italy soon followed. Many early engravers came from a goldsmithing background. The first and greatest period of the engraving was from about 1470 to 1530, with such masters as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, and Lucas van Leiden.


title: History of printing

text: Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal (the original process—in modern manufacturing other chemicals may be used on other types of material). As an intaglio method of printmaking it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains widely used today.


title: History of printing

text: Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates ones it is continuous tone imagery through the use of equally spaced dots of varying size. 'Halftone' can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process.


title: History of printing

text: The idea of halftone printing originates from William Fox Talbot. In the early 1850s he suggested using "photographic screens or veils" in connection with a photographic intaglio process.


title: History of printing

text: Several different kinds of screens were proposed during the following decades, but the first half-tone photo-engraving process was invented by Canadians George-Édouard Desbarats and William Leggo Jr. On October 30, 1869, Desbarats published the "Canadian Illustrated News" which became the world's first periodical to successfully employ this photo-mechanical technique; featuring a full page half-tone image of His Royal Highness Prince Arthur, from a photograph by Notman. Ambitious to exploit a much larger circulation, Debarats and Leggo went to New York and launched the "New York Daily Graphic" in March 1873, which became the world's first illustrated daily.


title: History of printing

text: The first truly successful commercial method was patented by Frederic Ives of Philadelphia in 1881. But although he found a way of breaking up the image into dots of varying sizes he did not make use of a screen. In 1882 the German George Meisenbach patented a halftone process in England. His invention was based on the previous ideas of Berchtold and Swan. He used single lined screens which were turned during exposure to produce cross-lined effects. He was the first to achieve any commercial success with relief halftones.


title: History of printing

text: Xerography (or electrophotography) is a photocopying technique developed by Chester Carlson in 1938 and patented on October 6, 1942. He received for his invention. The name xerography came from the Greek radicals (dry) and (writing), because there are no liquid chemicals involved in the process, unlike earlier reproduction techniques like cyanotype.


title: History of printing

text: In 1938 Bulgarian physicist Georgi Nadjakov found that when placed into electric field and exposed to light, some dielectrics acquire permanent electric polarization in the exposed areas. That polarization persists in the dark and is destroyed in light.


title: History of printing

text: Chester Carlson, the inventor of photocopying, was originally a patent attorney and part-time researcher and inventor. His job at the patent office in New York City required him to make a large number of copies of important papers. Carlson, who was arthritic, found this a painful and tedious process. This prompted him to conduct experiments with photoconductivity. Carlson experimented with "electrophotography" in his kitchen and in 1938, applied for a patent for the process. He made the first "photocopy" using a zinc plate covered with sulfur. The words "10-22-38 Astoria" were written on a microscope slide, which was placed on top of more sulfur and under a bright light. After the slide was removed, a mirror image of the words remained. Carlson tried to sell his invention to some companies, but because the process was still underdeveloped he failed. At the time multiple copies were made using carbon paper or duplicating machines and people did not feel the need for an electronic machine. Between 1939 and 1944, Carlson was turned down by over 20 companies, including IBM and GE, neither of which believed there was a significant market for copiers.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills () is a city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Its population was 20,330 at the 2010 census, which decreased to


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: 20,299 in 2020. It is in the eastern Conejo Valley between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains. The city is in western Los Angeles County and is bordered to the north by Bell Canyon and Ventura County. It is northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and less than west of the Los Angeles city limits at Woodland Hills. Agoura Hills and unincorporated Agoura sit next to Calabasas, Oak Park, and Westlake Village.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The area was first settled by the Chumash Native Americans around 10,000 years ago. The Alta California (Upper California) coast was settled by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in the late 18th century.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In about 1800, Miguel Ortega was granted a Spanish grazing concession called Rancho Las Virgenes or El Rancho de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Las Virgenes. The grant was abandoned after Ortega's death in 1810, and José Maria Dominguez was given Rancho Las Virgenes as a Mexican land grant in 1834. Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes purchased the rancho from Dominguez in 1845. (The "Reyes Adobe" ranch headquarters sits today in central Agoura Hills, where it is part of the Reyes Adobe Museum built around 2004 and owned by the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department.)


