10
STRANGE BUT TRUE
PRINTING FACTS
1. Per ounce, printer ink ($60.88 per ounce) costs more than Chanel No. 5 perfume ($44.11 per ounce), Dom Perignon Champagne ($4.53 per ounce), or milk ($0.03 per ounce).
2. Black is black: any combination of colors can create black, but not all black is created equal. Separating black from cyan, magenta and yellow in four-color printing optimizes the remaining colors and produces better results.
3. It took over two years to produce Shakespeare’s first printed folio.
4. There are over 35,000 printers in the United States employing over 976,000 people in sales, marketing and production.
5. In 2002, “247,777” new book titles were released for publication. In 2009, there were over “1,000,000”.
6. According to a 2004 Citigroup-Environmental Defense study, the actual cost of a printed piece, including development and distribution costs, is anywhere from 13 to 31 times the purchase price of the printing, the paper and the supplies used to produce it.
7. Mexico developed a working printing press in 1534, before Ireland, Russia, or even America.
8. For desktop laser printers, toner costs over $10,000 per gallon, or 2,500 times the cost of gasoline.
9. Ben Franklin was first published at age 16, writing his controversial, feminist "Silence Dogood" letters anonymously in his brother's newspaper, The New England Courant.
10. Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. Treasury.
