History of Screen Printing.
The screen printing process is a very versatile process, one of the porous printing methods. Basically the modern screen printing method is where the printer prepares a screen with an image on it and then passes ink through the screen onto the substrate using a squeegee. More complex designs may require a number of stencils, and printing in several colors requires at least one stencil for each color. First, the image is separated into the 3 subtractive primary colors and .
black. This forms four images with the tones of their colors. After the rest of the process where a film positive and the mesh screen have been exposed to ultraviolet light, a stencil is produced that corresponds exactly to the image that was initially supplied.
Screen Printing can be traced to as far back as 2,500 B.C., its origin being credited to the Japanese, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the early Fiji Islanders. Originally, primitive froms of screen printing were only used to print images onto fabrics. Now, screen printing is used on everything from billboards to electronic ciruit boards to textiles to decals. Basically any substrate can be printed on and it can be any size, shape design, or thickness. .
The inventor of the modern screen printing process is said to be Samuel Simon of Manchester who was awarded his a patten in 1907 for using silk fabric as a printing screen. Near the beginning of the First World War in 1914, John Pilsworth of San Francisco developed what became known as the "Selectasine" method. This method produced multi-color prints from one screen. Areas on the screen were blocked out after each color was printed, and the screen was reused for the next color. Commercial shops exploited this cheap technology to produce quantity signs and posters in color. The process was also used widely during the First World War in America, being used to print flags and banners to support the troops and was used for "point of sale" advertising in the chain store phenomenon of that period.
