Reflective Research Blog - UCK

Peru’s Toque Pala caves 3,000 to 5,000 BC 

Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, France 15,000-18,000 Before Christ

The first known information discovered about the culture of art.
 

There are many things that we understand and know about signage today, but do we really know how all of it began. In this essay I am going to cover how we realized the signage was important and how we progressed over time to start using the written word.  The visual communication is broken down into five main categories (cave paintings, ideograms, Egyptian hieroglyphs, invention of Gutenberg press and modern era of computing technology).  All of the previously stated things changed the world to as we know it today and without all of those things who knows how the world would have been like it those things didn’t take part in our history, that’s why I’m going to cover one question (how?).

People use to say that cave paintings date back only to 1500bc but now days just like this cave painting picture there date back to 32,000bc. The cave paintings usually show hunting scenes, animals and hand imprints to show that there they were and that’s what they had done and seen that particular day. Cave paintings were almost always done in yellow, brown, red and black pigments.  That earliest timeline was called Aurignacian and as you can probably see through looking at the cave painting pictures above the one that’s on the right hand side is older and more advanced. It seems like the art culture of cave painting went down the line at some paint. By comparing those two cave painting it is clear that the methods of producing a cave painting stayed the same but the style of art changed. Sort of like it had happened with art nouveau and art deco now a days. Except usually when an art movement changes the art style goes to better than worse.

From the Toque Pala cave painting I can make out two people and what looks like a long necked creature with horns almost like a giraffe. The rest of the cave painting is kind of smudged and unclear to me. Like what is that big thing in the top right corner? It looks like a blob with pointed brushstroke lines going down it. There are another few things that I can’t tell what that they are in the painting and those can be seen in the bottom middle part of the painting like those little dots and that huge line. The dots if I had to guess I would think that they are meant to be little foot marks made by people and animal tracks while hunting. Also the whole painting was made in an orange tinted colour or it even could have been red that over time became orange there are no particular shading or tones going on in the painting either. I can’t really judge this painting because maybe even this painting caused for a huge stepping stone in the art culture today. But then there also is the Vallon-pontd,Arc  Cave painting which presumably was created 10.000 to 15.000 years earlier and all of the most earliest cave paintings that were ever found and beyond there advancement. If the culture is older it is bound to be different and the paintings did get created by different people in different parts of the world. Paintings that were done in Aurignacian times actually define the animal detail like shading, tone, small detail like eyes and even in some the muscular structure of animal itself. It may just have been the leg muscles that were defined but still. The detail must have been the most important part of that time because even the colour of the animals fur was done perfectly some of the Aurignacian cave painting even defined which way the animals fur went. Also the animal bodies were painted in the right proportion meaning that the legs and the head matched the body of the animal perfectly. Some of modern artists can’t always get the proportions of their paintings, drawings or even sculptures right. But not only the painting were in the really advanced stages but also the compositions, structure and the way they laid out there pieces of art . The caves were the place where the artists would record the different events that happened in their life. Sort of like the photo and video cameras for us today. They really did think beyond their time and to be honest I don’t even know what happened because as the time passed the paintings got worse and worse until after BC.

When all of humans started to again to look at the way that everything is constructed and real. First came the patterns than the structure after came the composition and then perspective. The cave painting that was found in Peru looks almost like some sort of a print done by a child aged 3 to 5 using a stencil. The question I would ask those people if before they were such a great artist what happened to all of their detail and clever composition why now such a simplicity and a childlike designs. Why they didn’t advance their skill to produce even more remarkable paintings.

