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We live in an almost unbelievably convenient age. Before the time of printer cartridges and cartridge printer suppliers, printing was considered one of the more time-consuming and tedious tasks, left only to professionals and dedicated artists.

One of the earliest common forms of printing is the candlewax seal. Shown a lot in medieval themed media, candlewax was dripped onto a letter or note and a stamp, with a carved picture or symbol, would be pressed onto it. This was for two purposes, to represent the sender and to ensure the sealing of the personal or classified information.

Before we had machines and printer cartridges, prefilled with ink, the most efficient way to print was to carve the visual into a malleable substance like wood and use it to stamp ink onto a surface. Way before cartridge printer supplies existed, the first ever printed book, The Diamond Sutra, was crafted by Buddhist monks in Eastern Asia. It was a great step in efficiency, but required entire bookshelves of carved blocks to be able to print one book repeatedly. Today we can enjoy the convenience of simply replacing our printer cartridges once every now and again.

Although an efficient and comparatively rapid printing process existed for books, in order to print posters or anything bigger than a large book, artists would have to engrave a mirror image of the poster onto a rock. The artist would then paint the rock appropriately and paper was placed on top. This procedure advanced to accommodate three different rocks for each primary colour to avoid bad colour mixing. This process could make up to nine posters before the artist would have to manually ‘replace their printer cartridges’ by repainting the images on the rocks for the next few copies.

There was no doubt that the printing process needed huge development, so in the 1800s, when printing and copying were at an all-time high, the rotary printing press was invented. This still used the basic principle of the image transfer from a surface to paper, but now involved machines that automatically repainted metal plates each time a copy was made.

Next time you need to replace your printer cartridges, just remember that with the right service provider you won’t be left waiting for your product and wondering if it’s the correct cartridge. Visit Royce Imaging for cartridge printer supplies, friendly service and all the help you need.