Pre-15,000 B.C.	Prehistoric man first painted art on the walls of caves in what is now northen France and southern Spain.
3,500 B.C.	Papyrus came into use as a writing surface.
200 B.C.	A method of refining parchment from sheepskin was discovered.
105 A.D.	The first paper was made from mulberry and other barks, fish nets, hemp and rags. China.
400	True ink was invented from lamp-black and used in China for brush writing and later for woodblock printing.
868	First printed book, The Diamond Sutra.
1041	Movable type was invented in China.
1282	Italy became the first European country to use watermarks.
1298	Marco Polo witnessed the printing of paper money in China
1309	Paper was first used in England
1454	The first dated document printed from movable type in Europe. Attributed to Gutenbergm it is a 30-line indulgence granted by Pope Nicolaus V to those who donated money for the struggle against the Turks.
1455	The first major effort in Europe to print using movable type, the 42-line Bible known as The Gutenberg Bible was completed.
1469	First use of Roman type in printing.
1501	Aldus Manutius introduced his famous series of classics. It was in these that the italic form of type was first used.
1540	First printing in North America when Juan Pablos printed Manuel de Aldutos.
1639	First printing plant in the Colonies set up by Elizabeth Glover in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1655	The first true English language newspaper and the oldest existing newspaper, The London Gazette, was published.
1695	Dinah Nuthead inherited her husband William's printing business upon his death in this year. She was the first female licensed as a printer in the American colonies.
1702	The first daily newspaper was established when Elizabeth Mallett issued The Daily Courant in England.
1724	Benjamin Franklin arrived in London and began work as a printer's apprentice in the shop of Samuel Palmer.
1728	William Get perfected stereotype printing.
1769	The first printing press made by an American craftsman was the work of Isaac Doolittle, a clock and watchmaker.
1798	Aloys Senefelder invented the planographic method of printing known as lithography.
1812	Konig built the first automatic printing press and installed it in the offices of The London Times.
1824	William Pickering introduced his "Diamond Classics", the first books to be bound in bookcloth.
1833	The first mass produced newspaper in America, The New York Sun, was issued.
1880	Stephen Horgan printed the illustration "Shantytown" in the NEw York Daily Graphic. This was the first halftone photograph printed.
1886	Ottmar Mergenthaler set up the first successful automatic typesetting machine in the offices of The New York Tribune.
1952	The first work to use the phototype process to commercially set type was printed--The Wonderful World of Insects.
1961	Introduction of the first Xerox machine.
1977	Apple introduces the first mass produced personal computer--the Apple II.
1984	First desktop laser printer introduced by Hewlett-Packard. Also this year, Apple releases the first mass market desktop computer with a mouse and graphical user interface.
1985	The desktop publishing era begins when Aldus debuts its PageMaker program--the first desktop publishing software and Apple introduces its LaserWrite printer--the first desktop laser printer to feature Postscript.
1995	Adobe acquires Aldus.