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: By 1900, the area was being used as a popular stage stop for travelers because of its natural spring.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In the 1920s, the community was briefly known as Picture City, as Paramount Pictures owned a ranch known as Paramount Ranch used for filming Westerns. To obtain a post office of their own, the residents were required to choose a one-word name, and in 1927 chose the shortest name proposed: a misspelling of the last name of Pierre Agoure, a local Basque man and French immigrant who had settled in the area in 1871 to live the lifestyle of the Mexican rancher. Styling himself Don Pierre Agoure, he was a successful sheep herder and had a reputation as a swashbuckler.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura began to grow in the late 1960s after the Ventura Freeway section of U.S. Route 101 was built through the area, dividing the community into northern and southern sections. The first housing tracts in Agoura were Hillrise, Liberty Canyon and Lake Lindero. Rapid growth continued during the 1970s, when schools were built and much of downtown erected.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In 1982, the residents of the proposed city voted in favor of cityhood by a 68% majority. Agoura Hills became the 83rd City in Los Angeles County. Elected to the first City Council were Mayor Fran Pavley, Mayor Pro Tem Carol Sahm, Councilmembers Ernest Dynda, John Hood, and Vicky Leary. Incorporating a year after neighboring Westlake Village, the drive for cityhood in the region was largely based on public discontent with the county's failure to limit residential development of the area, motives that influenced Calabasas to follow suit in 1991.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The 1980s was a period of growth, with large land areas being subdivided into housing tracts. In the 1990s, businesses set up shop in the downtown including shops and restaurants.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In 1995, the murder of Jimmy Farris (the infamous Brandon Hein case) awakened the city to a rising drug problem and petty theft by its young. As a result, the city began sponsoring live music competitions and concerts in local parks.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In November 2018, the Woolsey Fire occurred during Santa Ana winds burning through the community. One victim was found on Tuesday November 13 in the 32000 block of Lobo Canyon Road.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills is known regionally for its live music scene and originality in the nu metal scene, a fame that has given rise to such acts as Linkin Park, Dub Thompson, Skye Aspen, Incubus, Hoobastank, and Fort Minor.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills is home to The Canyon Club, a concert venue that hosts touring acts such as Peter Frampton, Smash Mouth, Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper, REO Speedwagon, X, Steel Pulse, The New Cars, Asia, Boyz II Men, Alan Parsons, Foreigner, Bret Michaels and The Smithereens.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which of it is land and 0.04 square mile (0.1 km) of it (0.37%) is water.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills has a mountain called Ballard Mountain named after pioneer settler and freed slave John Ballard. The name of the mountain was officially changed from Negrohead to Ballard in a ceremony on February 20, 2010.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Ladyface Mountain is another prominent mountain on the west side of the Conejo Valley and stands at an elevation of .


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills is called the "Gateway to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area". The city is unofficially divided into a number of varied districts centered on the modern Downtown area of the city. The most notable of these districts include Morrison Ranch, Downtown, Forest Cove, South End, Malibu Junction, East Agoura, and Old Agoura.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Natural areas of Agoura Hills are part of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion and are covered by hundreds of local plant species, some of which are very rare, and others of which have become popular ornamentals. The range is host to an immense variety of wildlife, from mountain lions to the endangered Southern California Distinct Population Segment of steelhead. The mountain lion population within the Santa Monica Mountains (which includes the Simi Hills & Santa Susana Pass) is severely depleted with only seven known living adult individuals. The primary cause of the decline is due to a combination of traffic related mortality (three from the area were killed within a matter of months,) anti-coagulants ingested from human poisoned prey (two individuals within the Simi Hills) and attacks by other, more dominant mountain lions (an elder male, known as P1, killed both his son and his mate, this is thought to be due to a lack of space available.) The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is a proposed vegetated overpass spanning the Ventura Freeway and Agoura Road at Liberty Canyon on the east end of the city. Snakes are common but only occasionally seen. Local species include the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake (the only venomous species), Mountain Kingsnake, California Kingsnake, Gopher snake, and Garter snake. The mountains are also home to the Western fence lizard.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: In 2010, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that the New Zealand mud snail had infested watersheds in the Santa Monica Mountains, posing serious threats to native species and complicating efforts to improve stream-water quality for the endangered steelhead trout. According to the article, the snails have expanded "from the first confirmed sample in Medea Creek in Agoura Hills to nearly 30 other stream sites in four years." Researchers at the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission believe that the snails' expansion may have been expedited after the mollusks traveled from stream to stream on the gear of contractors and volunteers.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: At the 2010 census Agoura Hills had a population of 20,330. The population density was . The racial makeup of Agoura Hills was 17,147 (84.3%) White, (78.6% Non-Hispanic White), 267 (1.3%) African American, 51 (0.3%) Native American, 1,521 (7.5%) Asian, 24 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 590 (2.9%) from other races, and 730 (3.6%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1,936 persons (9.5%).


