A story about typography. Who invented the printing press

An important milestone in the development of writing and literature was book printing in Russia. With the development of statehood, the issue of the lack of books became acute. There were written samples, but their creation took a long time.

In Europe during this period (mid-16th century) printing presses already existed. understood the invaluable role of the book in the process of the formation of the state. He contributed to the foundation of the first printing house in Moscow.

The most educated people of that time were involved in the work on the first printed edition. The goal of the young tsar was to unite a large number of Orthodox peoples in one territory and into one state. There was a need for universal ecclesiastical and secular education, therefore, the priesthood and educators needed a quality printed publication.

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The first Russian printed book - the history of creation

Preparations for printing the original source of knowledge took a total of a decade. The creation of the first copy of printed art was preceded by a long construction and arrangement of the printing house.

In 1563, the book printer and inventor Ivan Fedorov and his faithful friend and student Pyotr Mstislavets set about printing a unique book that had no analogues at that time, which was called "The Apostle".

Over the first edition, book printers pored over as much as 12 months. Printer Ivan Fedorov put into his brainchild all the knowledge and skills that he acquired throughout his life. The first non-handwritten copy turned out to be truly a masterpiece.

The weighty volume was in a frame made of wood, which the creators covered with thin leather with amazing gold embossing. Large capital letters were decorated with unprecedented herbs and flowers.

The first edition was dated March 1, 1564. Later, this date began to be considered the year of foundation of the Russian book press. In the modern history of the Russian state, the day of the Orthodox book is celebrated on March 14. "Apostle" has survived until the 21st century unchanged, and is in the Moscow Historical Museum.

Beginning of book printing in Russia

As soon as the first book of the Moscow printing house "Apostol" ("Acts and Epistles of the Apostles") saw the light of day, the early Russian printers set about creating a new church publication called "Chasovnik". Not a year was spent on this work of printed art, but only a few weeks.

In parallel with the creation of church books, work was underway on the first Russian textbook "ABC". A children's book appeared in 1574.

Thus, in the 16th century, book printing was born and established in Russia, and the first non-manuscript church books appeared. The creation of a children's textbook was a very important stage in the development of Slavic writing and literature.

Who printed the first books in Russia

The founder of book printing in Russia was the inventor Ivan Fedorov. The man, even by modern standards, was very educated and enthusiastic. The man was educated at the university in the city of Krakow (now the territory of modern Poland). In addition to his native language, he spoke two more languages ​​- Latin and ancient Greek.

The man was well versed in carpentry, painting, foundry crafts. He himself cut and melted matrices for letters, made bindings for his books. These skills helped him fully master the process of book printing. Nowadays, the mention of the first Russian book printing is often associated with the name of Ivan Fedorov.

The first printing house in Russia - its creation and development

In 1553, the first printing house was founded in Moscow by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The printing house, as the printing house was called in ancient times, was located next to the Kremlin, not far from the Nikolsky Monastery, and was built on donations from the ruler himself.

The deacon of the church, Ivan Fedorov, was placed at the head of the printing house. It took 10 years to equip the building of the ancient printing house and create printing equipment. The room of the book printer was made of stone, and was popularly referred to as the “hut-printing house”.

Here the first printed edition "Apostle" was created, later the first "ABC" and "Hourmaker" were printed. Already in the 17th century, more than 18 titles of books were printed.

Later, the printer Ivan Fedorov and his assistant, on the slander of ill-wishers, will be forced to flee from Moscow, fleeing the wrath of the tsar. But the pioneer printers will be able to save the equipment and take it with them outside the principality of Moscow. The first printing house on Nikolskaya Street will be burned down by the book fighters.

Soon Ivan Fedorov will open a new printing house in Lvov, where he will publish several more editions of the Apostle, in the introduction to which the printer will tell about the persecution of ill-wishers and envious people.

The first printing press of Ivan Fedorov

The first equipment for typography was extremely unpretentious: a machine and several typesetting cash desks. The basis of the ancient printing press was a screw press. Ivan Fedorov's machine has survived to this day.

You can see this value, touch the history, breathe in the hoary antiquity in the Lviv Historical Museum. The weight of the machine is about 104 kg. The typeface was constructed in such a way as to resemble written letters. It was close to the handwriting that was understandable to a simple Russian person. The slope to the right is observed, the letters are even, the same size. Margins and spacing between lines are clearly observed. The title and capital letters were printed in red ink, while the main text was printed in black.

