Nehru Bat Pustakalaya

HOWBOOKS

ARE MADESAMUEL ISRAEL

NATIONAL BOOK TRUST, INDIA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the following individuals and organizations for the illustrationslisted against their names: Dr Kapila Vatsyayan (p.9); ArchaeologicaJ Survey 6fIndia (pp. 11, 14 - top); National Museum (pp.13, 14 - botlom, 18 -botlom,23 -left);UNESCO Courier (pp. 12, 20-21, 24, 27); Indraprastha Press, New Delhi (pp. 28, 30-left, 42). Illustrations on pages 34 and 55 are based on references made availableby Indopolygraph Pvl. Ltd., New Delhi; those on pages 60 and 61 are drawn frompromotional material issued by Oxford University Press, New Delhi; and thesketches on pages 62 and 64 are based on information drawn from the illustratedarticle, 'The Electronic Book,' by Michael Rogers reprinted by the US InformationAgency magazine Span (March 1944). These last and other illustrations have beenexecuted by National Book Trust staff artists and photographers. .

5.1.

First published under (he litleThe Wonderful World ofBooks, 1980

ISBN 81-23.7-2470-5

First Edition 1980First Reprint 1988Second Edition (revised and updated) 1998First Reprint 1999 (Saka 1921)© Samuel Israel. 1980, 1998

PublJshed by the Director, Nauonal Book Trust, India'\-5 Green Park, New Delhi-I 10 016

This revised edition is for

, RACHAEL RUKMINI

and

RAPHAEL RAHUL

CONTENTS

BooksSpeaking BooksWritten BooksParchment and PapyrusPaperPrintingPrinting MachinesPhototypesettingMaking a BookillustrationsAuthors, Publishers and CopyrightThe Future of the Book and

the Book of the FutUre

57

101620232935405156

60

BOOKS

Books are of many kinds-exercise books for doinghomework in, copybooks, drawing books, textbooks,picture books, diaries, notebooks, account books, paintingbooks, story books, 'comics': books on every possiblesubject-history, geography, maths, physics, chemistry,space travel, computers, exploration, nature, astronomy,cooking, football, cricket, mountaineering; there is no endto what books can be about. You can even have booksabout books, like this one.

Some atlases are very large.

Your dictionary is a big book, probably with stiffboardcovers covered with cloth; the 'cornie' you borrowed froma friend has a smooth and shiny paper cover; your historytext perhaps has a cover made of card; some books aresewn with thread; some, like this book, are stitched withwire staples through the back.

You need only look at a collection of books to get anidea of what things go into their making: paper, board,card, ink and, if you look a little more closely, gum andthread. All this is, of course, put together by skilledworkmen, either by hand or with the help of machines.This is done at printing presses and binderies (factorieswhere printed sheets of paper are put together andsecured, or bound, in proper order and supplied with acover).

But leaving aside objects like exercise and drawingbooks, the starting point of a book is not a thing but anidea or strongfeeling in the head and heart of an author orartist, or both in partnership.

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SPEAKING BOOKS

How do people come to write books? Most often becausethey believe they have something interesting andimportant to say or a good story to tell or an interestingexperience to relate. Whether the rest of the world agreesor not, they believe that what they have to say or tellshould not be lost with them, and that many more people

The oral tradition in India is an ancient one.

than those around them should have an opportunity toshare the profit and pleasure their words could bring.

Six or seven thousand years ago, people who felt the'urge to communicate' had no means other than theirtongues to do so. Writing had not developed, or was at avery rudimentary stage. Great thinkers, teachers andstory- tellers would 'Y"ander from place to place, speakingtheir thoughts or telling their tales; or people would corneto them and listen. Devoted disciples would learn theirmasters' words by heart and then spread them to far-offplaces. Often these lessons would be taught or the storiestold in long poems, now called epics. This not only madethem easier to remember but also much more pleasant tolisten to.

This is the way our Vedas, Mahabharat, Rarnayan, andmuch else of our ancient literature, were preserved andpassed on, from generation to generation, for hundredsof years, before they came to be Writfun doWrt. This ishow the teachings of Gautarn Buddha and Mahavir werespread allover India and also to distant countries in eastand central Asia.

This way of 'spreading the word' continues to bepractised in our country to this day, especially in ruralareas. The Ramayan, the Gita and stories from theMahabharat are recited by wandering minstrels all overthe country. We still have wandering story-tellers. In fact,even today there are groups of people in our country, andelsewhere in Asia and in Africa, who do not depend onwriting (who, indeed, have no scripts to write in) to

8

preserve their wisdom, their ideas, their culture, theirlaws, their customs, their beliefs qnd their legends. Theydepend on what is called an 'oral tradition' to preservewhat their ancestors have handed down to them. Butthings are changing fast.

We still have our wandering minstrels.

9

WRITIEN BOOKS

When scripts (writing) developed, it became much

easier to spread the word. What people had to sayar tellcould be written down either by these persons themselvesor by others. In this way, it was preservedfor the future and passed on for reading from person toperson, or from place to place. The problem now was thatthere were not enough things one could convenientlywrite on and pass from hand to hand. in most parts of theworld, the process of paper-making was then unknown.

What was once written, could be copied again andagain. An early example of the same writing spread overmany parts of India is the famous edicts ofAshaka which

.Were inscribed (cut or carved) on rocks or stone pillars ina number of places.

Copper, the earliest metal man put to use for makingtools, weapons, jewellery and household utensils in theprehistoric Copper Age, found additional use in earlyhistoriCal times. Inscriptions on plates of this metal, heldtogether by rings, very much like modem spiral-boundbooks, were used for preserving important records anddocuments.

But stone and metal are not very convenient to writeon. Stone carving and metal engraving can be done bypeople with special skills. Ink or paint does not stand outon these materials and is soon washed or rubbed away.