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The census reported that 20,242 people (99.6% of the population) lived in households, 15 (0.1%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 73 (0.4%) were institutionalized.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: There were 7,327 households, 2,799 (38.2%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 4,565 (62.3%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 726 (9.9%) had a female householder with no husband present, 302 (4.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 263 (3.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 36 (0.5%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 1,346 households (18.4%) were one person and 438 (6.0%) had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 2.76. There were 5,593 families (76.3% of households); the average family size was 3.15.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The age distribution was 4,904 people (24.1%) under the age of 18, 1,582 people (7.8%) aged 18 to 24, 4,465 people (22.0%) aged 25 to 44, 7,089 people (34.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 2,290 people (11.3%) who were 65 or older. The median age was 42.4 years. For every 100 females, there were 97.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.6 males.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: There were 7,585 housing units at an average density of 969.7 per square mile, of the occupied units 5,715 (78.0%) were owner-occupied and 1,612 (22.0%) were rented. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.5%; the rental vacancy rate was 6.8%. 16,111 people (79.2% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 4,131 people (20.3%) lived in rental housing units. The median household income was $107,885, according to the 2010 United States Census, with 7.1% of the population living below the federal poverty line.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: At the 2000 census there were 20,537 people in 6,874 households, including 5,588 families, in the city. The population density was 2,511.8 inhabitants per square mile (969.4/km). There were 6,993 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 86.96% White, 1.32% Black or African American, 0.25% Native American, 6.50% Asian, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 2.09% from other races, and 2.78% from two or more races. 6.85% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Of the 6,874 households 47.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 67.7% were married couples living together, 9.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 18.7% were non-families. 13.8% of households were one person and 3.0% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 2.98 and the average family size was 3.30.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The age distribution was 30.5% under the age of 18, 6.3% from 18 to 24, 27.6% from 25 to 44, 29.4% from 45 to 64, and 6.2% 65 or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.0 males.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: According to the city's 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills is governed by a City Council/City Manager form of government. A five-member City Council is elected by the residents to oversee city operations and guide the development of the community. Councilmembers are elected to four-year terms. The terms are staggered so that a measure of continuity is maintained from one Council to the next. The role of Mayor rotates among the Councilmembers. The Mayor is chosen by the City Councilmembers to serve a one-year term. The City Manager is appointed by the City Council to supervise the administrative personnel and contract services.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: As of April 2022 the Agoura Hills City Council consists of Deborah Klein Lopez (Mayor), Chris Anstead (Mayor Pro Tem), Linda Northrup, Illece Buckley Weber and Denis Weber. The City Manager is Nathan Hamburger and the city attorney is contracted through RWG Law.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Las Virgenes Water District serves Agoura Hills along with Westlake Village and other parts of western Los Angeles County. State water provided by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the sole source used by the district.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) operates the Malibu/Lost Hills Station in Calabasas, serving Agoura Hills.


