The following is a brief and selective history of the evolution of the usage ink from monks transcribing documents in medieval times to bloggers of the present day.
Northern England, 1323, a monastery: A studious man sits quietly anchored to his desk, penitent and devout as he attends to a seemingly endless task. He has a copy of the Bible in front of him, handwritten by some other monk, that he is copying page by page in a show of his faith. It will be months if not years before he is done, until every page is immaculately rendered, and then the cycle will begin anew. It will be another century before the invention of the printing press gives monks vast blocks of time they never had. This is how books get made.
London, 1590, the Globe Theater: It's been a century and a half now since a former goldsmith named Johannes Guttenberg built the first printing press off of existing screw processes, and the world of printing has come a long way. Nearly 200 million volumes have been printed, and among them is work after work by a playwright with a theater next to the Thames River. William Shakespeare will enjoy modest success and praise in his lifetime and not be a celebrity until two centuries after his death, though the works he publishes will endure to the current day.
Boston, 1850, a factory: Another few hundred years have passed, and printing and the world in general have undergone another metamorphosis. The weaver sits at her loom late into the evening, the sun long since given its notice for the day, the smoke from the oil lamps in her workplace blackening the walls. For her six days and 70 hours of work this week, she will earn approximately $3.25 (about $84 in today's money). Conditions will not change much within her lifetime, though literature has already began to reflect the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. It is making note of her struggles, if only for posterity.
New York, 1909, the streets: It is the best of times to own a newspaper in New York. It is the worst of times. Because of an ever-burgeoning immigrant population as well as a heavy volume of other transplants to America's most populous city, there are now 11 daily newspapers (eight of which will be long-dead a century later.) They are publications with names like World, American, and Mirror, newspapers that fight pitched battles between each other in the battle for supremacy, sending their paperboys out like foot soldiers. Rivers could run black with all the ink in use.
Sydney, current day, a living room: The blogger sits on a barstool at his counter, laptop before him, tapping out his post for the day. His canvas is the Web, his audience digital, and it's rare for him to furnish physical copies of his work. There's simply no need for it. This is what printing has come to. Sure, the blogger has a few unopened Canon ink cartridges in his closet that may be of use at some point in the future but the Internet provides its own means of vast distribution, and in a sense things have come full circle. The blogger is a monk of the modern age.
John Sheenan is the author of this article on the history of ink from monks to ink cartridges and bloggers. John distributes Canon ink cartridges for a living.