Tablets of soft clay weremuch easier to write on witha pointed rod called a stylus.After being written on, theclay was baked hard in anoven, making the writingpermanent. Whole bookswere written and preservedin this way. In the valleybetween the Tigris andEuphrates rivers in Iraq, alibrary of some 30,000 tabletswas discovered, each bookconsisting of a series ofnumbered tablets, like thenumbered pages of a book.This library was set up by aking called Ashurbanipal.who ruled in the area twothousand five hundred yearsago.

But clay tablets are notconvenient to handle,whether for the writer orthe reader. In India, thisdifficulty was overcome bywriting on leaves, on thebark of certain trees, onanimal skins and on cloth.

11

One of Ashoka's pillars. Theinscription is on the lower third,partly obscured by the recentlyadded railing.

An inscribed clay tablet from ancient Iraq, dating from about 2000 BC

12

The last was not very convenient as ink spreads on clothunless it is the kind that dries very quickly.

Most common in India, before paper became widelyavailable, was the use of dried palm leaf for writing andmaking copies of books. Even four or five hundred yearsago, when paper had become available, palm leaf copiesof books were still being made. A number of examplesare preserved in our museums and libraries, and even inprivate collections.

A palm leaf manuscript book from the collection of the NationalMuseum, Delhi. The lower picture shows the book open for reading.Notice the method used for 'binding' and how the book is closed andsecured, as shown in the upper picture.

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Copper plate inscriptions from thecollection of the National Museum,Delhi. Notice the similar meansadopted to 'bind' the copper plateand the pages of the spiral-boundbook which is also shown.

Opposite: Adult education not only spreads literacy but also helpsensure that children grow up literate and educated.

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With palm leaf books, writing could be both preservedand made available to many more people than ever before.But the circle was still a small one. 'Each additional copyhad to be written laboriou'sly by hand and bookscontinued to be rare and expensive. Even when paperbecame widely available, the difficulty of making copiesby hand remained and books were still few and costly.

When books are difficult to get, being able to read,literacy; is for many people, not very important. Theopportunities to read are so rare that people do not feelthe need for this skill. If they do acquire it, they often loseit for want of practice. Such people continue to dependon oral, word of mouth, transmission (spreading orpassing on) of their knowledge and wisdom. Progress,under such circumstances, is very slow.

•

PARCHMENT AND PAPYRl,JS

Even as long as five or six thousand years ago, theEgyptians had discovered a way of making paper fromthe stalks of a tall reed that grew in the marshes on thebanks of the river Nile. The reed was called papyrus andit is from this that .the English word paper has come.

To make papyrus, as the sheets of writing material alsocame to be called, the stalks were split into long strips'with the help of a sharp needle. These strips were laidside by side on a stone slab and a gummy solution wasspread over them. Another layer of strips was then laidacross the first set and the two layers were pressedtogether and dried to form sheets which were rubbedsmooth with stone, shell or bone.

Papyrus used to be exported from ancient Egypt toMediterranean countries and also to more distant lands.

Papyrus manufacture in ancient Egypt.

Making handwritten copies of books.Top left : In ancient Egypt, papyrus was the writing material.1bp right : A slave in ancient Greece or Rome might have looked like thiswhile taking dictation to make a copy of a book.Also shown are a scroll and a wax book.Bottom left : In India, palm leaf was often used.Bottom right : In Europe, before the ad,vent of printing, monl<s belo{lgingto religious orders were among the most active in making copies ofbooks.

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Left : A contemporary parch­ment scroll from a Delhisynagogue (a place of Jewishworship). The text, in theclassical Hebrew language, isa manuscript copy of the Booksof the Law from the Bible.Below : This 'illuminated'(decorated with coloureddesigns and illustrations)Persian langUage manuscriptversion of the Ramayan is saidto have been prepared at thecommand of a Mughalemperor.

But supplies were limited and there were occasions whenexports were banned. The chief substitute that wasdeveloped in Europe and the Arab world was parchment.This was animal skin specially treated to make it suitablefor writing on.

Parchment is very long-lasting, and ancient scrollsmade of this material have survived a thousand yearsand more. Fragments of scrolls with parts of the Biblewritten on them in the ancient Hebrew language (thesacred language of the Jews) were discovered in 1947 in acave on the banks of the Dead Sea in Israel. Thesefragments of parchment, archaeologists believe, havesurvived some two thousand years. They are still largelylegible.

The books of ancient Greece and Rome were mostlyscrolls of papyrus or parchment. Many 'topies of bookswere made simultaneously by dictating from the originalbooks to a team of educated slaves who would copy themas do students in a 'dictation' exercise. Wax tablets werealso used, on which letters were inscribed with a stylus.These were sometimes joined together like the pages ofbooks, as seen in the picture on page 17.

You will see from the pictures on pages 17 and 18 thatscrolls were often attached at each end to rods roundwhich they were wound. You don't have to 'tum' thepages of such books as you read on; you have to roll themfrom one rod on to the other, leaving the page you wantto read open in between.

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PAPER

Itwas the invention of paper and printing that ultimatelygave us books as we now know them. Both of these wereknown to our neighbours, the Chinese, more than twothousand years ago.

Ancient Chinese paper was essentially what paper istoday: sheets of dried and smoothened wood- and/or rag­pulp. Straw and bamboo are also sources of pulp forpaper-making.

, 1.1't •.

These panels show five stages in the ancient process of Chinese

The raw material is soaked in water and pulped eitherby mechanical pounding or chemical treatment, or acombination of the two. The ancient Chinese did the jobmechanically. The pounding and the chemical treatmentseparate the wood or cotton fibres and break them intoshort lengths. A large tray with a bottom made of finecloth is dipped into the pulp. As it is lifted out, waterdrains off, leaving behind an even layer of pulp on thecloth bottom. The layer is pressed and dried to form asheet of paper.

I~.

A•

paper-making, as illustrated in a Chinese book printed in AD 1637.