 The one thing I noticed is that the cave paintings of animals were really detailed unlike the more rare paintings of humans that in those prehistoric times didn’t change. So for 15.000 years the paintings of humans didn’t change often painted in black with a stickman like look it make you wonder how comes they produced animal paintings so clearly but when it came to painting themselves  just the stickmen were painted. It is sad that the cave painting were like a message of the future generations also these prehistoric cave paintings wore not just placed on the first coming wall of the cave painting. The cave painting are usually buried deep inside the cave and not just painted on the walls but also on the ceilings and rocks. I have also got a theory of my own why they painted the cave paintings at all. In our world no matter what time or when there always has existed one thing with humans and it is religion. The huge amount of animal painting kind of suggests to me that the animal were painted as soon as they were killed either for food or for the animal fur that could have been used as something soft to sleep on and something worm to wear. The painting was probably painted each time an animal got killed for the world to remember that the animal once walked this earth it was probably also a sign of sorrow that they didn’t want to kill the animal but it was necessary for them to survive. The same goes for humans they were probably painted as soon as they got killed in the battle or the handprints could have been placed on the wall by an elderly that was dying for everyone to remember and not forget that they once existed. Something like we have today with a video and a photo camera with the years we start to lose the image of our loved ones but all of that can be changed by one look at the picture.  Maybe back the prehistoric people wouldn’t be able to remember the face of the long gone person but with one look at that handprint they could remember what they did with that person when they were alive and probably gather around the fire telling stories and eating their hunted down animal at that time. Personally I don’t know that is just my own theory and no one can really tell today what our early ancestors did and why they did it. The only possible thing that can be told to day is how old the cave paintings really are. Our advances in technology can show us that just by taking a small sample of pigment to tell approximately when it was created buy why and for what reason will always remain a mystery to us.

Ideograms found in far East China 5.000 BC

Now just like the cave painting those were just a start in the massive and prolonged time period of the various different movement’s ideograms was just another movement that followed and helped us to advance further. Ideogram isn’t just a word that can be found in the usual dictionary it is a mass known sign sort of like today we have zebra stripes on the roads, 30 mile per hour speed limit sign and the exit and the stop sign. 

Ideogram for family household

No matter where the people come from or what language they speak anyone everywhere all over the world understands those signs. Today those signs are more known as pictograms but in the ancient times they had a sort of written symbols that meant a specific thing. Those symbols today are found to be carved into stone surfaces or stone plates for the straight smooth surface and also are found on the wooden tablets. I’m guessing that in the ancient times I probably took ages to carve out a perfectly smooth stone tablet where the ideograms would be engraved on. The method of engraving ideogram into the stone is the same as today by getting a metal cylinder than sharpening one end not too much so when the cylinder gets hit with a hammer the force of the hit penetrates a small part of the stone. Than by constantly doing that action there is a wide verity of things, images, letters and symbols that can be carved into the stone tablet. Now today ideograms are also known as logo graphic writing system that is most commonly found in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. The start of ideograms is believed to be 9.000 years ago and Chinese started to first use ideograms 8.000 years ago. But the complete Chinese writing system was only developed 3.500 years ago. So it took Chinese people 4.500 years to develop and perfect their written language.  So all of the Chinese language descended from the wide verity of pictogram. And also phonetic signs that were used in the Egyptian times.

Modern example of Kangxi Dictionary

I also found out that the Kangxi dictionary which is the Chinese dictionary contains of a  whopping 47.035 characters that amount of characters use to be primarily used during the 18^th and 19^th centuries but now a days only 4.000 to 5.000 characters are used. The dictionary doesn’t just contain all the modern words but also rear and ancient words too that no common Chinese citizen uses today. It is bizarre of the amount of characters in Chinese dictionary. It’s definitely nothing like the 26 characters that are in English dictionary. Imagine learning all of those characters from your heart. It would just be practically impossible to do. Today Chinese written language is known to be the oldest one found and no wonder. But when I was doing research on whom or why the ideograms were create no internet page could give a clear reason. It is just guesses right now and thought even if they are for the correct reason  no one can really tell if it’s true or not. You have to think about the ideograms like this, if the Chinese wouldn’t have thought of ideograms we might not even have our written language today. That’s why it is one of the four wonders that Chinese created. This was getting close to creating a real term known today as the alphabet that only appeared 2.000 BC.

The Phaistos Disk dating back to mid Minoan bronze century.

 The Rosetta stone shows the co-existence of Hieroglyphics, Hieratic script and the Greek Alphabet in Egypt in the third century B.C.