title: Agoura Hills, California

text: Agoura Hills is home to the Great Race of Agoura Hills, an annual running event held at Chumash Park in Agoura Hills in March of every year. The Great Race was established in 1986 and features six races including Pacific Half (half-marathon), Chesebro Half (half-marathon), Old Agoura 10K, Deena Kastor (5 kilometers), Kids 1 Mile, and the Family Fun Run (1 mile). The Chesebro Half was voted best half-marathon in the U.S. in 2011.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The Porsche 919 Hybrid is a Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) racing car built and used by Porsche in the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons of the FIA World Endurance Championship. It has a 90-degree V4 mid-mounted mono-turbocharged petrol engine that produces and acts as a chassis load-bearing member - and two separate energy-recovery hybrid systems to recover thermal energy from exhaust gases and convert kinetic energy into electrical energy under braking for storage into lithium-ion battery packs. In accordance with the 2014 regulations, the vehicle was placed in the class.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: On 4 March 2014, the 919 Hybrid was shown to the press for the first time during the Geneva Motor Show. Porsche supplied two cars, driven by six drivers, for the season. Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, and Marc Lieb won three pole positions and the season-ending 6 Hours of São Paulo as Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber helped the team to finish third in the World Manufacturers' Championship.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In 2015, the car was further developed and was categorized into the category. Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber won four out of eight races to claim the 2015 World Endurance Drivers' Championship and the World Manufacturers' Championship. Earl Bamber, Nico Hülkenberg and Nick Tandy won the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a third 919 Hybrid.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In 2016 Dumas, Jani, and Lieb won the 6 Hours of Silverstone and the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the car after further development. Consistent performances from the trio won them the 2016 World Endurance Drivers' Championship and the team's second. Although Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber had reliability issues in the season's first three races, the trio won four of the six remaining rounds to help Porsche win its second consecutive World Manufacturers' Championship.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The next year, 2017, Tandy and former Audi LMP1 driver André Lotterer joined Jani in place of Dumas and Lieb, and Bamber teamed up with Bernhard and Hartley, replacing the retired Webber. Porsche finished on the podium in the first two rounds. Bamber, Bernhard, and Hartley recovered from a 13-lap deficit to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and three more races for Porsche's third consecutive World Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships at the season's penultimate round, the 2017 6 Hours of Shanghai.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: After 2017, the 919 Hybrid project was discontinued as Porsche entered Formula E. An evolution of the car, called the 919 Evo, was demonstrated in 2018.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In mid-May 2011, Porsche decided to compete as a works team in the Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) category for the FIA World Endurance Championship, which began in 2012. Two months later, Porsche publicly announced the plans and stated that the car would debut in 2014. Around this time, the Porsche Motorsport Centre Flacht in Weissach expanded to 200 full-time employees working on the project's design, assembly and deployment. In late 2011, Porsche employed Fritz Enzinger from fellow German marque BMW to serve as the vice-president of LMP1. Enzinger oversaw the organisation of the vehicle's construction. At the end of the year, Porsche employed Alex Hitzinger—former Head of F1 Development for engine builder Cosworth and later Red Bull Racing's Head of Advanced Technologies—to oversee the car's technical design.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The car was named the 919 Hybrid to acknowledge Porsche's embarkation into hybrid car technology and honour its tradition of having similarly named vehicles compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was Porsche's first sports car prototype built since the RS Spyder debuted in 2005, the first prototype Porsche constructed to compete in the top category of sports car racing since the 1998 Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98 and the first sports car prototype to be raced by Porsche as a factory operation since the Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98. A total of nine chassis were built.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: At the end of 2012, the monocoque was finalised to comply with a request from Porsche, which wanted it to be ready for testing in June 2013. It was designed for maximum efficiency while meeting the 2014 LMP1 regulations on driver visibility with a raised cockpit. The car's developers were inexperienced in the LMP1 category, but they drew upon the 911 GT3 R Hybrid and the 918 Spyder hybrid-powered sports car. The 2014 LMP1 regulations mandated that the car be no longer than , be around to wide and tall. Aerodynamic fine-tuning of the carbon fibre with honeycomb aluminum core chassis began in February 2012, with 2,000 hours spent in wind tunnels at Porsche's Weissach facilities and the University of Stuttgart. It combined the car's low weight with a high amount of torsional rigidity and safety, allowing for the foundation of a precise wheel location via its independent multi-link suspension with pushrods and adjustable shock absorbers to exploit its Michelin tyres. The regulations reduced the car's maximum weight to .