The use of two-color printing is an invention of Ivan Fedorov himself. Before him, no one in the world used several colors on one printed page. The quality of printing and materials is so impeccable that the first printed book "The Apostle" has survived to this day and is in the Moscow Historical Museum.

In the 16th century, there were two significant events for the history of Moscow, and later for the history of Russia - the construction of the Cathedral of Ivan the Blessed in the capital and the creation of a printing press by Ivan Fedorov.

The first textbooks in Russia

The development of education was an important matter for the formation of the Russian state. Books transcribed by hand were distinguished by a large number of errors and distortions. Their authors were not always well educated themselves. Therefore, for teaching children to read and write, well-read, understandable, non-manuscript textbooks were needed.

The first book for teaching children to read and write was Ivan Fedorov's printed volume The Clockworker. For quite a long time, children learned to read from this book. Two copies of this edition have survived to this day. One volume is in Belgium, the other is in the Leningrad Library. Later, the Azbuka, which became the first textbook for children, will be printed in Moscow. Today, this rare copy of ancient printing is located in the United States.

Tsar Ivan the Terrible, with all the ambiguous attitude towards him, understood that it was impossible to build a strong developed state without smart, educated people. It is necessary to keep up with the times and keep up with the advanced states. The source of true truthful knowledge at all times has been and will be a book. Only reading, literate, educated people will be able to build an advanced power and introduce technologies, according to the requirements of the time.

The founder of book printing in Russia, Ivan Fedorov, is a genius of his time, who was able to move Russia from the point of ignorance and stupidity, to direct it along the path of enlightenment and development. Despite the disgrace and persecution that befell him, Ivan Fedorov did not leave his life's work and continued to work in a foreign land. His first printed editions became the basis of writing and literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Since ancient times, people have made books by hand (see Writing). For months, and sometimes for years, a scribe worked to reproduce a literary or scientific work on durable sheets of expensive writing material - parchment, made from animal skins. To reduce the price of the book, to make it more popular, paper allowed, the inventor of which is considered the Chinese Tsai Lun, who lived in the 1-2 centuries. n. e. In Europe, the first paper mill started operating in the 12th century.

The development of crafts and trade, the great geographical discoveries, the emergence of universities - all this contributed to the formation of enlightenment, the growth of education. More and more books were needed. Manuscript workshops, located mainly in monasteries and castles of sovereigns, could not satisfy the growing need for books from year to year. Then book printing arose - a whole complex of production processes that made it possible to produce books mechanically.

In fact, this is not one, but several inventions. It is based on the so-called printing form; it is a relief mirror image of text and illustrations that need to be reproduced in a large number of copies. The form is rolled with paint, and then a sheet of paper is pressed against it with force. In this case, the paint transfers to paper, reproducing a page or group of pages of a future book.

When creating book printing, people also took care to simplify and facilitate the process of making a printing plate in every possible way. It was made up of metal blocks - letters, on the ends of which embossed mirror images of letters, numbers, punctuation marks are reproduced ... Letters were preliminarily cast using a simple word-casting form.

The first experiments in book printing were carried out as early as 1041-1048. Chinese blacksmith Bi Sheng; he made letters from clay. In the 12th-13th centuries. in Korea, metal letters were already used. The great German innovator Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1399-1468) became the creator of the European printing system. It was he who managed to find the best technical forms for the embodiment of ideas that were partially expressed before him. Gutenberg printed textbooks of Latin grammar - "Donates", all kinds of calendars, works of medieval literature. His masterpiece is a 42-line Bible printed in 1452-1455.

The emergence of printing has played a colossal role in the socio-political and cultural life of mankind. Typography contributed to the development of science and culture, contributed to the fact that education lost its religious character, became secular, and made it possible to unify the grammatical norms of the language and graphic forms of writing. Books became cheaper, access to knowledge was easier, and they themselves became more democratic. “We can and must begin the history of our scientific worldview with the discovery of book printing,” said the great Russian thinker Academician V. I. Vernadsky.

Johannes Gutenberg mechanically reproduced only the text; all kinds of decorations and illustrations were drawn in ready-made prints by hand. In 1457, the inventor's student Peter Scheffer (c. 1425 - c. 1503) on the pages of the "Psalter" managed to reproduce multi-colored initials - initials and his publishing mark. Another student of Gutenberg, Albrecht Pfister (c. 1410-1466), first printed illustrations in a book published in 1461. Ornamentation and illustrations were reproduced at first by the so-called woodcut - woodcut, which appeared even earlier than printing. Later, the book included an engraving on copper, based on a different principle: the drawing to be reproduced is engraved here not in sublime, but in deep relief.