The art of paper-making is believed to have alreadyspread to India by the seventh century after Christ. Itspread further westward only in the eighth century. ExpertChinese paper - makers were captured by Arab invadersat Samarkand (briefly capital city of Uzbekistan) inCentral Asia. Through them, the art was spread to theArab countries and the Arabs carried the industry toEurope in the late twelfth century. Once established inEurope, the industry developed steadily. Like otherindustries there, the paper industry was rapidlymechanized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.The industrial revolution resulted in an enormous, andever increasing, demand for paper.

An Indian paper mill.

22

PRINTING

Hand printing from seals and blocks (very much as saridesigns are even today printed from carved woodenblocks) is an ancient art. A skilled wood-carver, who canmake blocks for intricate sari designs printed in two orthree colours, can certainly carve blocks for whole pagesof pictures and writing. But it has to be mirror writing ifit is to be read the right way when printed, just as witha rubber stamp. The Chinese had been printing books bythis method some eighteen hundred years ago and blockprinting of illustrations and short texts was doneelsewhere also, but much later on.

It is not surprising that very few books cotV.d be printed

Left : One of the many seals discovered at Mohenjo Daro, one of themajor sites of the ancient (about 2000 Be) Indus Valley civilization.Right : A carved wooden block and a print from it.

An example of printing whole pages from wooden blocks. This pageis reproduced from a book printed in Germany around AD 1470.

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by this method and people preferred to copy books byhand as long as printing a book involved carving all ofit on hundreds of blocks of wood at great expense of timeand money. Also, carving letters in small sizes on woodis extremely difficult. Carving them in large sizes wouldmean carving many more blocks. Also a book with fewwords per line and few lines per page is tiresome to read.

The idea that made all the difference was that, insteadof carving whole pages, one could carve individual letters(type) and then put them together in the right order, withspaces and punctuation marks, to form words and lines andpages. This is the process a printer today calls composing.The composed type can be dispersed after printing and re­composed to print other books, again and again, till it isworn out. Today, this sounds simple enough, but manydifficulties had to be overcome, and many problems solved,before the idea could be put into practice.

A little elN'lier it wa~ mel'ltioned that it is very diffic1,1ltto carve letters in small sizes-even olilJwhole blocks of wOlDd.How much more difficult it would be to carve them at theends of little wooden sticks; and how many of each letterone would need to set up even a single page! Count the c' sand s's on this page and you will get an idea.

In spite of these difficulties, the ingenious Chinese,even a thousand years ago, made and used movable typeof baked clay and, later, even of wood, bronze and tin;but their use was only occasional and must have presentedmany problems since the main trend in printing in ancientChina continued to be based on wooden blocks.

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Movable Metal TypeIt was the genius of a German named Johann Gutenberg,combined with the advance of the science and art ofworking metals (metallurgy) that solved the problemround about the year AD 1450.

What Gutenberg did was to cut a mirror image of eachletter at the end of a stick of hard steel. This is called apunch. Each punch was placed over a flat strip of copperor brass and struck sharply with a heavy hammer toimpress the image of the letter on the strip which is calleda matrix. The matrix was fitted to a mould into whichmolten lead was poured. The lead cooled and formed apiece of solid type, again in mirror image.

You will see that, from a single mould, large quantitiesof type can be cast; and that, once one has a matrix; onecan make a number of moulds and make them available

Type

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Stamp issued in Germany in 1956 to commemorate the SOOth anniversaryof the printing of Gutenberg's edition of the Bible, believed to be the firstever book to be printed from movable metal type outside ancient China.

to a number of people. Metal type can be composed· intowords and lines, made up into pages, 'printed, and thendispersed and used again and again till itwears out. Wornout type can be melted and re-moulded.

Mechanical lYpesettingType composition was originally done only manually, bycompositors who picked out individual pieces of type froma tray carrying multiple pieces of each character, arrangingthem letter by letter and word by word into lines andpages. With the advent of Linotype and Monotypemachines at the end of the nineteenth century and earlyin the twentieth, the process was automated. These

27

machines have keyboards like typewriters (with extrakeys for feeding in typographical instructions). The textis 'typed' in, and letters, words and lines get automaticallycast from molten metal.

However, hand-eomposition continued tobe widely usedin India till the nineteen-eighties, especially for Indianlanguages. It is only now on its way out, with the advent ofcomputer-assisted typesetting which will be brieflydescribed after we have said something about two majorprinting processes and particularly about offset printing, forwhich computer-assisted typesetting is so well suited.

Left; A photograph of a Linoty.pe typesetting machine. Right: AMonotypecaster that casts individual metal types, arranged in words and lines asinstructed by a code of perforated holes in a continuous roll of paper, theperforation pattern being governed by a separate keyboard unit. In theLinotype, keyboarding and casting are combined in a single unit, whichsets the type in solid slugs in units of lines. These are both heavy machinesand consumers of substantial quantities of electric power.

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PRINTING MACHINES

Letterpress PrintingTo print composed matter, Gutenberg fixed it firmly in aframe (to prevent the type falling apart and getting mixed)and laid it on the bed of a press. The surface of the typewas inked and a sheet of paper carefully placed inposition over it. The sheet was then evenly pressed overthe type by a simple hand-powered machine. After thepressure was released, the sheet was lifted off and putaside to dry. The operation was repeated with the nextsheet, and so on till the required number of copies hadbeen printeq;

Now we know why we speak of printing pre~ses.

Pressing paper on inked type is the essential function ofa printing machine.

Since Gutenberg's time, printing from metal type(letterpress printing, as it is called) developed rapidly. Oneby one, hand operations were eliminated ftom bothcomposing and printing. Machines became faster and thequality of printing steadily improved with improvedmachinery. Machines also became larger and today thereare large and complex units that carry out multipleoperations. For example, paper is fed in from huge rollsat one end and finished paperback books come out at theother, without any human intervention, once the platesof the composed matter have been fitted in: and themachine properly set.

