Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the years 1760-1840. It was a period of social and economic change. Cities were growing, everything was being run by steam, electricity, and gasoline. Factories were built. The capitalist replaced the landowner as the most powerful force in the Western countries. Not everything in the Industrial Revolution was positive, however. Workers were forced to work 13 hour days with miserable wages and lived in unsanitary conditions.

There were two innovations in typography during this period. The first innovation were the fat faces. The fat faces were innovated in 1803 by Robert Thorne. The typestyle is considered a roman face but the contrast and weight were increased by expanding the thickness of the heavy strokes. The width had a ratio of 1:2.5-1:2. The second innovation was the sans-serif type, which made its debut in 1816 by William Caslon IV. It made little notice until the early 1830s. Sans-serif were pretty much used for subtitles and for descriptive material under bold fat faces and Egyptians.

As type became bigger, it became harder and more costly to use metal type. American printer, Darius Wells, managed to fix that problem. He created wood types which became very successful for poster and broadsheet design. Reasons being were due to the fact that wood-type was more durable, less expensive, and much lighter than metal types.

The Industrial Revolution also led to innovations on redesigning the printing press. The one that I think was the most important in the time period was the steam-powered presses that were created by German printer, Friedrich Koenig in 1814. The reason why I feel that this one was the most important was because it was faster than previous presses (it could print 1,100 impressions an hour) and that resulted in lowering the costs for production. It also helped pave the way for future, faster printing presses.

Sketchbook assignment:

The Industrial Revolution also led to the invention of photography. It was invented by Joseph Niepce by first coating a pewter sheet with a light-sensitive asphalt which hardens when exposed to light. Then he contact printed a drawing (which was oiled to make it transparent) onto the pewter sheet with the sunlight. He then washed the pewter sheet with lavender oil and then etched it with acid. A few years later, he expanded his experiment by placing one of the pewter sheets in the back of his camera obscura (a darkened box with small openings or lens on one side) and pointed it outside the window and leaving it exposed all day. After washing it with lavender oil, a hazy image of sunlit buildings outside the window was captured.

The one photograph that I found most interesting was the photograph that was taken by Matthew Brady in 1862. It was taken in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam which was the bloodiest battle in the Civil War. History has always fascinated me and that photo showed everyone the reality of war, since that this was the first time war was documented in photography.

I really couldn't decide on a modern day picture so I used one of my own that I took in a Tuscan village when I went to Italy last year