The printing press was an amazingly timely invention; it spread very quickly throughout Europe. In 1465, the printing press started working in Italy, in 1470 - in France, in 1473 - in Belgium and Hungary, around 1473 - in Poland, in 1474 - in Spain, in 1476 - in Czechoslovakia and England. In Slavic script - Cyrillic, Schweipolt Fiol (d. 1525) began to print for the first time in 1491 in Krakow.

Scientists have calculated that in about 50 years - until January 1, 1501, printing houses began to work in 260 cities of Europe. Their total number reached 1,500, and they published approximately 40,000 publications with a total circulation of over 10 million copies. These first books are called incunabula by historians; they are carefully collected and stored in the largest libraries in the world.

In the history of domestic book printing, the name of the great Belarusian educator Francysk Skaryna (c. 1486 - c. 1541) should be the first to be named. In 1517, he founded a Slavic printing house in Prague, where he printed the Old Testament books of the Bible in separate editions. In 1522, Skorina created the first printing house in Vilnius and printed here the "Small travel book" and "Apostle".

The first printing house in Moscow was founded around 1553. It is called anonymous, since seven editions issued by it do not indicate the name of the printer, nor the time and place of printing. The first accurately dated Russian printed book, The Apostle, was published on March 1, 1564 by the great Russian educator Ivan Fedorov (c. 1510 - 1583) and his colleague Pyotr Timofeev Mstislavets. The initiator of the emergence of book printing in Moscow was the so-called Chosen Rada - a government circle under the young Tsar Ivan IV. Later, however, under the influence of reactionary religious circles, Ivan Fedorov was forced to leave Moscow and move to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on the eastern lands of which lived Ukrainians and Belarusians who professed Orthodoxy. The pioneer printer works in the Belarusian city of Zabludovo, and then moves to Lvov, where in 1574 he publishes the first Ukrainian printed books - the ABC and the Apostle. In 1581 Ivan Fedorov printed the first complete East Slavonic Bible in Ostrog.

In the 17th century the typographic workshop was replaced by a printing manufactory with a well-developed division of labor. The Moscow Printing Yard was such an enterprise. Reformed book printing Peter I, who in 1702-1703. began to publish the first Russian newspaper, and in 1708 he introduced a new civil font, which still exists today.

Johannes Gutenberg and Ivan Fedorov printed their books on a manual printing press, which was entirely made of wood, its productivity was small. At the beginning of the 19th century German inventor Friedrich Koenig (1774-1833) designed the printing press. The day of November 29, 1814, is memorable in the history of printing, when the number of the London newspaper The Times was first printed on a printing press. Thus began the industrial revolution in the book business. Its result was the introduction of machines in the printing industry. The hand typesetter, for example, was replaced by the "linotype" invented in 1886 by Otmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899). High-performance rotary printing machines, units, bookbinding and binding books appear in printing houses. Illustrations, starting from the second half of the 19th century, are reproduced with the help of photomechanical processes, which are based on the method invented in 1839 by L. J. M. Daguerre (1787-1851) and J. H. Niepce (1765-1833) photo. The same method allowed to improve the typesetting processes; we are talking about a phototypesetting machine created in 1895 by V. A. Gassiev.

The 20th century was a period of transition in book printing from machines mechanizing individual production operations to automatic systems. Inventors put forward projects for fully automated printing houses. Recently, portable printing houses have appeared, which are based on microcomputer and microprocessor technology. Such printing houses are called desktop; they enable everyone to produce books at relatively low cost.

Modern book printing is a highly developed branch of culture and industry. Here is some data on the circulation of published books. In 1955, 269 thousand publications were published all over the world, in 1965 - 426 thousand, in 1975 - 572 thousand, in 1986 - 819.5 thousand. About the total circulation of books published annually in the world there is no exact information. In China, in 1985, almost 6 billion copies were published.

In our country, 80-85 thousand publications were published annually with a total circulation of over 2 billion copies.

“The history of the mind represents two main eras,” argued the Russian writer and historiographer N. M. Karamzin, “the invention of letters and typography; all others were their consequence. Reading and writing open up a new world for a person, especially in our time, with the current progress of the mind. These words were written almost two centuries ago, but they are still true today.

