Offset printing
Impresión offset
- Date
- 1904 · confidence medium
- Place
- Nutley, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- Ira W. Rubel and Caspar Hermann
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An indirect lithographic process in which the plate inks a rubber blanket that then prints on the paper. It gave sharper prints and was the dominant method of the 20th century.
Rubel found in 1903-04 in New Jersey that rubber improved the result; Caspar Hermann did so in Germany and Robert Barclay patented a tin-printing offset in 1875.
What it led to
- books, newspapers and colour magazines
- industrial four-colour printing
- digital computer-to-plate workflows