Information and communication technologies the Age of Expansion and Enlightenment (1650–1800)

The eighteenth century was a pivotal time in the development of the mechanics and methods of communication. Commercial, political, legal, social and religious interactions were all facilitated by a variety of material processes including handwriting, printing and engraving. Printing, arguably the pre-eminent form of mass communication in the eighteenth century, was not a new technology but how print happened, its purpose and function was changing. Letterpress, the dominant printing process, had long been used to produce books for the prosperous. By the eighteenth century many more people encountered other forms of print such as newspapers, magazines, chapbooks, and business ephemera. Printed communication was not simply dependent upon the word: technological advancements in engraving and lithography, used for the production of images, resulted in an explosion of visual materials such as maps, charts, diagrams, atlases, illustrations and prints. Information became visual and images started to be included in all sorts of media. Printing, however, did not replace handwriting and manuscript culture, and personal letter writing and public record keeping became increasingly pervasive and various technological innovations developed to facilitate the trend. The eighteenth century was, therefore, a multimedia society, with a ‘mixed model’ of communication systems. This chapter will consider the various communication systems, the reasons for their development and their wider impact.