In Europe, he invented typography from typesetting letters. This meant that letters, numbers, and punctuation marks were cast from metal and could be used repeatedly. And although such a system was known to the Chinese as early as 1400 BC, it did not take root there due to the presence of several hundred written characters. And the method was forgotten. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg began printing texts in Germany in a new way. At first it was calendars or dictionaries, and in 1452 he printed the first Bible. It later became known throughout the world as the Gutenberg Bible.

How did the first printing press work?
Separate printed signs, letters, were fastened in hard metal in a mirror image. The compositor put them into words and sentences until the page was complete. These symbols were printed with ink. With the help of a lever, the page was strongly pressed against the paper placed under it. On the printed page, the letters were in the correct order. After printing, the letters were folded in a certain order and stored in a type-setting cash desk. Thus, the compositor could quickly find them again. Today, a book is usually designed on a computer: the text is typed and sent directly from the computer for printing.

Why was the invention of printing important?
Thanks to the new printing method, it became possible to print a lot of texts in a short time, so suddenly many people had access to books. They were able to learn to read and develop spiritually. The heads of the church no longer determined who could access the knowledge. Opinions were disseminated through books, newspapers or leaflets. And discussed. This freedom of thought was completely new for those times. Many rulers were afraid of her and ordered to burn books. Even today, this happens with some dictators: they arrest writers and journalists and ban their books.

All books printed before January 1, 1501 are called INCUNABULAS. The word is translated as "cradle", that is, the infancy of printing.

Little incunabula has survived to our time. They are kept in museums and major libraries in the world. The incunabula are beautiful, their fonts are elegant and clear, text and illustrations are placed on the pages very harmoniously.

Their example shows that the book is a work of art.

One of the largest collections of incunabula in the world, about 6 thousand books, is stored in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. The collection is located in a special room, the so-called "Faust's study", which recreates the atmosphere of a Western European monastery library of the 15th century.

Do you know that...
In ancient Russia, they wrote on birch bark? This is the name of the outer part of the birch bark, consisting of thin translucent layers, easily separated from each other.
Was the first typewriter made in the USA in 1867?
Is the number of books published around the world growing year by year? True, this applies only to developed countries.

Check yourself.

1. In Germany, in the city of Strasbourg, there is a monument to Johannes Gutenberg on the central square. For what merits did grateful descendants perpetuate the memory of this German master?
2. Why are 15th century printed books called incunabula?
3. What new elements appeared in printed books in the 15th century?
4. Explain the meaning of the following concepts using reference books.
The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary will help you (any edition)
letter
typesetting (set)
font
printing house
engraving
Red line

Watch cartoon about Johannes Gutenberg:
http://video.mail.ru/mail/glazunova-l/4260/4336.html

Most people take printed materials for granted, it is difficult for us to imagine modern life if the printing press had not been invented. We would not be able to read books, newspapers, magazines. There would be no posters, leaflets, brochures, and would not come to us by mail. Typography allows you to exchange a huge amount of information in the shortest possible time. In fact, the printing press is one of the most important inventions for modern man. He made a huge contribution to the development of society. How was the printing press invented, and how did it influence the development of culture?

Life before the printing press

Before typography was invented, all writing and images were written and copied by hand. Certain people were engaged in this, who were allocated places for scribes at monasteries. This room in the monasteries was called the scriptorium. There, the writer could work in silence, first marking out the page, and then transferring to paper the data from the book that was being copied. Later, decorative elements began to be applied to the pages of books. In the Middle Ages, books, as a rule, were only owned by monasteries, educational institutions or very rich people. Most of the books were religious in nature. Some families kept copies of the Bible, but this was very rare, and the family was considered lucky.

Around the end of the 1430s, a German named Johannes Gutenberg contrived to find a good way to make money. At that time, there was a tendency to wear small mirrors on clothes and headdresses when visiting sacred places. The mirrors themselves did not mean much to him, but they gave him the idea of ​​how large volumes of printed matter could be produced. In the 1300s - 1400s, the society received the main form of printing. For her, images or letters were used, applied to wooden bars, which were dipped in paint, followed by transferring it to paper. Gutenberg already had experience working with print, so he realized that by using cut bars for it, he could make the process faster. He strove to reproduce large texts in large volumes. Instead of wooden blocks, he decided to use metal ones. The design he invented was called the "Mobile Printing Press" because the metal letters could move, forming different combinations to print words and phrases. Using this device, Gutenberg created the first printed book, which was the Bible. Today, the Bible printed by Gutenberg is a historical treasure.

