The history of printing spans many centuries, from early Chinese woodblocks to today's advanced desktop publishing applications. Major inventions such as the printing press and the linotype machine affected not only the printing industry, but also society as a whole. As printing methods improved and printing costs decreased, more and more printed reading material became available, eventually leading to greater literacy and improved education for many people.

No one knows when humans first learned to communicate. However, we do know that the human ability to record and preserve ideas and descriptions of events through drawings, symbols, and letters is closely tied to the rise of civilization. Early humans had no method for permanently recording their ideas. Our ancient ancestors could only communicate through gestures and the spoken word. They passed along their stories and traditions by word of mouth. There were problems with this exclusively oral method of recording stories and ideas. In the first place, most people are capable of holding only a limited amount of information in their brains. After many years, storytellers might forget details of their songs and tales or unintentionally change their content. People also like to embellish their stories. As they passed stories and ideas to another generation, they sometimes purposefully modified and distorted the information. And finally, if the storytellers did not teach their stories to others, the stories died with them. Although transmitting traditions and stories orally is a valuable form of communication, this method was not the best way to preserve permanent records of people's thoughts and activities.

Early humans learned to record thoughts and ideas more permanently through pictures. In the 1940s, cave paintings drawn by an ancient group of people that inhabited the lands and caves of a region in southern France were discovered. These paintings, created around 17,000 years ago, depict animals and people, with many scenes of hunters stalking and killing prey. From these paintings, scholars have learned many details about this long-ago culture, including the animals they killed for food and the weapons used in hunting. Many thousands of years of later, the images created by these ancient authors still speak to us. Time has not altered their original messages because the artists permanently recorded their message on the walls of the cave.

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