The civilization that created alphabet wasn’t the Chinese but in fact it was the Egyptian that made that wonderful breakthrough that is used now worldwide for communication, reading, and writing and learning. This is probably the greatest invention ever made by a man because without this we probably would of never had such a thing as education at all. The alphabet was created to clearly summarize a person’s thoughts or ideas by combining several or a few characters together. The main clear proof that shows us where the written language came from is shown in the Rosetta stone tablet which consists of Proto-Canaanite alphabet, Phoenician alphabet and the Greek alphabet. To be honest I’m not sure what the other alphabets mean but I know that it has a Greek alphabet. This shows one alphabet containing three alphabets. Now I know one thing that there are sign of Aramaic alphabet that involved from Phoenician alphabet to now become the modern alphabet of Asia. But the other alphabets throughout the world evolved from the ancient Greek alphabet. There are signs of some Greek in any language or the alphabet now a day. We might as well all be speaking Greek but no maybe some letters changed and be used more of the same characters in our language and by doing that many times again we created a whole complete different language.

Now there is another proof that Egyptians started of the language of alphabetic words because there is an ancient artefact that no one has yet been able to tell what is written on it. It is also classed as the most mysterious artefact in the world. It is the Phaistos Disk. No one has even come close to translating the disc and that is because it is made up of load of ideograms that when I talked about it previously, ideograms don’t give a correct meaning or a thought. Ideograms are there to help and guide not to instruct.

After the alphabet was created the Egyptians obviously had to use it somewhere and carving each letter out perfectly took up enormous amount of patience and time. So they had to think of a way to get a quick and reliable resource that they could write on. I’m sure that they didn’t have the problem of getting paints or inks together to write with. The problem was what to write on. I am positive that they probably searched hundreds of years before they discovered what we know today as paper or as it is correctly known as papyrus. How the Egyptians created the paper isn’t the right way like we see our paper today. The actual creators of the paper known to us today are the Chinese. It only makes it fair if they were the first ones to discover writing of character they should be the ones that make the discovery of paper.

Papyrus Plant

Papyrus Paper

The following evolution of type came through with the discovery of papyrus. The papyrus is sort of like a writing platform just like paper. But in those days we still hadn’t discovered paper so this was an adequate replacement for it.  Papyrus is made out of Cyprus Papyrus plant found in Africa grooving next to shallow water and swamp like areas. Papyrus plant is another wonderful discovery made by a man. To make the papyrus paper you first need to cut the papyrus plants stem somewhere in the middle and then cut it the same way again. Than what you need to do is peal the outer layer of the papyrus plant completely off. Than by getting a sharp object presumably the knife and cutting through that cut out piece of stem and making a few lined cuts of the white inner layer. It would give you the base for starting producing the papyrus paper. Now you can tell from here if you are doing something wrong you can tell immediately. It can be tested easily if you get the long white inner bit cut out and try to twist it around your finger it would snap straight away because of all the water and the fibre inside it. But if you get a roller and something hard to hit the white cut out with that won’t happen. First what you need to do is get the white cut out than het a homelike instrument to hit the cut out with just to spread the fibres apart just a bit, than by getting a roller and rolling the cut out and squeezing all the water out. It would now give you an opportunity to twist and bend the cut out to your will. As soon as the water gets drained it becomes a much stronger object than it was previously. Oh by the way the little cut out bit is called sylux. What the Egyptians did next is created the process they needed to go through to create papyrus but also a method of colour changing the papyrus from light to dark. That happened straight after the sylux was water proof, thin and rolled up. After the sylux got put back in water for six hours to absorb some water into it but as the water that got absorbed wasn’t the one that was made inside it previously it forced sylux to change colour from light to dark. Than after the same process was done with a good amount of sylux bits it was time to finally create papyrus. By viewing and placing sylux bits one over another side by side the papyrus shape was created. The next step was to squeeze all of the syluxes together. I am not sure what the Egyptians used in those times probably a rock something really heavy with a smooth surface, today we just use a simple press. After syluxes are pressed down they have to stay like that for six days.  That would make it dry and bind together strongly as if those syluxes would of been glued together. Than after those six days all of the syluxes seem to be banded together to form one shape that makes up the whole papyrus up. Also the papyrus paper is very strong, doesn’t rip easily and is not water absorbent unlike the papers we have today. Because of this magnificent discovery the Egyptians now could create their famous and huge manuscripts with paintings and drawings. After the alphabet and the papyrus were created it was the beginning of a new movement all together. Imagine this if the Egyptians wouldn’t of discovered the way to make papyrus the Chinese wouldn’t of picked up on how to make proper paper. And if that wouldn’t of happened imagine today without paper which is practically impossible as the time goes ahead our human race seems to progress more and more.