Offset PrintingTo catch up with today, however, we shall for a while haveto go back to 1798, some three and a half centuries afterGutenberg, which saw the beginnings, again in Germany,of a printing process that had eliminated the need formetal type altogether.

Strangely enough, the initial invention was by a writer,a dramatist, Aloys Senefelder, who was looking for a wayof making copies of his plays without the expense of

Small printing machines likethis one, often more than 75years old, are still doinguseful work in hundreds ofpresses all over India. Theyare often called •treadles'because they used to bepowered by'a foot pedaLToday, most of them run onelectric motors.

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The kind of press used inGutenberg's time.

The principle of the offset printingmachine.Roller (1) picks up a layer ofmoisture from the lower roller thatrotates in a water-bath. Roller (2)carries oil-based ink and comes incontact with roller (3) only when ithas to ink the plale shown in blackround part of it, and only after it hasbeen dampened by roller (1). As therollers rotate in the directions shownby the arrows, the plate transfers theimage to the rubber surface of roller(4) from which it is transferred(offset) to paper under pressurefrom roller (5). Blank paper is fed inat (6) and printed paper is deliveredat (7). The actual mechanisms are~

of course, much more complicated.

7

having them set in type and printed. Senefelder markedthe surface of a slab of limestone with greasy crayons andoil-based inks such as letterpress printers used, and found,when he wet the marked surface, that only the blank,unmarked parts of it got wet since oil repels water. When,in turn, oil-based ink was spread on the surface, it wasrepelled by the wet, unmarked portions of the surfaceand absorbed only by the marked, oily portions. Then,by pressing a sheet on the moist/ inked surface, an imageof the markings was transferred to (printed on) the sheet.Since the surface from which the sheets are printed isvirtually flat, the process is described as planographic, asagainst letterpress printing which is a relief process, sincethe face of metal type is raised (in relief) over a base

31

( see illustration on page 26). Because it utilized a surfaceof treated stone, the process was called lithography(Greek lithos-stone, gtaphe-writing).

In lithography, matter can of course be written ordrawn direct on the stone surface, but it would have tobe in mirror-image form if the prints are to read correctly.With the use of special inks and paper, however, meanswere devised to transfer a mirror-image to the stone afterwriting or drawing it in the normal way.

Uthography proved particularly useful for printing inlanguages with scripts like Urdu and Persian which do notconveniently lend themselves to composition in metal type.Types in the scripts of such languages were cast in India butwere neither popular with readers and scholars nor-withprinters. Even today in India, Urdu printing is widely donefrom text handwritten bykhatibs, expert calligraphers, someof whom are noted for their artiStry.

While artists making 'lithographs' still take copies oftheir works patiently, one by one; carefully, colour bycolour, from the flat lithographic surface, commerciallithographic printing was increasingly mechanized andimproved steadily in quality and speed. The use of metalsheets (mostly of aluminium) instead of stone slabs makesit possible to wrap them round cylindrical rollers, whichhelped greatly in speeding up the printing process.Later, improved results were obtained by transferring(offsetting) the inked image to an additional rubber­covered roller from which the image was impressed onthe paper, rather than direct from the plate. Hence thecurrent term, offset printing.

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If the surface of an otfsetplate is photo-sensitized,images can be transferred to it. This involvesphotographing the image to be transferred and then againphotographically transferring it to the plate. Hence theterm photo-offset printing. So, if we want to print a newbook by the,photo-offset process, we will, in any case,have to set il;lin type first, then prepare prints of the pagesand then photograph them for transfer to offset plates.

But, if we have already had a bookltypeset in pages,

why just print a single copy for offset reproduction? Whynot print all the copies we require by the letterpressprocess? This is, in fact, what was mostly done. The photo-

Acontemporarykhatib at work. Computer-assisted pesettinghas nowentered his field also.

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offset process was most useful when a book had to berapidly reprinted as the pages of the first printing couldbe photographically transferred to offset plates, savingthe considerable labour, time, trouble and cost involvedin setting the book in type afresh. Storing film is mucheasier than keeping tons of composed metal type stacked.The photo-offset process is also more suitable thanletterpress when a very large number of copies have tobe printed as offset printing machines run at great speeds.Also type wears out in the course of printing much morequickly than offset plates do.

lt is only in our own times that photo-offset printingis rapidly displacing letterpress printing. The processbegan with the advent of the phototypesetter and is nowreaching its climax with·the advent and rapid progress ofcomputer-assisted typesetting, which eliminates metaltype altogether. To these developments we must now turn.

This· is a diagrammatic representation of a multiple-station offset printingmachine (compare with illust:ation on page 31. For a photographicrepresentation, see page 55. Since there are eight stages, the machine couldprint four colours in succession on the two sides of a sheet (see pages 53­55.

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PHOTOTYPESETTING

The photosetter became available in India in the 1960's.Because of its high cost it had limited application in thesetting of type for books. Also, while costing more thanthe current Linotype and Monotype setting, like them itpresented difficulties in carrying out corrections andmaking changes in matter once initially set. The firstphotosetters used a combined electromechanical andoptical technique to set lines of type in the form of images011 light-sensitive film (that is why they were sometimescalled film-setters). Modern phototypesetters useelectr9nic, electromechanical and opticalprocesses ratherthan just the latter two.

A phototypesetting unit which yields setting in the form ofo

photographic negatives or positives on film in 'galley' lengths or madeup into pages as it might be instructed either through a keyboard ora disc on which the necessary instructions have been digitally recordedon a computer.

Afull-scale 'dedicated' computerized phototypesetter,that is one that has been designed expressly forphototypesetting and which can supply' typeset materialas sharp black on white images on glo sy photographicpaper, is still a very expensive proposition. But,fortunately, those companies that possess them are usuallywilling to sell services on them.