The typewriter had a device that arranged groups of blocks in the right order so that the letters would form words and sentences in constant motion. Blocks were dipped in ink, and paper was placed on top of them. When moving the paper, letters appeared on it. These printing presses were manually operated. Later, by the 19th century, other inventors created steam-powered printing presses that did not require operator control. Today's printing presses are electronic, automated, and capable of printing much faster than any previous counterpart.

Gutenberg's invention resonated with society. Representatives of the higher social strata were not happy. For them, books written by hand were a sign of luxury, grandeur, they believed that books should not be mass-produced. In this regard, printed books were, first of all, distributed among the lower strata of the population. Later, printing houses began to open, giving the world new professions. Printed texts have become a new way of distributing information to vast numbers of people quickly and cheaply. Benefits were invented by scholars who could distribute their writings and politicians who could interest voters through printed materials. The most important achievement that has been achieved with the invention of the printing press is the opportunity to receive an education that many people could not receive before. The invention marked the beginning of new ideas and developments. Another contribution that the invention made was the distribution among people of printed materials and books in all languages.

It is impossible to imagine modern life without the invention that a simple German artisan gave the world. Typography, of which he became the founder, changed the course of world history to such an extent that it is rightfully attributed to the greatest achievements of civilization. His merit is so great that those who, many centuries before, created the basis for a future discovery are undeservedly forgotten.

Wood board print

The history of book printing originates in China, where, as early as the 3rd century, the technique of the so-called piece printing came into use - an imprint on textiles, and later on paper, of various drawings and short texts carved on a wooden board. This method was called xylography and quickly spread from China throughout East Asia.

It should be noted that printed engravings appeared much earlier than books. Separate samples have survived to this day, made already in the first half of the 3rd century, when representatives ruled in China. In the same period, the technique of three-color printing on silk and paper appeared.

First woodcut book

Researchers attribute the creation of the first printed book to the year 868 - this date is on the earliest edition, made using the xylography technique. It appeared in China and was a collection of religious and philosophical texts, entitled "Diamond Sutra". During the excavations of the Gyeongji Temple in Korea, a sample of a printed product was found, made almost a century earlier, but due to some features, it belongs more to the category of amulets than books.

In the Middle East, piece printing, that is, as mentioned above, made from a board on which text or a drawing was cut, came into use in the middle of the 4th century. Woodcut, called in Arabic "tarsh", became widespread in Egypt and reached its peak by the beginning of the 10th century.

This method was used mainly for printing texts of prayers and making written amulets. A characteristic feature of Egyptian woodcuts is the use for prints not only of wooden boards, but also made of tin, lead and baked clay.

The advent of movable type

However, no matter how the box printing technology improved, its main drawback was the need to cut out the entire text again for each next page. A breakthrough in this direction, thanks to which the history of printing received a significant impetus, also occurred in China.

According to Shen Kuo, an outstanding scientist and historian of past centuries, the Chinese master Bi Shen, who lived from 990 to 1051, came up with the idea to make movable characters from fired clay and place them in special frames. This made it possible to type a certain text from them, and after printing the required number of copies, scatter and reuse in other combinations. This is how movable type was invented, which is still used today.

However, this brilliant idea, which became the basis of all future book printing, did not receive proper development at that time. This is explained by the fact that there are several thousand characters in the Chinese language, and the production of such a font seemed too difficult.

Meanwhile, considering all the stages of printing, it should be recognized that non-Europeans were the first to use typesetting letters. Known to have survived to this day is the only book of religious texts, made in 1377 in Korea. As the researchers found, it was printed using movable type technology.

European inventor of the first printing press

In Christian Europe, the technique of box printing appeared around 1300. On its basis, all kinds of religious images made on fabric were produced. They were sometimes quite complex and multicolored. About a century later, when paper became relatively affordable, Christian engravings began to be printed on it, and in parallel with this, playing cards. Paradoxical as it may seem, the progress of printing has served both holiness and vice at the same time.

However, the full history of printing begins with the invention of the printing press. This honor belongs to the German artisan from the city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, who developed in 1440 a method for repeatedly applying prints to sheets of paper using movable type. Despite the fact that in subsequent centuries other inventors were credited with the leadership in this field, serious researchers have no reason to doubt that the appearance of printing is connected precisely with his name.