Gutenberg Press 1439

A picture that I found online of one of the first ever printing presses.

As the character, the alphabet and the paper were now created it was time for a new invention a book and who was the man that helped create all the books out till this day. The person’s name is Johann Gutenberg and without him we wouldn’t have any form of type and most importantly the vast variety of books that we have the access to today. He is the man who created the first ever printing press which now developed into the simple thing that we know as the printer and his life story is quite remarkable and I am going to write all about it.

 It is said that his remarkable invention took of just like the interned has since 1993 and today no one can live without it. It an on-going and never-ending flow of information that is necessary for our work, everyday life or just plainly our interests and an excuse for relaxation. There is literally nothing that you can’t find out how to do today online there are billions of websites with even more stuff sitting inside them.

An old vine press is said to be the main inspirational element to the design of the Gutenberg’s Press.

                                                













Gutenberg’s press and all those presses of that time hat two main bits one was the bit that was the bottom part that allowed for the type letters to be put in there and inked up. And the second bit is almost something that looks like a foot that steps onto the paper and presses it into the type to than create a duplicate on the paper that had come off from the type blocks underneath. So one of the bits went up and down and the second bit went in and out. But unlike the late Gutenberg press replicas that were a two pull press design which meant that those print presses could create two printed pages at the time. Gutenberg’s was just a one pull press meaning that he could only create one printed page at the time. So how he came up with his unique to back than is beyond me. 

Mainz

Gutenberg was born in Germany and spent most of his child hood in the town called Mainz. His family also lived there most of their life. One thing is that Johann Gutenberg wasn’t a Gutenberg at all. His true family name was Gensflaish which in translation means goose meet. And I presume he changed it to Gutenberg because he was bullied because of his original surname. Another   thing about Gutenberg that’s not clear is the year when he was actually born. The year known are close but the precise date is unknown. The years of when Gutenberg is thought to be born are 1397 and 1404 so there is seven year clearness when Gutenberg was born.  There are a few well known things and they are about Gutenberg’s mother and father had a great part to play to what he would become in his later life. Gutenberg’s mother owned some land in Mainz and his father was a merchant whose work brought him in contact with city’s goldsmith’s experts and experienced men with skills that Gutenberg would later on in life find useful. Also Gutenberg went to university where he would have seen books that could have maybe influenced him to design a specific machine so no one would write books anymore.

The painting of what Johannes Gutenberg is supposed to look like.