What really made photosetting a practical andeconomic process for the average Indian printer/ publisherwas the spectacular and currently ongoing progress incomputer technology over the last twenty years. Thanksto the ever-growing capacity of the microchip to store andprocess information, there has been a sharp fall~ the sizeand cost of computers. Even a small-scale investor cannow afford to buy a 'personal computer' (a PC as it iscommonly called) and, using various 'word processing'programmes, key in text on to a 'floppy disc', more orless as one would do 011 a typewriter.

A medium-sized offic'e desk can accommodate currentmodels of PCs. A PC comprises a keyboard that controlsand instructs the data storage and a processing unit (thecomputer proper), a display screen (on which matter beingkeyed in can be read and checked and corrected ifnecessary before further matter is keyed in), and a 'printer'that can record it on paper, when required. Since the textis initially recorded on a disc inserted in (and removablefrom) the processing unit, corrections and changes,including additions and deletiuns, can be done at later

36

A DTP unit. To the left of the screen is the computer unit; to its right is astand for the 'copy' to b~ typeset; next to it is a laser printer with two'floppy discs' lying in front of it. (What one sees is of course the sleeve inwhic\> the discs are contained, not discs themselves.) It is on such discsthat the computer unit records the coded instructions fed to it via thekeyboard. These instructions are decoded by the laser pririter to provideprints on paper which could serve as camera-ready,copy (CRC) for offsetcamera. Contrast this with the bulky, expensive units of machinery usedfor setting type in metal (see illustrations on page 28)

stages also with comparative ease. All the shifting andrearrangement of words and Jines necessary is doneliterally in the twinkling of an eye by, the computer.Instructing it on what has to be done is, of course; amanual process which takes much much longer butnowhere near as long as it would take to carry out thesame changes in matter set in metal type. In the case ofcomputerized word processing, the job can be done bythe author / editor himself. This on-machineeditingfacilitywas not available with Linotype and Monotypecomposition.

37

While the prints one gets from the printer attached to aPC are adequate for checking, correction, communicationand documentation, they are not in a form or of a qualitysuitable for regular printing. To get typeset matter in a formsuitable for being photographed (camera-ready as it istermed) for transfer to offset plates, a dedicatedcomputerized phototypesetter is needed. The disc onwhichthe text and typographical instructions have been recordedare fed into this typesetter which reproduces the codedmaterial, in the typeface and arrangement required, as sharpblack-and-white images on photosensitized paper.

Aless expensive typesetting device, which supplies fairlysharp images of typeset matter from a computer disc is thelaser printer. It can print on plain paper. Though the qualityof the images is inferior to that from a photosetter, it is goodenough for many purposes and is oftenused for books whenit is necessary to cOiltrol costs. Laser printers too are beingsteadily refined and recent models are said to be capable ofalmost matching photoset material in sharpness and quality.

It is this combination ofPC with laser printer that makeswhat is called Desk Top Publishing (DTP) possible. Laserprints of all the pages constituting a book can be copied inthe quantity required on a xerographic machine and pqttogether in sets to constitute copies of the publication. Thewhole operation from manuscript to book having beenaccomplished on equipmentaccommodated on office tables,calling it DTP is appropriate. (If a large number of copiesare required, it would be more economical to print by thephoto-offset process, as a regular publisher would.)

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Since photosetter/laser printer output is either on filmor paper, only photo-offset printing can reproduce it.

With the ownership of personal computers becomingincreasingly widespread both by business organizationsand institutions, and even by individuals, it is nowpossible for authors, using a suitable word-processingprogramme, to submit their 'manuscripts' to publishersrecorded on 'floppy 'discs'. The editor can edit themanuscripts available on the disc on her PC before passingit on to the typesetter. Thus, the typesetter does not haveto key in the text from a typescript or manuscript, butSimply uses the disc on which the edited text has beenrecorded. The author and/or publisher can therefore nowundertake a major part of the.typesettingpperation, whichpreviously lay entirely in the domain of the typesetter orprinter. .

Thus, even if the publisher has to pay for photosetteroutput from his discs, he saves considerably oncomposition which is an extremely expensive item inletterpress typesetting.

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MAKING A BOOK

EditorsPublishers employ editors to advise them on which booksto accept for publication and also to help them get theright books written for them by the right authors. Thetwo things a publisher keeps in mind when decidingwhether or not he should publish a book are whether thebook is a good one of its kind and whether he can expectto sell all, or at least most, of the copies printed fairlysoon.

The editor's next job is to prepare the author'smanuscript (abbreviated MS; plural MSS) for press. Hewill carefully read through the whole of it,keeping inmind the kind of reader for whom the book is meant. Ifhe thinks this necessary, he will suggest changes to theauthor that will make the book more readable and clear.These may include suggestions that some parts may be

{ m; 9A composing stick used in hand composition to assemble lines ofmetaltype, one above the other. Every four or five lines composed aretransferred to a galley tray as shown in the next picture. These itemsof the traditional compositor's equipment are becoming increasinglyobsolete with the advent of computer-assisted type composition andthe diminishing use of metal type.

omitted or some matter added, or some portionsshortened. Either while this is being done, or in a secondoperation that follows it, the MS is checked in detail forspelling, grammar, uniformity and completeness, amongother things. Instructions to the printer about the waythe text has to be set,in type are also 'marked up' on theMS. This second job is called copy-editing, 'copy' beingthe term printers use for MSS and other matter given tothem for setting in type.

Composition and ProofsThe publisher's production section now takes charge andpasses on the MS for typesetting, giving full instructionsconcerning the general design of the book, the typesettingand printing process to be adopted, the typeface wanted,

A galley tray

Galleys broken up into pages

41

the way the pages have to be 'laid-out', and a number ofother matters.

Matter set in metal type is stored in long trays (calledgalleys), or, in the case of photosetting, as photographicprints on lengths of glossy paper or transparent film innegative or positive form.