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The compact and lightweight engine was a 90-degree V4 cylinder bank mid-mounted mono-turbocharged petrol engine. It ran at 9,000 rpm, with performance coming from a direct fuel-injection system and a single Garrett-designed turbocharger with a dual overhead camshaft. It produced approximately and acted as a chassis load-bearing member. Due to the small size of the engine, the transmission casing was fitted to the rear suspension and was almost a third of the car's length. Engine cooling was achieved through a carbon-fibre-and-gold thermal airbox in its centre. Front airflow was enabled by louvres along its flank, and a single curved roll-hoop intake was mounted on its roof to allow air cooling. The car had traction control and a hydraulically operated paddle-shift seven-speed sequential gearbox with rear-lock differential mounted inside a carbon-fibre casing with titanium inserts around its high-stress sections. The brake discs were made from internally ventilated light-alloy carbon ceramic materials, and the car has power steering. For night driving, Porsche designed two four-point LED headlights at both sides of the vehicle for better visibility.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The 919 Hybrid had two separate energy-recovery hybrid systems. The rear exhaust system used a two-turbine electric generator to recover thermal energy from exhaust gasses, which exited from an off-central outlet on one side of the engine cover's dorsal fin. The front system utilised a motor–generator (MGU) on the front axle; when braking kinetic energy was converted into electrical energy, which was stored in water-cooled A123 Systems lithium-ion battery packs installed on the passenger side, and eliminating turbo lag. Under acceleration the motor-generator operates as an electric motor to run the front wheels via a differential while the petrol engine drives the rear wheels. This temporarily made the car four-wheel drive as the electric motor directed an extra to the front wheels for a total of . The 2014 regulations divided the MGU hierarchy into increments, from . Porsche chose the category, allowing the 919 Hybrid to use per lap at Le Mans, although Porsche designed it to operate in the class due to incompatibility.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In April 2013, Porsche named its first two drivers. Two-time co-champions of the American Le Mans Series Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class and 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans winners Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas were chosen for their previous experience in Le Mans Prototype racing for Porsche. Two months later, Neel Jani was drafted from the Rebellion Racing team on a multi-year contract, and Red Bull Racing Formula One driver Mark Webber, whose last experience in sports car racing was the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans for AMG-Mercedes, joined the team two days later. In December 2013, the programme's final two drivers were announced, with Mercedes-Benz Formula One test driver and Murphy Prototypes European Le Mans Series LMP2 competitor Brendon Hartley and long-time Grand Touring racer Marc Lieb completing the lineup.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Dumas shared the 14 car with Jani and Lieb while Bernhard was paired with Webber and Hartley in the No. 20 entry. According to Enzinger, Dumas and Bernhard were paired separately because Porsche wanted to create parity in terms of experience and driver weight within both crews. Enzinger said both drivers had "the most prototype experience of [the] drivers, so [they] decided to split them" and that they had "two newcomers to Porsche in Neel [Jani] and Brendon [Hartley] and decided to put one in each car. The other factor was weight. [They] looked at the weight of the drivers" and "tried to equalise that across the two cars [...] to be absolutely fair to give both cars an equal chance."


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The 919 Hybrid was liveried in white and incorporated the 'Porsche Intelligent Performance' slogan, with the first letters of each word emblazoned down the vehicle when viewed from the top. The rear wing was liveried in black with the word 'Porsche' in red letters. The team had no title sponsor, with few sponsor stickers adorning the car. Its race number was put in a red square in the middle of the top of its sidepods and near both fenders but below both door panels. On 12 June 2013, Bernhard drove the 919 Hybrid in a one-day private test session under a camouflage livery at Porsche's Weissach test track. Testing continued into September, with car development carried out at France's Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours and Circuit Paul Ricard, Italy's Autodromo Nazionale Monza and Germany's EuroSpeedway Lausitz. Its 2013 schedule concluded at Portugal's Algarve International Circuit in December.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: On 4 March 2014, the car was officially revealed at a press conference during the Geneva Motor Show. From 24 to 26 March, Porsche held its first two-car endurance tests at the Circuit Paul Ricard and fine-tuned the 919 Hybrid's setups with its drivers, covering a total of with multiple technical problems stopping both cars several times during the three-day session. The team stayed at the track for the official two-day pre-season test. During the Friday night session, Hartley set the fastest overall lap time of 1 minute, 41.289 seconds in a low-downforce setup.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Porsche redesigned the 919 Hybrid for the 2015 season, carrying over the concept from 2014. It featured a new chassis with an identical layout, manufactured as one piece to save weight, dropping from overall to . The car was categorised into the class because of a lighter, refined and improved hybrid system increasing its maximum power to , following a decision made by Porsche around early March 2015. The car's nose-cone impact structure was lowered and narrowed, with its lead supported by the front bodywork's leading edge. Its curved louvres were replaced by two straight slats with a bulge on the rear floor. Porsche changed the car's centralised exhaust system to a twin exhaust-pipe layout arranged symmetrically to the axis for improved output and more efficient aerodynamics.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The 2015 car began private testing at Porsche's Weissach test track with Lieb in December 2014. Drivers further tested it at UAE's Yas Marina Circuit, the Bahrain International Circuit and Spain's Ciudad del Motor de Aragón from January to March. The first pictures of the car were published online on 16 January, and it was officially revealed to the press at Circuit Paul Ricard's official two-day pre-season test session on 26 March. Porsche used three liveries for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The No. 17 car was adorned in red as a tribute to Porsche's first overall victory at Le Mans with the Porsche 917 in 1970. The No. 18 entry was liveried in black to showcase the close technical similarities between the 919 Hybrid and the 918 Spyder. The No. 19 vehicle was adorned in white, Germany and Porsche's national standard colour.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: The carbon fibre sandwich chassis was retained for 2016, but many of the car's components were improved because of detailed performance enhancements and weight reduction. The wheel rim was redesigned to be deeper in an attempt to reduce drag. The mandatory air extractor, which cooled the top of the front wheel arches, had a turning vane on its inner edge. The car had new rear wing endplates with a small extension at its base as part of the car's bodywork. The 2016-specification 919 Hybrid had three distinct aerodynamic packages. They were used depending on the type of circuit, with two high-downforce configurations for the Silverstone Circuit and a low-downforce package for the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans (developed in Williams Grand Prix Engineering's wind tunnel in Grove, England with full-scale testing in Germany).