The mystery isn’t just about Gutenberg’s date of birth but also about how he looked like. The most common look given to Johann Gutenberg is a portrait of him fairly old with a kind of a fishtail beard. It’s quite strange not know in the man who actually might of made the best machine in the world. It was revolutionary for the 15^th century time period because everything was getting handmade and he slowly did an art movement to the industrial revolution. Gutenberg made his machine at the time when monks use to write the books by hand using inks and feathers. Spending endless days, nights and countless hours in the scriptoria where there had to be the perfect conditions for the monk writer there. In the summer they needed lights and in winters they needed candles. The monks at that time usually only produced written copies of bibles. After they were done writing the bible they went to the chapterhouse where they would reread their written bibles and see if they had made any mistakes. After the book was done the monks sometimes at the back of the book wrote what he was going through and what he was experiencing while writing the bible. For example saying how cold it was in the winter how his hands were shaking and he was tempted to quicker finish of the book. Or just simpler describing how hard it was to sit in the same spot for hours, with his back acing because of it. Than the books weren’t cheap and no ordinary peasant could afford a handwritten book. But when writing by hand you make mistakes but I think Gutenberg knew it that by creating a print press machine all of the trouble with mistakes is going to go, because a print press doesn’t make mistakes. But then Gutenberg needed money to star working on this idea and he could already go to a few places like the universities because they were just popping up one by one or go to the church because churches use to control England back in those days. The churches were responsible for the legal documentation of anything that was happening or going around, church was the bank, church was the law and church was the parliament. But that money church wouldn’t give just to anyone but lucky Gutenberg had three things going for him. He was a merchant, engineer and as he went to university he was very intellectual person so getting the money wouldn’t be a problem at all. The church had a huge asking for books back then and if a person could make a machine that could produce the books really quickly without any mistakes than the person would have all the wealthiness they wand and be known throughout the land too. Gutenberg probably had an idea of making the press for ages but he didn’t know how to correctly construct it. Lucky he used to live in one of the largest wine making areas in England so he probably went and visited the wine makers a few times over and the layout of the and the structure of the vine press probably played a huge part in the main design of the print press. Especially the middle spindle that sends the weight or the foot down to squeeze the juice out of those grapes. But to make his invention come true after he would need a lot of money which he didn’t have those days. And not only the money turning around a simple press that presses grapes into something that is straight to a millimetre would really be something. After all it would have later taken him years to make all the preparations and then finally make it. Mainz had been very rich and greatly known in medieval times but after the plague (Black Death) started it became hard for anyone to live in those days. So Gutenberg didn’t actually choose place and the best time to start a business up. 

Strasbourg

So he decided to move down a river to a city called Strasbourg. When Gutenberg arrived there it was a very powerful town full of money and with trading links across the Europe. The city was full of people with money with people deal makers, moneymen and prototype capitalists which Gutenberg needed to use as partners so he could get all the money he needs to start to work on his invention. By the late 1430s Gutenberg struck up a partnership with three of them. There is also one more thing that Gutenberg needed to assure so he would be allowed to produce his prints without anyone stopping him. That one thing was a church. Churches controlled everything in those days. They were like the centre of the earth. Where everything went into, everything was getting told and where all of the legal documentation was made. In those days it was the church but today it’s the finance. Gutenberg saw how the monks had to do hand written work in the church and he realised that he had to improve the paste of writing books. He only had to come out to the street called RUE DES ECRIVAINS Scbriwerstubgass. The street of the writers located in Strasbourg. All you could see in those days when you would have come down this street is scribes running around with their inky fingers and sheets of paper under their arms. This was a way of inspiring him to create his machine quicker because as soon as he would have created his machine such an important person like a scribe wouldn’t be needed anymore and he would have achieved his lifetime glory and success. The next thing that Gutenberg did was employ a carpenter called Sazpah to help him work on his invention and later on he did the same with some other craftsmen that he recruited from Strasbourg guilds. He set them to work in his new premises where no one could find it in a hamlet down a stream. This secretsy was necessary to keep the invention away from the potential competitors that also wanted to make this sort of a machine. Because if this sort of a machine would have got made the person that did it would have had their fortune made for them. So if everyone would of known how the machine was made than everybody would have been doing it. To make a printed ford for the church would have been the greatest sensation of that time. It would speed up book making and anything else that was written by hand. So while Gutenberg’s team was working on the printing press he needed the second job you can say for the money to start coming in so the people around wouldn’t start asking questions what is he doing at home and stuff. He didn’t want anyone to start asking questions so he came up of an idea that would keep other people away from his work. Gutenberg’s side tracking idea was to create mirrors for pilgrims coming to the pilgrimage at Arham. In the Arham was a cathedral that at that time was showing relics that were supposedly directly descended from Christ. Now this showing of relics only happened once in four years so it was a great opportunity for side tracking the questionnaires and earning a bit more income to go on the design of his invention. So pilgrims would come from all over Europe to see these relics and revive the rays of healing that emanated from them. But eventually there were too many of them coming and not everyone would get to see the relics so this was a perfect opportunity for creating mirrors because than pilgrims wouldn’t have to be really close to the relic to see it the mirror could reflect its image anywhere. The idea was to create some sort of a concave metal mirror that was held above the relict that then would capture those rays coming from the relics and be given to the pilgrims. The local mirror makes couldn’t keep up with the demand so Gutenberg’s idea was if he could mix his metals right he could use the presses that were in the development to make the mirrors and after sell them to the cathedral to earn some more money. 