Rough prints of setting in metal type are made onsimple machines (usually hand-powered) or byphotocopying in the case of photosetting. These prints

An eight-pagefonne locked up for letterpress (from metal type) printing.Notice the metal furniture combined with the wood. A key fits into thecircular eyes which, when turned, tightens or loosens the metalfurniture. Computer-assisted typesetting and offset printing is noweliminating the necessity of handling such extremely heavy frames.Even large offset plates are extremely light and are thin and flexibleenough to wrap around the roller of offset printing machines.

42

called proofs are sent to the author and editor for correctionof typesetting errors. Proofs is the term used for prints ofset matter made in limited numbers only for purposes ofchecking the set matter.

Proofs are returned with all corrections marked, alongwith instructions about insertion of illustrations anddiagrams, style and position of headings, dimensions ofpagE;!s, and a number of other matters concerned with thedivision or breaking up of the set matter into pages. Hereagain, computer-assisted typesetting comes into its own.The comparative ease with which corrections can becarried out has already been mentioned. Computerprogrammes are available that automate a substantialpartof the page-making operation also. The computer can acton instructions and specifications encoded on the disc inelectronic terms, which enable the photosetter or laserprinter to turn out prints of the matter in the desired pagedform. The convenience of the system will be appreciatedwhen one considers the labour and hassles involved inhandling heavy trays of metal type. Even the task ofcutting and pasting lengths of photoset matter in pageform manually is quite a tedious business which computerassistance eliminates entirely.

ImpositionGutenberg printed his celebrated Bible one page at a time.Today many pages are printed simultaneously. This book,for instance, will be printed on sheets of paper 65 x 86 emin size, 16 pages at a time on each side of the paper. The

43

whole of it, minus the cover, will be printed on two sheetsof this size printed on both sides to make up its 64 pages.To make this possible the pages have to be arranged in away that would ensure that when the printed sheets arefolded, the pages will be in the right sequence and theright way up.

To simplify matters; let us suppose we have a smallmachine that can print only four pages at a time and,taking a rectangular sheet of paper, fold it in half from

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Getting pages in the right setfI""I'% : (Follow the instructions in the text.)Uncircled figures represent the numbers of pages on the face of thesheet seen in the pictures; thvse circled represent the numbers of thepages behind them, on the oCher side of the sheet

44

top to bottom across the longer edge; then left to rightacross the shorter edge; and then, without cutting thefolds, number the pages 1 to 8 and unfold the sheet. Thesheet will have pages 1, 4, 5 and 8 on one side and 2, 3,6 and 7 on the other. From the accompanying diagram itwill be clear how the pages will have to be arranged forprinting four at a time back to back on a single sheet andwhich way up they should be in each case.

In the case of books set in metal type, the printerimposes and locks up the pages in a steel frame as a forme(see picture on page 42) according to this sequence. Hehas also to ensure that the pages in the book will haveuniform margins and that the pages printed on the twosides of a sheet back~up correctly, that is that they areexactly back to back on the two sides of each leaf. (A leafis a single sheet in a book, consisting of two pages, andis in most cas~s printed on both sides.)

In the case of books that have been photoset,theimposition is much less physically laborious, but equallyexacting in terms of care and accuracy demanded.Diapositive prints of the negatives, that is positive printson transparent film of each page have to be pasted in theexact position required to print down a composite plateof all the pages constituting the forme. In an alternativemethod, the negatives themselves may be pasted downto form a composite negative forme which is transferreddirectly to the offset prirtting plate by a slightly differentprocess, without the intermediate step of printingpositives.

45

We have already outlined the two major printingprocesses aId can therefore move on to how the printedsheets are transformed into the volumes we place on ourshelves.

Negatives and positives likethese on transparent film are somuch easier to handle and layout than the heavy metal frame,metal type and the othermaterials used to locktraditionally typeset matter int;'position for printing as shownin the illustration on page 42.

BindingAfter all the formes are printed, their number dependingon the length of the book, the printed sheets are passedon to a bindery where they are folded into signatures orsections. These sections are then gathered in sets in correctsequence and sewn together through the back folds ofthe sections. Batches of these folded, gathered and sewnbook-blocks are then trimmed at the top, bottom and rightedge (the left edge for Urdu) to free the pages on top andgive the books a neat appearance. A cover is then fixedwhich may be either of paper or card, or cardboardcovered either by paper or cloth.

When the number of pages are not too many, as in thecase of this book which has just 64 pages made up of two32 page sections, one placed within the other and bothwithin a paper cover, you will see that the three unitsmay be held together by a pair of wire staples through

Gathering the sections in correct sequence.

47

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the back fold. The same could of course be done withfour 16-page or eight 8-page sections.

Currently seen in the case of many imported and someIndian paperback books is a binding that uses no sewing.The back of the gathered sections is trimmed to a roughsurface on which a special flexible synthetic glue is appliedto hold the sheets together and also to attach them·to acard or paper cover. As is to be expected, this sort ofbinding is not very strong and, sooner or later, individualleaves or bunches of them may start working themselvesloose from the rest.

Gathered sections sewn and trimmed. Tapes are sewn in for additional strength.

Making the cover of a book to be bound in stiff boards.

Cover glued on to the book.

48

As in the case of our descriptions of other processes,our description of binding is a simplified account of theessentials of the process. Needless to say, mechanizationand automation have been applied to all the processesmentioned. Nevertheless hand binding is still dominantin our country, especially for hard-bound books, thoughfolding, gathering and sewing have been mechanized inthe larger binderies.

Binding a centre-stitched book like this one. The sections go one insidethe other, with the cover on the outside. The pages are stapled togetherthrough the back fold. .

49

Sewing together of the gathered sections, long done by hand, is donemechanically by machines like this one to make up book blocks like theone shown in the upper part of the illustration on page 48. Folding andgathering of sections in correct sequence have also been mechanized.Below is a photograph of a folding machine.

