These print stories, you may really not know

As we all know, air conditioning was invented in 1902. But people at that time did not think there would be air conditioning such a "artifact" to improve the comfort of life. That summer, because of the unusually hot and humid weather, a printing factory in Brooklyn, New York, was troubled. Due to the influence of hot and humid air, the ink can not be dried for a long time, and the paper is also flexible because of the temperature, and the printed products are blurred. For modern printing plants, the influence of temperature and humidity on the quality of printing products is very large. So the printer asked the Buffalo Forging Company, which specializes in heating machines, bellows and exhaust fans, to design a system that could control temperature and humidity.

Carrier, of the research and development department of the Buffalo Forge Company, accepted the task and set out on the road to inventing the air conditioner. According to the thermometer, he accurately calculated the temperature and humidity needed for printing, and invented the "air handler". He let the hot air condense into water, and then concentrated discharge, so that the humidity in the air was stable at 55%, successfully solved the problem of the printing house.

Willis Havilland Carrier

In 1915, Carrier and six other engineers formed the Carrier Engineering Company in New Jersey, which was the predecessor of Carrier air conditioning.

In the eyes of Iranians, "printing paper into gold"

When Marco Polo visited Kublai Khan's China, he saw nothing worth reporting in the large number of engravings of sutras. But he describes with astonishment how Kublai Khan printed paper as currency instead of precious metals. In The Travels of Marco Polo, he called it "the alchemy of turning paper into gold." In addition to Marco Polo, several others, including Roberlu, Oldoric, and Pegorotti, wrote admiringly of how the Yuan emperor used bark as a substitute for precious metals.

Inside the wooden box are banknotes printed and issued by the Yuan Dynasty. In this painting, Kublai Khan sits on a throne and his entourage pays for goods with paper money made from mulberry bark. But in the West at that time, people did not know what paper money was, and they thought that the idea of equating paper with silver was extremely absurd. They even asked Marco Polo to withdraw this nonsense.

Image taken from the Book of Marco Polo's Miracles, manuscript from the collection of the National Library of France

There are 100 interesting stories like these in the book! After reading these 100 printing stories, you can not only understand the history of printing, but also learn more about the economy, culture and historical fun around the world, and suddenly have a lot to talk about when chatting with friends

As Marx mentioned, printing is not only a "tool", "means", but also a "lever", he leveraged not only the development of Europe, but also the great development of the world. The 100 printing stories that affect the world are only a microcosm of the development of printing, and fundamentally, the telling of 100 stories is undoubtedly to describe a whole printing history that affects the process of world civilization, and strive to get speculation and exploration from it.

100 printing stories, four continents of the grand historical map, it tells the past and present life of printing, but also guide us to explore the future development of printing. About those people and things, technology and art, will record the outstanding achievements of "printing" as the forerunner of modern human civilization.

These 100 printing stories not only fully tell the great inventions of China, but also tell the technological innovations of other countries in the world. It not only shows the external dissemination of printing, but also invisibly propagates the idea of a community of human destiny.