The Black Death Plague.

But that idea was good until the biggest ruiner of businesses came in 15^th century the plague the Black Death. The back death stroke that year again and the pilgrimage got put off. So that year not to risk load of peoples life’s getting lost it got closed down. Than the economics went down because of all the disaster that the black plague brought with it. One of Gutenberg’s partners died and the partnership began to collapse. Any other man would have just given up but Gutenberg nearly out of money was still fighting to get his machine finished.  He chose a secluded base where he would protect his invention from industrial espionage. Maybe his machine was already done by then but his plan would only succeed if he could find a way to mass produce individual letters that than could be used to print books with. So he went to the guild of goldsmiths and found a man called Hans Done together they made a thing that today we grow as a letter block except in those days the letter block was a little bigger than we see today. Today we have the brilliance of microscopic engineering to lead us but in those days no such a thing even existed. To make a type there are several processes that need to be done and several items are used to make them with. First thing that need to be done to make the type is you need to make a punch a master copy of the letter that will then be reproduced. After the letters outline is placed onto the steel bar it than needs to be carved out by hand using a file. In the Gutenberg’s bible there was presumably over 200 characters used and to create the by hand it would of taken Gutenberg about a year to make those letters. So the investors would I think would of got a bit annoyed waiting for a whole year and not seeing any results of money coming back in. After the filing of the letter is done it is than smoke proofed. It is done by getting the letter over a lit candle and picking up the smoke that comes of the candle burning. Than the tip of the later block becomes black and after is pressed into a paper. It gives the same effect as using ink. You get a perfect replicate of the letter on the type. The type needs to be hand carved, grooved, shaved, emir aid, rasped, shaped, hardened and tempered to make it work. That is a key of making type but Gutenberg wanted a quicker was of producing the types and he developed a perfect little machine called the type mould.  It is made up of two halves that when they are put together they make a cavity where the type can be easily made with something called matrix at the bottom. Matrix is basically a copper metal into which an existing type is hammered into to make an indent. It is placed into the bottom and then a mould of metal made up from led, tin and antimony in the whole that is made in the type mould. The metal hardens instantly and the type is formed. This machine and using this process allowed Gutenberg to create endless amount of types in a day instead of waiting a whole year.

The continuing on about Gutenberg by the late 1440s he had moved on from Strasbourg because it had been terrorised by a band of French mercenaries called the Armanyacks. So he decided to go back to his hometown Mainz. As with Gutenberg he had a problem with money so he decided to borrow some from s relative and he left his house as a security for the loan. And he started a new partnership with a man called Johan Fust. It gave him some cash injection he needed to get his press started.