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50

ILLUSTRATIONS

In the letterpress (Gutenberg) process, simple one-colour(black on white, most often) illustrations consisting ofsimple lines of varying thickness and solid patches hereand there (see illustrations on pages 16,17 and 20-21) arereproduced from zinc or copper plates, mounted on woodto bring their surfaces up to the same height as the surfacesof the type, along with which they are used. Thecombination of plate and mounting is called-a block. Theillustrations are transferred to and fixed on the plate bya combination of photographic and chemical processeswhich result in a surface on which the portions of theillustration that have not to print (the white portions inblack on white printing) are either removed altogether orget etcheddown by acid to a level lower than the printingsurface.

If the illustrations to be reproduced containvarying shades (tones), as is true of most photographs,these are reproduced by splitting the image into a patternof very small dots of siZes varying with the depth ofshadeltone required. This is done by placing a fine screenof crossed lines on a glass plate in front of the lens whentransferring the illustration to the zinc or copper plate.Over the darker portions, the dots on the plate remainlarge and close and therefore print darker than theportions where the dots are smaller and consequentlyhave more white space between them and, in fact, all but

A screen, greatly enlarged.

A half-tone picture and a portion of it greatly enlarged to show thedot pattern.

What .a half-tone block would look like if viewed from the edge andgreatly enlarged.

52

disappear in the white or near-white portions. The changefrom dark to light, or the other way about, can be eithergradual or rapid, or even sharp, as might be necessarywhen reproducing a photograph with bright highlightsand deep shadows.

Ifyou look closely at the reproduction of photographsin this book or in newspapers and magazines you willsee the dot pattem quite clearly. A magnifying glass willshow even more clearly how the varying sizes· of dotsmakes the reproduction of tones possible.

For offset printing of illustrations, the process oftransfer of the image to the offset plate is similarbut, sincethe process is planographic, printing areas are not raisedover the general surface to any appreciable extent.ColourPrinting in more than one colour, at its simplest, isachieved by printing each colour in succession. This ispossible only if the colours are simple and distinct, as isthe case of those illustrations in this book requiringprinting in a colour in addition to black, leaving asidethose on the cover.

When reproducing coloured photographs andpaintings, however, we have to deal not only with tones,as in the case of a black and white photograph or sketch,but with tones in an infinite range of colours and shadesof colours. Fortunately, all these can be broken down intocombinations of four colours: yellow, m~genta (a deeppurplish red), cyan (a shade of blue) and black. Thesecombine in various strengths to give the total effect. Ifwe

53

have blocks or plates corresponding to each of thesecolours and print them on the same surface one after theother in transparent inks of these colours, we get a fairreproduction of the original colours.

To achieve the necessary separation of the colours,photographic 'filters' are used when taking foursuccessive photographs of the original.At each stage, theunwanted colours are absorbed by the filter and only therequired one registers on the film in proportion to itsstrength in the original. This gives us a series of four

..

A set of two-colour line blocks. lne impressions made by each of themseparately and with the second colour printed over the first are shown.

54

negatives, each corresponding to one of the four colours.It is these that are used to prepare blocks/plates. Whenthese are used for printing the colours they represent, oneover the other in transparent inks, the result is aremarkably close imitation of the original.

In recent years, 'colour separations' are being done by'electronic scanning', the colour and shade of eachmicroscopic point of the original being analysed into threebasic colours and black by what might be called a highlysensitive electronic eye. The process gives much moreaccurate results than optical;separation with colour filters.

The process of four-colour printing is illustrated onthe back cover. For very special purposes, for costly artprints for example, even more separations may be madeand printing in seven or eight, or even more colours maybe undertaken.

A multi-stage offset printing machine. See also the diagrammaticrepresentation of the same machine on page 34.

55

AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS AND COPYRIGHT

Printing and paper made it possible to make a largenumber of copies of a book with very much less labourand in very much less time than it would take to makethe same number of copies by hand. But this can only bedone in printing plants which have expensive equipmentand machinery and a number ofpeople working for them.It also costs quite a lot to provide the paper and othermaterials required, and to get the copies bound. Even ifan author has the money to get his books printed, it ishardly ever possible for him tosel/ more than a few copieshimself.

This is where a publisherhas to step in.Authors, usuallyin return for some payment, give publishers the right toprint, publish (make public; make available to the public),and sell their writings in book form. Publishers undertakethis activity in the expectation that they will be able tosell the books at a profit. A publisher is therefore· abusiness-person who puts his money into the printing ofbooks which he hopes to sell at a profit. Like producersof other goods, he has to organize not only themanufacture of the goods he deals in, but also theirdistribution and sale.

CopyrightWe have just spoken of the author 'giving the publisherthe right' to publish his book. This implies that only the

515

The international copyright symbol. This, along© ."",~_"' .._"..-""">0",the year of writing or publication, printed in thebook, gives it copyright protection in all countriesthat have joined the International CopyrightConvention. (See the copyright statement on theback-verso-of the title page of this book.)

author has the right to use his creation and profit from itsuse in any way. The right to make copies of his work andmake them available to others for reading is, among otherrelated rights, one of the major rights an author possesses.Thispackage of rights of an author in relation to his workis protected by law in our country, and in almost all othercountries. It is called copyright and is, in most cases,enjoyed by an author in our country for his whole lifetimeand by his heirs for 60 calendar years after his death forall works still in copyright at the ~nd of 1991, and all freshcopyrights arising after that. .

Till recently, as in many other countries, this periodwas 50 years and was extended to 60 in India only in 1992.Copyrights that had already lapsed before that, under the50 year rule, are not entitled to an extension under thenew provision even if t~eir late owners (the authors) diedless than 60 years ago.

After its 'legal term of copyright' is completed, anyonecan make copies or otherwise make use of a work (publisha translation or make a film based on it, for example),without anyone's permission. Thus the works ofRabindranath Tagore, whose works would have gone outof copyright at the end of 1992 under the SO-year rule,since he died in 1941, will now go out of copyright (go

57

into the 'public domain' as it is termed) only at the endof 2002. Copyright in the works of Hal Gangadhar Tilakwho died in 1920 lapsed at the end of 1970, while that inthe works ofJawaharlal Nehru who died in 1964will lapseonly at the end of 2024.