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Because of a new World Endurance Championship regulation that restricted the amount of available electrical energy and fuel by 8%, Porsche's engineers redesigned the engine to be lighter and produce around . Within the kinetic energy recovery system, the electric motor on the front axle, the power electronics and a new generation of lithium-ion battery cells in the in-house designed car battery were optimised to produce more horsepower. The power delivered by the front axle was more than using an 800-volt battery, with a cumulative total of from both the front and rear.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In mid-February 2016, Porsche held an eight-day tyre development test session at the Yas Marina Circuit, covering a total of between its six drivers. On 23 March, the car was officially revealed online, two days before the annual pre-season test session at Circuit Paul Ricard. The livery, which was different than in the previous two years, was mostly in black and white with touches of red.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: According to Porsche, it retained the monocoque from 2016, but 60 to 70% of the 2017 car was new, with the largest alterations being to its aerodynamic demands. This included a major redesign of the front of the 919 Hybrid with wider arches for the front wheels to make it less aerodynamically sensitive from small bits of discarded rubber from the track surface. To the car's side, a new channel from the monocoque to the wheel arch was made visible, along with redesigned rearward air intakes for the radiators to cool the engine. New cost-cutting regulations mandated LMP1 teams to slow the cars and use just two aerodynamic packages for the season, restricting the amount of flexibility depending on the type of track. One aerodynamic alteration raised the front splitter to lower its cornering speeds and featured two strakes on its underside. Porsche elected for a low-downforce package that minimised air resistance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and a second that compensated for an increased amount of drag and downforce for tighter circuits.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Porsche remained in the MGU category for the 2017 season. The engine was modified to be lighter and more compact, and Porsche stated that it was its most-efficient ever. The power output was less than and slightly more than when the car's dual kinetic-energy recovery systems were active, for a total of . Approximately 60% of kinetic energy produced under braking was recovered by its front kinetic energy recovery system, and the remaining 40% was generated by the rear dual exhaust pipe system. Exhaust gases allowed the turbine to run at more than 120,000 rpm, operating a MGU that converted kinetic energy into electricity and stored it into the third-generation lithium-ion battery. The turbine was designed to run efficiently with variable geometry when there was low exhaust pressure at low speeds. The 919 Hybrid's livery was changed to white and black, with grey and red lines adorning its body.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In December 2016, testing of the car began at the Ciudad del Motor de Aragón for one week. Two months later, the team returned to the track for five days of further vehicle-development testing and endurance runs of . The first spy photographs of the 2017 919 Hybrid testing at the Circuit Paul Ricard were published on 27 March 2017. Four days later, the car was officially revealed to the press. The two cars ran with its six drivers in the official two-day pre-season test session at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: On 11 April 2018, Porsche revealed an evolution of the 919 Hybrid. It broke the lap record of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps with a lap time of 1 minute, 41.77 seconds, with Neel Jani behind the wheel. Jani was more than 12 seconds faster than the standard 919 Hybrid's 2017 pole position lap of 1 minute, 54.097 seconds. During the lap, Jani recorded a speed trap at on the Kemmel Straight, with an average speed of .