Velum Created Book

So he started to test his invention on fairly simple literature like a Latin grammar book. But to show the church that his printing press works 100% and would be a nice investment made he printed a document such as people indulgence to show that his press works. Than witch churches interest taken there was only one more issue to be resolved paper. Most high end books in those days were written on velum because they didn’t know how to make the paper even know that the Chinese people haw had the paper for few millennia. Vellum was made by yielding cow skins. Gutenberg obviously wanted his bible to printed using highest quality materials and he thought that he would print every bible using vellum. But he kind of miscalculated that quite a bit because there are different breeds of cows and their skins are different. There were genesis, exodus, duderonamy and vibidocus. It would take 140 calves to provide enough vellum just to make a single copy of a bible. But to make 180 bibles just as Gutenberg was expecting he would have needed to slaughter around 25.000 calves which was unreal. There are only a few bibles made by Gutenberg created using vellum but the rest is made out of paper. If Gutenberg wouldn’t of found out a way to produce paper his invention would have been almost useless but he did find a way and quite luckily paper just had come into the west. Gutenberg found a mill that was set up in Barzal in   Switzerland and it was used to create paper. Not creating paper as we would know it today using wood pulp but by using cloth rag. To create the paper first the rags are mashed to a fine pulp. A waterwheel provides the power to drive the big hefty hammers which mash the rag up. Once the pulp reaches the right consistency it is transferred into a huge watt. Inside the watt the water looks like a foggy almost milky like water. The water is used warm so it would go through the seethe quicker and leave the pulp behind. The seethe is placed into the water and then slowly pulled up. The seethe will pick up all of the pulp and soak the water through. Gutenberg had found a brilliant way to mass producing paper and he was almost done. The first Gutenberg bible was displayed at the Frankford train fair in 1454 and it caused a sensation because this sort of thing had never been done before. Firs it started with just plain black font but after two years he started to add some colour and drawing onto the pages. He always use to decorate the pages in natural objects like leafs and flowers. Gutenberg’s invention astonished the world and spread just like the internet has today.

Fibber Paper resolution of Gutenberg.

In the more modern days there were several inventions made that affected visual communication in ways that man could never imagine. It went in steps such as photography, than TV, film, computers, internet, email and all the different photo manipulative software available today. all of those and the previous things mentioned in this essay enable us to have all of the different kinds of visual communication. Combining each of the together allow us to have different kind of visual communication.

An explanation about how all of those things started should give a clearer knowledge of how we understand visual communication to day. First of all the sensation of photography. It had been long before we even knew what a photo camera was when Chinese and Greek philosophers described the simple element as optics and the camera. That first was mentioned 4^th and 5^th centuries B.C. But it wasn’t until the years 1664-1666 when we really understood what colour were. It was only after Isaac Newton discovered that a white light is composed of different colours. As the years went on there was another discovery made by a man called Johann Heinrich Schulze. He discovered that silver nitrate darkens when being exposed to the sun. Finally the first ever photograph was created by a man called Joseph Niepce in the year 1814 using the (camera obscura) .even know that the photograph needed 8 hours of sun expsure and later faded it has upon this day been clased as the first ever photograph.           

Camera Obscura 1814.

The first ever photograph known to be taken.  

After photography came the television. This breakthrough was bigger than anything out there yet. To this date it has been classed as one of the biggest inventions that a man has made. It is said that today 92% of the world’s households have got a TV inside somewhere. Most of those 92% will have more than one TV inside. The television today is sort of like our third eye from which we can see anything anywhere in the world and out. The basic principal of television came from radio. It was already known how to send one signal and receive it elsewhere but that was just a sound. What the inventors wanted to do was send an actual image that could be reproduced at the other side to the exact detail. So that how it started through radio signal. A transmission of an image was just a simple experiment back than who knew that years later some people wouldn’t even be able to live without it. This was the major step for visual communication. Visually communicate an image through miles and miles of land were just something astonishing. The first ever transmitter was created in 1911 by Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin. It was only a transmitter than that could transmit only still images but it was a step forward never the less.

Mechanical mirror drum scanner 1911

           

The mechanical mirror drum is the transmitter itself through spinning at a high speed the holes inside the drum captured parts of the image using its mirror drum. It was the first ever prototype of what we know today to be TV. Of course there was a flaw with the scanner it took in the image but on the other side it could just be enough to say what that is. The unclaritty in the image was the problem back then. But no one really was concerned about that than because they already achieved what they intended in the first place which was to send an image and receive it at the other end. The two Russian inventors were just experimenting with the concept but 13 years later Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a silhouette image in motion. Later the same year Charles Francis Jenkins using a 48 line disk scanner sent an image of a toy windmill over the radius of 5 miles back to his lab. That was the first ever long distance image transmission. In October 2^nd, 1925 Baird still hadn’t achieved the concept of image movement because for something to be classed as a moving image it had to be moved 12 frames per second but Baird’s scanner could only display 5 images per second at that time. But by January the same year the Baird managed to improve his scanner to produce 12.5 frames per second and that was a new beginning for a new television set. Afterwards there followed a public presentation where Baird shoved everybody his fabulous invention that could display movement from a long distance. Unlike the inventions that could display several hundred lines of resolution. Baird’s television set could only reproduce 30 lines of resolution just enough to recognize a human face. And after that followed more and more advanced TVs. Even now today the TVs are getting improved all the time, and they will continue to get improved in the long run too. Who knew that 86 years later the TVs would be such a big thing? Today television is the main way of visual communication around the world. The TV show, adverts and movies it’s all part of visual communication except its visual communication in motion.