Authors did not always enjoy copyright protection. Infact, before printing and publishing developed no greatneed was felt for it. It was only when it becamecomparatively easy to copy works in large numbers andsell them at a profit that copyright protection for authorsbecame necessary.

Copyright protects the publisher as much as it doesthe author as it ensures that, once he has been given thesole right to publish a book, no one else can do so'.

Most countries hi1ve agreed to respect the copyrightof one another's authors, but some countries have yet todo so. Almost all of them, however, have laws protectingthe copyright of their own authors internally.

Booksellers' DiscountsTo interest booksellers in selling what has been published,publishers sell copies of their publications to booksellersat what is called a trade discount, that is at some percentagelower than the prices fixed for their sale to the public.Thus, if a pUblisher allows booksellers a discount of 25per cent, he will sell a book he has priced Rs 40 to abookseller for Rs 30. When the bookseller sells the bookfor Rs 40, he will have Rs 10 to cover his expenses and getsome profit.

58

Author's RoyaltiesWhat about the author? How does he get his reward?The commonest fonn in which a publisher pays an authorfor permission to print and sell his work is royalties. Aroyalty is a payment made for the use of someone else'sidea or creation or invention. In the case of books it isusually calculated as a percentage of the total price of allcopies sold. Thus the more copies of an author's bookthat are sold, the more he gets paid as royalties. Forexample, a 10 per cent royalty on a book priced Rs 40would be Rs 4, that is the publisher would have to paythe author four rupees for each copy of the book sold.

It is of course possible, if this is agreed between authorand publisher, to follow other methods of paying theauthor. For example, a fixed amount may be paid,irrespective of the number of copies printed or sold; afixed payment may be made for an agreed number ofcopies printed, irrespective of sales; or, rarely, a publishermay pay nothing to an author till he has recovered hisexpenditure on the production of the book and then sharethe profits with the author.

59

THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK ANDTHE BOOK OF THE FUTURE

With every technical advance in the electronic media,doubts have been expressed concerning the future of thebook. First, it was the radio that was expected to drawpeople away from books; it did the opposite. Then it wasTV and video; the outcome was not much different. Therewere even some electronic-media fanatics who argued thatwith TV and video available as media of direct instruction,information, demonstration and entertainment, literacywas no longer essential for ordinary, everyday life andwork for large masses of our people! While we all agreethat the electronic media are effective instruments ofeducation at all levels, few of us could agree that anyindividual could really do without books. The future ofthe book as a major source of information thus seemssecure.

The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) comprises 20 large (30.5 X 22.5em) volumes with a total of 21, 728 pages. The whole of its content is storedin machine (computer) readable form in a single compoct disc as shown. Thesmaller disc is used for retrieval of infonnation under a variety of classificationheads (in addition to the usual alphabetical sequencing) without having'manually' to search through pages after pages of entries. This electronicversion of the dictionary sells at about a third of the price of the 2G-volumeprint on paper edition.

But the aspect of the book that is now being challenged.is not its relevance but its form. Already personal andinstitutional computers are being used to gain access,through telephone links, to large national and eveninternational 'data-banks'. These are vast amounts ofinformation relevant to various subjects stored onsuper-computers. This information would previouslyhave been (and still is) sought in large reference works

61

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This sketch is broadly indicative of the size of a 'handheld digital book'that could store the equivalent of the Bible ten times over -more than?,OOO pages of closely printed text.

62

like dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks anddirectories. Now in many countries this kind ofinformation is available to subscribers who can read it ontheir computer display units and even print it out forthemselves if they wish to.

But snippets of information on a screen do notconstitute a book. Actually there is nothing to prevent awhole book being presented page-by-page on a computerscreen and its,being printed out by a printer associatedwith it. But one of the essential characteristics of a bookwould be missing - usability without the need for any~quipment,not to mention benefits like portability, easeof handling, legibility and elegance.

What has come near to giving books a new form iswhat communication professionals call the HandheldElectronic Book (HEB). Thanks again to the increasingminiaturization of computer circuitry, whole multimediaencyclopedias, the Bible and all of Shakespeare's worksare available in HEBs of normal book size withrechargeable, self-contained power sources. On the screenone can perform the equivalent of turning pages andbrowsing, and locating items in an alphabetical sequence.Recent developments are towards a reading (screen)device with interchangeable discs so that libraries wouldexchange your discs rather than your books.

Problems remain-like legibility, readability,reproduction of illustrations (especially coloured ones),costs, prices and so on, but it is unwise to expect thatthey will not be solved quite soon. Th,,- developments

63

which have already taken place within the last ten yearsare enough to drive this lesson home.

How soon and whether the REB will replace thepresent-day book, in what direction it will develop andthe new forms it might take are beyond anyone's abilityto predict. But most of us would hope that the book as weknow it now will continue to be made, for aesthetic if forno other reasons. Perhaps, some time, even the REB maybe able to match and display the sheer beauty of anelegantly designed page of printed text. But will it everbe able to match the pleasure of smelling and handling apage of printed paper, turning it over and then turning itback again?

This sketch indicates approximately how small a handheld electronicbook could be.. Besides being a reading device it stores the content of4-6 medium)ength books and a power source (rechargeable cells). Thedevice of which the size is indicated in the inustral:\0n on p. 62 isdescribed as 'digital' as against the device shown above and describedas 'electronic' - which, presumably, accounts for their differentstorage capacities.

PriDted at Impress Offset E-17, Sector 7, NOIDA

THE FOUR-COLOUR PROCESS

BlackCyan·-.MagentaYellow

ISBN 81-237-2470-5

National Book Trust, India

Yellow & Magenta Yellow, Magenta& Cyan

Yellow, Magenta,Cyan & Black