Inventor and his investor

Gutenberg's invention consisted in the fact that he made letters from metal in their inverted (mirror) form, and then, having typed lines from them, made an impression on paper using a special press. Like most geniuses, Gutenberg had brilliant ideas but lacked the funds to implement them.

To give life to his invention, the brilliant artisan was forced to seek help from a Mainz businessman named Johann Fust and conclude an agreement with him, by virtue of which he was obliged to finance future production, and for this he had the right to receive a certain percentage of the profits.

Companion who turned out to be a smart businessman

Despite the external primitiveness of the technical means used and the lack of qualified assistants, the inventor of the first printing press managed to produce a number of books in a short time, the most famous of which is the famous "Gutenberg Bible" stored in the Mainz Museum.

But the world is so arranged that in one person the gift of an inventor rarely coexists with the skills of a cold-blooded businessman. Very soon, Fust took advantage of the part of the profit that was not paid to him on time and, through the court, took over the whole business. He became the sole owner of the printing house, and this explains the fact that for a long time it was with his name that the creation of the first printed book was mistakenly associated.

Other contenders for the role of pioneer printers

As mentioned above, very many peoples of Western Europe disputed with Germany the honor of being considered the founders of printing. In this regard, several names are mentioned, among which the most famous are Johann Mentelin from Strasbourg, who managed to create a printing house similar to the one that Gutenberg had in 1458, as well as Pfister from Bamberg and the Dutchman Lawrence Coster.

The Italians did not stand aside either, claiming that their compatriot Pamfilio Castaldi was the inventor of movable type, and that it was he who transferred his printing house to the German merchant Johann Fust. However, no hard evidence for such a claim has been presented.

Beginning of book printing in Russia

And, finally, let us dwell in more detail on how the history of printing in Russia developed. It is well known that the first printed book of the Muscovite state is the "Apostle", made in 1564 in the printing house of Ivan Fedorov and Both of them were students of the Danish master Hans Missenheim, sent by the king at the request of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The afterword of the book states that their printing press was founded in 1553.

According to the researchers, the history of printing in the Muscovite state developed as a result of the urgent need to correct numerous errors that had crept into the texts of religious books that had been copied by hand for many years. Through inattention, and sometimes deliberately, scribes introduced distortions, which became more and more every year.

The church council, held in 1551 in Moscow, which received the name "Stoglavy" (by the number of chapters in its final decision), issued a decree on the basis of which all handwritten books in which errors were noticed were withdrawn from use and subject to correction. Often, however, this practice only led to new distortions. It is quite clear that the solution to the problem could only be the widespread introduction of printed publications that repeatedly replicate the original text.

This problem was well known abroad, and therefore, pursuing commercial interests, in many European countries, in particular in Holland and Germany, they arranged the printing of books based on their sale among the Slavic peoples. This created fertile ground for the subsequent creation of a number of domestic printing houses.

Russian book printing under Patriarch Job

A tangible impetus for the development of printing in Russia was the establishment of a patriarchate in it. The first primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Job, who took the throne in 1589, from the first days began to make efforts to provide the state with an appropriate amount of spiritual literature. During his reign, a master by the name of Nevezha was in charge of printing, who published fourteen different editions, in their characteristic features very close to the Apostle, which was printed by Ivan Fedorov.

The history of book printing of a later period is associated with the names of such masters as O. I. Radishchevsky-Volintsev and A. F. Pskovitin. From their printing house came out a lot of not only spiritual literature, but also educational books, in particular, manuals for studying grammar and mastering reading skills.

The subsequent development of printing in Russia

A sharp decline in the development of typography occurred at the beginning of the 17th century and was due to the events associated with the Polish-Lithuanian intervention and called the Time of Troubles. Some of the masters were forced to interrupt their occupation, while the rest died or left Russia. Mass book printing resumed only after the accession to the throne of the first sovereign from the House of Romanov - Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich.

Peter I did not remain indifferent to printing production either. Having visited Amsterdam during his European voyage, he concluded an agreement with the Dutch merchant Jan Tessing, according to which he had the right to produce printed materials in Russian and bring them to Arkhangelsk for sale.

In addition, the sovereign gave an order for the production of a new civil type, which came into widespread use in 1708. Three years later, in St. Petersburg, which was preparing to become the capital of Russia, the largest printing house in the country was established, which later became synodal. From here, from the banks of the Neva, book printing spread throughout the country.