Example of 30 line of resolution image.

With the arrival of television came the arrival of motion pictures. At the beginning the motion pictures involved mainly adverts on many of which the companies were trying to sell their TV’s on. Then slowly came the news channel where it was showing how the war is going letting people know what’s out there and are they safe. Then there were a few kids’ breakfast shows. And gradually more and more channels came on. Straight after channels the movies started to appear, first the movies started by showing some of the performances in theatres but after it grew up. The variety of angles, different movie sets, improvisation, horror, action and romance. Making movies was a huge deal then as it is today except than there were maybe 3 movies a year but now we get like 2 to 3 new movies each week. It was a secondary way of people providing money to TV companies back then. Today there are two categories for those two (the movie industry and the electronics industry) both are still related and partners in a way but none of them get money from the others benefits anymore.

Mobile phones are really a short story as they stand for in visual communication. The mobile phones really started as radio telephony firs used in 1926 on the trains from Berlin to Hamburg. The firs far distance mobile communication that a man could carry was available in the early 1950s but a handheld mobile device that we would remotely even consider as a mobile phone was available since 1973. There were big heavy devices whose battery only lasted for about an hour or two. The devices had only a keypad just for direct calls. The fancy things like a contact phone memory or even messaging was only a thought of the future than. So practically at the beginning the mobile phone had nothing to do with visual communication at all. It was only when mobile messaging was invented when the visual communication of mobile phone began. Today the mobile phones are involved in one of the biggest advertisement businesses going. The mobile phones today are plainly meant to be for visual communication. The software inside the mobile phone visually communicate itself, even the normal house phones today are getting influenced by the modern mobile phones. The house phones have near enough or exactly the same specifications as a mobile phone. The software today lets us manipulate the images inside the mobile phone using the pictures we have taken.

Computers today manage all of the businesses and companies. Everything that we see today on the street such as signs and billboards, everything gad been put through the computer. The manipulation of the image is possible by using specializes software such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. The invention of the so needed product is a question that no one can really answer with a straight answer. Some can tell you that Microsoft invented the first ever computer and some can say that it was Mackintosh. The thing is that Microsoft didn’t really come out with a computer; they really came out with an operating system. Their OS was released in 1981, and it gave some companies to develop or create computers to work with their OS. What mackintosh actually did was come out with their own computer and their own specialised operating system. They released Apple 1 in 1972 it is thought to be the first ever consumer based computer. Actually the first ever consumer based computer was Mark-8 Altair that came out 2 years before the Apple 1 was even released. Obviously there wasn’t no internet or the fancy colour screens with background images, but it was a step forward anyhow. What is a computer? It is a device that can be programmed to do different things. The first programmable computer dates back all the way to 1936. It was the Z1 Computer designed by Konrad Zuse.

 Apple 1 1976

Mark-8 Altair 1974

Z1 Computer 1936












After all of the computers were invented the people had to take a step forward. At that time the computer technological development had reached its peak at 1993 than the programmers thought of a new invention that would let people share information everywhere. The internet was the next step forward. The information that you could get from World Wide Web was incredible. The internet in the next decade would overtake any books and information that you would be found in the library every book and more was and would be available online. The internet was a new beginning. The internet was a new way to get the visual communication out there in the world. Images, art, advertisement, videos and more manipulation were going inside the web. From computers to its software now days comes the graphic design industry as we know today. 

What Hardware and software is available today?