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Fuel flow restrictions were removed from the engine, allowing it to produce . The amount of recovered energy that could be used was increased from to for the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, and the output of the electric motors was increased from . By removing air conditioning, windscreen wipers, headlights and other electrical devices, the car's weight was reduced by ; it weighed at dry and with driver ballast. Extensive aerodynamic upgrades to the 919 Evo increased downforce by 53% and increased aerodynamic efficiency by 66%, compared to the 919 Hybrid's 2017 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps qualifying specifications. These upgrades consist of the inclusion of an active drag-reduction system, an enlarged rear wing, a wider front diffuser and fixed-height side skirts.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: Throughout 2018, the 919 Evo was driven in demonstration runs as part of the "919 Tribute Tour" at the Nürburgring Nordschleife for the 2018 24 Hours of Nürburgring, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June, the Festival of Porsche at Brands Hatch and at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca as part of Porsche Rennsport Reunion VI. On 29 June, Porsche ran the 919 Evo on the Nürburgring, and Bernhard recorded a lap time of 5 minutes, 19.546 seconds, breaking the May 1983 outright record of 6 minutes, 11.13 seconds set by Stefan Bellof in a Porsche 956.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: At the season-opening 6 Hours of Silverstone, Dumas and Jani's No. 14 car started from third while Webber and Bernhard's No. 20 car was sixth. In the opening laps of the race, a problem with the front left wheel bearing forced Jani to the garage before retiring with an unrelated hydraulic problem after 30 laps. Bernhard passed Alexander Wurz's No. 7 Toyota TS040 Hybrid for second place at the beginning of the second hour on lap 53, but the No. 20 car slowed after it began raining because of its low-downforce package, ultimately finishing the weather-shortened race in third. Two weeks later, Jani and Lieb took the car's first pole position in changeable weather in the qualifying's final seconds at the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps while Bernhard and Hartley began from fifth place. The No. 14 car led the first two hours until Sébastien Buemi's No. 8 Toyota passed it. An electrical fault disabled the No. 14's hybrid system and losing the car two laps, falling to 23rd overall with a subsequent rear damper problem and two front driveshaft faults.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: In the trio of qualifying sessions held to determine the grid for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Hartley's No. 20 vehicle set the first session's fastest lap, but the car fell to fourth the next day despite Bernhard improving its lap time in the second session. Jani's No. 14 car was second after the first session, maintaining it through the remaining two sessions as Dumas twice bettered its lap. The No. 20 entry failed to finish enough laps for classification due to a broken anti-roll bar, and fuel pressure and gearbox problems left the No. 14 car in eleventh overall. For the 6 Hours of Circuit of the Americas, Jani and Dumas qualified the No. 14 car second despite a transgression of energy recovery system limits nullifying one of Jani's laps; Hartley and Webber's No. 20 entry took third. In a race that was red flagged for 77 minutes because of a thunderstorm flooding the Circuit of the Americas, Jani overtook the Toyota cars to lead at the restart, but a loss of engine power left the No. 14 car in fourth. Bernhard aquaplaned and beached the No. 20 car in a gravel trap, but he, Webber and Hartley finished fifth.


title: Porsche 919 Hybrid

text: At the season's fifth race, the 6 Hours of Fuji, Webber and Bernard's No. 20 Porsche were beaten to the pole position by Buemi and Anthony Davidson's No. 8 Toyota with less than two minutes left in qualifying; the No. 14 entry of Jani and Lieb took third. Webber and the two Toyota cars duelled until a pit stop to replace a slow puncture lost him time by double stinting his tyres. He led twelve laps, and Porsche took its second podium of 2014 by finishing the No. 20 car third after power issues. The sister No. 14 car was a further lap adrift in fourth. Three weeks later at the 6 Hours of Shanghai, Jani and Dumas qualified with an identical two-lap average to Buemi and Davidson's No. 8 Toyota; the pole position was awarded to the former because they set their times first. Webber and Hartley's No. 14 car was 0.024 seconds slower in third. Dumas led until his teammate Hartley passed him on the 22nd lap. After the No. 20 Porsche's first pit stop in the second hour, Hartley sustained a puncture and fell to sixth. Jani's No. 14 car contested Tom Kristensen's No. 1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro for third, winning the battle with assistance from Webber to claim Porsche's third podium of 2014.